Cloning my bootcamp dedicated drive 500 Gb to smaller 250 Gb SSD. Shrink? (Mac Pro 3.1, El Capitan) (Winclone 6)

Winclone
1

Hi there,

I can’t find a shrink option for my dedicated 500 Gb Bootcamp drive (135 Gb used space).
I want to clone this drive to a newly bought 250 Gb SSD but I cannot see any shrink options ?
Do I have to shrink it ? Or is this automated when I create the image?

Thank you in advance for your help,

Chris

2

I just wrote up this support article to answer your question:

Hope that helps!

tim

3

Thank you, Tim.

That sure helps.

I was able to successfully clone my Bootcamp partition from my large windows dedicated drive to a smaller SSD drive. The default setting (WIM) automated the process quite efficiently.

My method for the old (but capable) Mac Pro 3,1, El Capitan, was:

  1. Make Winclone image file of the old Bootcamp hard drive to my Mac drive.
  2. Format the new Bootcamp SSD in Diskutility ( Fat 32)
  3. Open Bootcamp assistant utility in Utilities. Create Windows USB installer with a downloaded Windows iso file (from Microsoft) in the Bootcamp Assistant. When the Mac needs to restart the first time to install from the USB, hold Option key at restart and choose boot to MacOS .
  4. Open Winclone again and clone (“restore”) the image file to the new SSD drive (which is now recognised as the Bootcamp drive).
  5. Remove old drive from the Mac not to have 2 conflicting Bootcamp versions at startup
  6. Restart (hold Option key at boot) and choose Bootcamp partition to load Windows from the new SSD. It works!

Thank you.

Regards,

Chris