boot camp question

[Kristofer]

I had bootcamp installed on my Macbook once before and i remember it going over quite smoothly. I recently got bootcamp back and tried to use bootcamp assistant. I tried to partition the drive to give windows 15GB. When I do so, I get a message after a time of "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."

Does anyone have any suggestions? I know I didn't have to do this before when I installed BootCamp. If no suggestions, is there a more explicit guide to following these directions? It seems a little more complicated than what the error message lets on.

Please help! I need to use XP soon!

Thank you!

[Bill Gates]

That message usually appears when there is a data on the disk that cannot be moved, thus preventing Boot Camp Assistant from shrinking your OS X partition. To resolve this issue you can either copy your data to another volume and restore it as the message instructs, or use a third-party utility such as iDefrag or Drive Genius to move your data to the beginning of the partition. You may also have luck temporarily moving any large files off the disk and onto an external volume before reattempting to partition the drive.

[EndlessMac]

Originally Posted by Kristofer

I had bootcamp installed on my Macbook once before and i remember it going over quite smoothly. I recently got bootcamp back and tried to use bootcamp assistant. I tried to partition the drive to give windows 15GB. When I do so, I get a message after a time of "Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."

When you say you had Boot Camp installed do you mean you used it to partition your hard drive but you didn't installed Windows and then used Boot Camp you restore your hard drive to one partition? I did that a few times to test Boot Camp before my copy of XP arrived and I got the same message when I actually tried installing Windows. It seems that the hard drive doesn't like being partitioned too many times with Boot Camp.

To fix the problem I just used the Mac OS disc that comes with your computer to use Disk Utility to repair my hard drive. You can first verify your hard drive in your computer's Disk Utility in your applications folder to see if it needs repairing if you want but it's good bet that you need to. In order to repair it you have to use the Mac OS disc that comes with your Mac or any Mac OS disc that's the same as the one you are using because Disk Utility can't repair a hard drive that it's installed on, hence using the Mac OS disc. It's the same Disk Utility program that's on your computer but it's just running off the disc instead of your hard drive.

Once that is done you should be able to go back to Boot Camp and partition your hard drive in order to install Windows.

[Kristofer]

Thank you for your suggestions. I tried iDefrag and repairing the HD. I still get a message about files not being able to be moved.

But why does it suggest a sledgehammer when all I need is a pair of tweezers? Why backup and wipe out the ENTIRE disk when Boot Camp could instead just identify the problem files that it cannot move, and then I could back just THOSE up? Seems really silly reformatting the whole thing just because some files won't move.

Now I have to think about how to back up my whole HD. :\ Can anyone help me with this? I've tried creating an image of the HD but all I ever get is errors. "Bad descriptor", "Error -61". Would this be because I'm using a PC-formatted external HD? I was surprised to find it readable by osx (as in I plugged it in, it appeared on desktop, I checked to make sure the files actually appeared.) Then when I booted with my install disc and tried to put an image back up on it, I got the errors above. Over and over.

[EndlessMac]

Originally Posted by Kristofer

Would this be because I'm using a PC-formatted external HD? I was surprised to find it readable by osx (as in I plugged it in, it appeared on desktop, I checked to make sure the files actually appeared.)

If the hard drive was formatted as FAT32 then both PC and Mac can read it but FAT32 is a limited format for both Windows and Mac. You have to format the drive to Mac first if you want to use it as a true backup. Backing up using Time Machine will probably be the easiest route for you.