I installed Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro Retina laptop.
Now I would like to remove the OS X partition to get some extra space for Windows. Is it simply just a matter of formatting the OS X partition from, e.g., Windows Explorer?
Will the laptop ever boot again afterwards?
Best Answer
I just removed the OS X partition on a 2011 MacBook Air, leaving only the BOOTCAMP partition. For what it's worth, I then rebooted into Windows 7 normally without problem.
The partition map now looks like:
However, I did not trust regular Windows tools to delete the HFS+ boot partition for OS X. It might have worked, but instead I booted from an OS X 10.8 USB key, and then switch into Disk Utility and remove the OS X partition using the GUI.
(Yeah, this is on an old "64GB" MacBook Air... which definitely is not big enough to dual-boot unless you have very specific, limited needs.)