Bootcamp cannot partition disk

[zen]

Huh.

I have an alu iMac with a 500GB HDD. There is about 200GB free.

Every time I run the Bootcamp Assistant, choose a Windows partition (doesn't matter what size), it sits with the progress bar spinning for ages before it gives me the error "Disk could not be partitioned as some files cannot be moved. Please reformat the disk and try again".

What gives? There is no way I can back the disk up, reformat, reinstall and re-update everything.

No other apps are running when I run the Bootcamp Assistant.

Any ideas?

[richard.mac]

defrag the disk with iDefrag. there is also a free way of doing it by cloning your hard disk to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner which actually defrags as well but you need an external.

[zen]

I thought Mac OS X defragged as it went, all the time?

[richard.mac]

yeah HFS+ auto defrags for caches, log files and stuff like that… small file sizes.

but Boot Camp Assistant cant make another partition because there is no free blocks, your hard drive is probably fragmented to the end of the drive spindle. you need to move all of your data to the start of the drive spindle and you do this by defraging… OS X doesnt do this on its own think of this as a special case to defrag which is pretty rare.

[vandozza]

edit - ^what he said!

I think it defrags to an extent.

- Individual files are defraged, but
- The file structure/folders/applications aren't.

[zen]

Ah, interesting. Which means, Bootcamp aside, it would actually be a good idea to defrag anyway in my case anyway.

But iDefrag is a bit expensive.

[highac3s]

Originally Posted by richthomas

defrag the disk with iDefrag. there is also a free way of doing it by cloning your hard disk to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner which actually defrags as well but you need an external.

uggghh... i got the same problem and i saw that same advice (with carbon copy cloner) and i tried it. took me like 8 hours to:

1. Clone the boot camp partition to internal hdd (ccc)
2. Clone the os x partition to external hdd (winclone) (5 hrs +)
3. Boot on the external hdd (which was still almost empty, btw)
4. Erase the whole internal hdd by Zero-out'ing (zzz)
5. Restore all the data from the external to the internal
6. Boot back on the internal hdd
7. Try again with Boot Camp

only to get the same dumb error message... could somebody please help me because i am seriously considering to throw my computer out the window. no joke.

[MacDawg]

Originally Posted by highac3s

uggghh... i got the same problem and i saw that same advice (with carbon copy cloner) and i tried it. took me like 8 hours to:

1. Clone the boot camp partition to internal hdd (ccc)
2. Clone the os x partition to external hdd (winclone) (5 hrs +)
3. Boot on the external hdd (which was still almost empty, btw)
4. Erase the whole internal hdd by Zero-out'ing (zzz)
5. Restore all the data from the external to the internal
6. Boot back on the internal hdd
7. Try again with Boot Camp

only to get the same dumb error message... could somebody please help me because i am seriously considering to throw my computer out the window. no joke.

I am not sure I understand exactly what you did from your post

First of all, I think you have #1 and #2 confused with CCC and Winclone
Second, if you already had a Bootcamp partition, why were you trying to create one?
When you restored "all your data", did that include your WinClone data?

The strategy is sound...

Clone to an external
Boot from the external
Use Disk Utility to erase and format the internal
Restore the clone
Run Bootcamp Assistant

[lucifiel]

Originally Posted by MacDawg

I am not sure I understand exactly what you did from your post

First of all, I think you have #1 and #2 confused with CCC and Winclone
Second, if you already had a Bootcamp partition, why were you trying to create one?
When you restored "all your data", did that include your WinClone data?

The strategy is sound...

Clone to an external
Boot from the external
Use Disk Utility to erase and format the internal
Restore the clone
Run Bootcamp Assistant

yeh i did that and it works perfectly, and only takes an hour or so for me? I do have a 128gb disk though...

[balamw]

FWIW I ran into this myself recently trying to increase the size of my Boot Camp partition on the iMac from 10 GB to 32 GB. The winclone/CCC approach worked wonderfully, though I created some issues for myself, by cloning to an image and not having a bootable OS X drive on hand.

As an experiment, I installed OS X on to a 16 GB SDHC card and used that to boot from and restore the CCC image, but I do not recommend that. It was very slow to install on the SDHC card and I would have been better off using one of my older HDDs.

Moral of the story. Be sure to have a bootable OS X drive on hand or to use CCC to create one as part of the process.

B