El Capitan - Increasing/Resizing the BootCamp Partition Size

Question

I'm running OS X 10.11.5 El Capitan with a 240GB SSD. I made a 50GB BootCamp Partition using this guide because my usb/dvd wasn't being detected. I found myself searching for space because I somehow only have ~16gb left after installation of several programs. I need around 2-5GB more.

Upon research, I found this youtube guide which basically makes a 3rd partition, booting in Windows, and then using MiniTool Partition Wizard, have the windows partition "take" the 3rd blank/unused partition. However, upon further research, I've seen this thread among several others that say that this method does NOT work on El Capitan. It primarily has something to do with the partition mapping and how adding a third one makes you unable to boot in Windows. There are comments that say it works on El Capitan and some say it doesn't. I'm not sure if those who managed to make it work did 10+ steps in between or if those who didn't manage to make it work simply weren't resourceful enough, and I'm not taking a risk by figuring it out on my own.

I then found Paragon Campture which seems promising as it says it support El Capitan. I know this isn't free and I'll have to shell out cash, however, I'm okay with the free 2GB reallocation. My main concern is that I haven't seen as much feed back (I'm pretty sure I'm looking at the wrong places) about Paragon on El Capitan but so far, they seem to be the most solid choices. It would greatly help if I got feedback from anyone who used Paragon on El Capitan.

I know the old method is to scrap the Windows Partition and reinstall one using the Boot Camp Assistant, however, as I stated above, I took a pretty darn long way around installing Windows on my Mac and I don't wanna do that again.

Any feedback on these software, or any tips on how to make MiniTool Partition Wizard work on El Capitan, will be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

The product I have used for years to solve such a problem is Winclone. According to Russel Scheil at Twocanoes Software, the Basic edition is all you should need. You install Winclone as an OS X application. The steps to create a larger Boot Camp partition are given below.

1. Use Winclone to create a compressed backup up of your Boot Camp partition. This backup can be stored in any Mac OS Extended (HFS+) formatted volume.
2. Delete your Boot Camp partition.
3. Resize your OS X volume.
4. Create a MSDOS (FAT) formatted partition. This partition will need to the same size or larger than the original Boot Camp partition.
5. Use Winclone to restore Windows to the MSDOS (FAT) formatted partition. Winclone will change the partition to NTFS format. If Winclone is running under El Capitan, you will first need to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) before restoring Windows.