Reformatting as single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume for Win 7 install

[grastafaram]

Hi, I'm trying to install Windows 7 Home Premium. When I get to the step about partitioning the drive it tells me that the disk cannot be partitioned because some of the files cannot be moved, and recommends that I "...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." This sounds a little risky to me, and perhaps beyond my limited knowledge, and I don't want to inadvertently screw something up or lose everything. Also, I'm not really sure how to restore my information to the disk, although I did just back everything up onto an external drive. I'd like to know if I could damage something by reformatting to an extended journaled volume, if it is feasible for a newbie to attempt, and how to restore everything to the disk. Thanks to everyone who might help, this site has always been great!

[minifridge1138]

It sounds like you already have multiple partitions created on your hard drive.

Boot camp only works with a disk with a single partition.

Let's start at the beginning...

What model of Mac are you using?
How many physical hard drives do you have?
How many partitions do you have per disk?
What are you using to backup your data?

[grastafaram]

Hi, thanks for the reply, I'm using a 15" MBP Mid 2009 model, 2.53 Ghz, 250 GB, 4 GB RAM. I have only the hard drive that it came with, and have never partitioned the disk before so there are no other partitions that I know of. To back up I'm using an iomega 500 GB external hard drive for Mac.

[johnhurley]

Originally Posted by grastafaram

Hi, thanks for the reply, I'm using a 15" MBP Mid 2009 model, 2.53 Ghz, 250 GB, 4 GB RAM. I have only the hard drive that it came with, and have never partitioned the disk before so there are no other partitions that I know of. To back up I'm using an iomega 500 GB external hard drive for Mac.

What version of the mac os x operating system are you running?

How much free space is available in your primary disk?

[balamw]

Originally Posted by johnhurley

How much free space is available in your primary disk?

Also, was your HDD ever quite full? This can leave some active files like logs in the area where Boot Camp wants to put Windows.

Personally, this would be the time when I replace the HDD in my Macs and get a larger internal drive as a bonus.

B

[grastafaram]

I'm running 10.6.8 and have 108 GB of space available, and am just trying to set up a 30 GB partition. My hard drive has been nearly full once or twice in the past. Also I was looking in some other forums and saw some code you could enter into the terminal to see how many partitions there are on your drive, this is what came back:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 249.7 GB disk0s2

So it looks like there are actually two partitions if I am reading this thing correctly. I have no idea what the EFI is, but boot camp requires a single partition hard drive to install Windows. If this is indeed another partition, how can I get around this and install Windows??

Thanks.....

[balamw]

Originally Posted by grastafaram

My hard drive has been nearly full once or twice in the past.

...

I have no idea what the EFI is, but boot camp requires a single partition hard drive to install Windows.

The EFI is a hidden system partition that doesn't count for this.

How comfortable are you with doing this all manually? i.e. without much help from Boot Camp Assistant?

B

[grastafaram]

Well I don't know what that would entail, but I think trying it manually would be over my head. I guess that I could try to reformat and reinstall, as long as that is pretty straight forward, and I'm not likely to damage anything or lose all my data. I just thought there might be a simpler solution.

[minifridge1138]

If you reformat, then you will lose all of your data.
It's an option, but only if you have recent back ups.

[grastafaram]

I am just wondering if there are any other solutions to this problem other than reformatting my hard drive????

[scottdf]

I had this same error come up for me last night as I tried to use Boot Camp Admin. I defragmented my hard drive thinking that would help, but no such luck. I am running 10.6.8 on a 2007 24" iMac Model 7,1.

Is the next step to backup my hard drive and reformat?

I have 165G free and was trying to create a 100G partition - would making a smaller one make any difference? I tried doing a 90 and 80 and ran into the same error, but maybe going smaller still - or is it simply an error that only a complete wipe of the HD will fix?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Scott

[ancelrick]

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/.../t-191729.html

this thread has some good possibilities

at one time, I recall some defragmenting program (lol OS 9 i think) used to show specific file info when you moused over the graphic of the disk. I can recall seeing a file flagged as not movable. So ultimately you need some way to find a file flagged as can't be moved , or just guess , or erase the disk.

[NZed]

Originally Posted by grastafaram

I'm running 10.6.8 and have 108 GB of space available, and am just trying to set up a 30 GB partition. My hard drive has been nearly full once or twice in the past. Also I was looking in some other forums and saw some code you could enter into the terminal to see how many partitions there are on your drive, this is what came back:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *250.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 249.7 GB disk0s2

So it looks like there are actually two partitions if I am reading this thing correctly. I have no idea what the EFI is, but boot camp requires a single partition hard drive to install Windows. If this is indeed another partition, how can I get around this and install Windows??

Thanks.....

I think 30gb is way too small, Windows itself takes over already half and sometimes(usually) more up to 20gb