Mar 16, 2018  How to Share Files Between Mac OS X and Windows With Boot Camp. Chris Hoffman @chrisbhoffman Updated March 16, 2018, 11:14am EDT. Your Windows partition appears under Devices as BOOTCAMP on Mac OS X. Unfortunately, Mac.

Are you receiving that uncomfortable notification from macOS informing you that “your disk is almost full“? You can save space by optimizing storage using iCloud Drive – if you rent enough space from Apple – or reclaim space by removing the Boot Camp partition that was required when you installed the Windows operating system.

What Is the Boot Camp Partition?

Software incompatibility may force some Mac users to take the ultimate step and install Windows on their computer using Boot Camp. As with every operating system, Windows requires its own partition and its own file systems, which means to use it on a Mac requires you to repartition the drive using Boot Camp assistant in order to install the Windows operating system.

If you are installing Windows for the first time, you will require at least 30GB of free space, increasing to 40GB if you are upgrading from a previous version of Windows. This space will be taken up on the built-in hard drive (which may have limited storage space), allocated to the Windows OS during the installation process. This newly created partition will be named Boot Camp by default.

Regardless of how much disk space you have allocated to Windows, it is nothing more than a waste of storage if your startup disk is getting full, and so in these situations it is recommended that users either wipe away the macOS partition using Mac optimization software such as CleanMyMac, OnyX, and the like, or remove the Boot Camp partition to reclaim gigabytes of disk space.

How to Remove the Boot Camp Partition

1. Back up all the data that you need from the partition.
2. Start the Mac in macOS.
3. Quit all open apps and log out of any other users that are currently logged in.
4. Open up Launchpad, click Utilities, and then Boot Camp Assistant.
5. Click the “Continue” button.
6. If you’re prompted to select a task, click on either “Remove Windows 7 or later version” or “Remove Windows 10 or later version”, whichever is relevant. Then hit “Continue”.
7. If your Mac has a single internal disk, then you'll see a “Restore Disk to a Single Volume” window; click “Restore”.
8. If your computer has multiple internal disks, select the Boot Camp disk with Windows installed on it and hit “Restore disk to a single macOS partition”, followed by “Continue”. Depending on the size of the drive this may take a few minutes.
9. Click “Quit” once the process is complete. Launch Disk Utility and check if the drive is no longer available just to confirm that the Boot Camp partition has been removed.

Some users complain about receiving the “Your disk could not be restored to a single partition” error message, and therefore being prevented from restoring the internal drive back to a single partition. If, for some reason, Boot Camp fails to remove the partition, then you can always turn to Disk Utility, a powerful tool built into macOS.

1. Launch Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. Select the Windows partition.
3. Click “Erase” and select either the “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for Macs running macOS 10.12 Sierra or earlier, or “APFS file system” for users on macOS 10.13 High Sierra and beyond.
4. Erase the partition.
5. Select the complete disk.
6. Click on the Partition tab.
7. Select the newly formatted “Windows” partition and remove it by clicking on the minus button in the bottom left.
8. Select the main partition and type in its full size into the “Size” option, then hit enter.
9. Let Disk Utility complete the resizing to restore your full macOS-compatible partition once again.

It's not specifically a virtual machine, but you cannot avoid talking about Boot Camp when it comes to running Windows on a Mac. Boot Camp is Apple's own answer to consumer demand, and as a part of macOS represents a huge advantage as it eliminates the need to download any third-party apps. Parallels Desktop, on the other hand, seeks to solve a widespread demand for running not one but multiple operating systems on a single computer in a secure and trusted environment. But which can cater to your needs, and are there more benefits for one than the other?

Boot Camp

Although it lacks the features that virtual machines offer, Boot Camp is still the best way to make the most of the Windows experience on a Mac, be it for leisure, gaming or work purposes. It builds on the need that Mac users sometimes have to run the most popular desktop operating system on their machine because the software they wish to use is only available on Windows.

Boot Camp is Apple’s way of running a guest operating system (specifically Windows) on a Mac. The on-screen installation instructions are easy to follow and require little input from the user beyond the presence of the Windows ISO file or installation disk. Once the process is complete users will have access to the ultimate Windows experience as the operating system takes full advantage of the Mac's hardware resources without the performance penalty of a virtual machine.

Setup Process

Creating Boot Camp Partition

Filezilla for mac book.

Windows Installed via Boot Camp

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Boot Camp Volume Mounted

The downside of Boot Camp, however, is that users need to allocate storage space on the startup disk for the Windows OS, which will be formatted to NTFS. Alongside this minimum allocation of 40GB of space, users will only be able to read the Boot Camp partition's content and not write to it. This means that they will have to figure out how to create a communication channel between the two completely isolated operating systems to allow for file transfers across platforms.

Maybe the biggest downside of all is the reboot process. Every time a user wants to use the guest operating system for whatever, a full reboot is required. This could easily become a hassle over time but considering that Boot Camp is available for free it is an acceptable compromise.

Parallels Desktop

Launched a year before Apple added Boot Camp onto its desktop operating system, Parallels Desktop is one of the top paid virtual machines available for both regular and power users. Thanks to years of development, the hypervisor has reached a deep level of integration while still isolating the guest operating systems from its host, in this case macOS.

What makes a virtual machine such as Parallels Desktop highly appealing is the convenience of being able to run two or more operating systems simultaneously. However, it’s the tiny automation of certain aspects that makes or break such software, and Parallels Desktop incorporates a wide variety of these.

Parallels Desktop Downloading Windows 10

Shared Folders

For example, Parallels will download Windows directly from Microsoft and install it at a speed that matches Boot Camp. And when Windows (or another guest OS) is running on a Mac, users of Parallels can take bidirectional sharing for granted since the software has smoothly integrated this function, meaning you can focus on getting the job done instead of figuring out how to share a file between the two operating systems. The same goes for apps: this deep integration allows users to run Windows in Seamless mode as if it would be part of macOS and use features such as Call with iPhone or Quick Look while still running Windows.

Parallels Desktop charges $79.99 per year for a single Mac license or $99.99 for a lifetime license, but users can test the software free for 14 days.

Conclusion

The final choice depends on the consumer's needs, and in this case there are multiple factors to consider. If free solutions are required due to budget constraints, then Boot Camp is by far the best option. Still, either choice comes with compromises: Apple's solution limits the guest operating system choice to only one platform and has other challenges such as having to find a way to share folders and the need to reboot the Mac every time platforms are switched.

Parallels Desktop, on the other hand, incorporates all the extra features of a virtual machine, meaning that it offers users the convenience of running multiple operating systems simultaneously including a wide variety of supported platforms, which is great for getting the job done. However, users need to consider a roughly 10% performance penalty, as its host must share the hardware resources with whichever guest OS is being operated.