Bootcamp Woes - Files can't be moved?

[NeoXY]

Hi everyone

I'm trying to partition my HD to put windows on it through bootcamp assistant but I'm having problems with it.'

I keep getting this error message (see attachment)

Can someone shed some light on how I could fix this? I REALLY do not want to format my hard drive. Its just way too much work.

Thanks everyone.

Spec:
MacBook Pro Core2Duo 2.2GHz
2GB RAM
120GB HD
Nvidia 8600mGT 128MB

 

[Infrared]

Hi everyone

I'm trying to partition my HD to put windows on it through bootcamp assistant but I'm having problems with it.'

I keep getting this error message (see attachment)

Can someone shed some light on how I could fix this? I REALLY do not want to format my hard drive. Its just way too much work.

Thanks everyone.

Spec:
MacBook Pro Core2Duo 2.2GHz
2GB RAM
120GB HD
Nvidia 8600mGT 128MB

You might try booting off the Leopard DVD and partitioning
using the Disk Utility. If the files can't be moved, it may be
because they are in use. Which they won't be if you boot
off the DVD.

I'm not saying that will definitely work, but it's worth a try I
think.

 

[Neil321]

Try defraging the drive

 

[Krevnik]

Considering you already have over 60GB of data on the drive, it will have problems dynamically partitioning like that, depending on what data you have on the drive. Fragmentation and the like will make it dangerous to change the size of the partition, and you really can't force it without a disk defragmenter.

A fast-ish way to solve this problem is to boot from the OS X CD with an empty firewire or USB drive that is bigger than your boot disk, and start Disk Utility. Make an image of your boot drive in Disk Utility to the external drive, format, and restore the image back to the drive.

 

[NeoXY]

Thanks for all of your quick reply, my question to you is, if I move data off that drive (say 20GB worth or more) will the operating allow me to partition than?

Thanks again

 

[Krevnik]

No idea, it is VERY dependent on /where/ the file is on the drive.

The reason it can't repartition is that in the last 25GB of space on the drive, you have some data. What that data is, nobody can really tell you, but unless that particular data is moved, then you will still have the problem.

Infrared's idea is a good one, except you can't dynamically partition from OS X CD unless you know some terminal commands, just as an FYI.

 

[Infrared]

Infrared's idea is a good one, except you can't dynamically partition from OS X CD unless you know some terminal commands, just as an FYI.

I've used those commands, but I can never remember what the
arguments are. Every time I have to look them up. They must
be special memory permeable arguments as I have no trouble
with most UNIX commands

[EDITED]

Ok, something along the lines of "diskutil list" to find out what
your current partitions are, e.g.:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *298.1 Gi   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            297.6 Gi   disk0s2

And then find out the resizing limits like so:

$ diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 limits
For device disk0s2 Macintosh HD:
	Current size:	319594741760 bytes
	Minimum size:	29531373568 bytes
	Maximum size:	319728959488 bytes

And then something like this and hope for the best:

$ diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 100G

Please read the manual before attempting anything so risky.

 

[NeoXY]

Hi

Thanks for the help guys! Really appreciate it.

The next chapter of the saga goes like this:

I try and move some things off my hard drive, 20GBs worth of data to an outside drive, so now, I have 61GB of free space. I give it another shot, for a 25GB partition through bootcamp assistant and I got a kernel panic (out of all times to get one), so I'm forced to reboot, I load OSX back up and behold! 25GB of free space is GONE! But no partition. It doesn't show up in bootcamp assistant as ever existed, nor does it show up in disk utilities.

....what now? lmao

Thanks Guys

 

[Infrared]

Hi

Thanks for the help guys! Really appreciate it.

The next chapter of the saga goes like this:

I try and move some things off my hard drive, 20GBs worth of data to an outside drive, so now, I have 61GB of free space. I give it another shot, for a 25GB partition through bootcamp assistant and I got a kernel panic (out of all times to get one), so I'm forced to reboot, I load OSX back up and behold! 25GB of free space is GONE! But no partition. It doesn't show up in bootcamp assistant as ever existed, nor does it show up in disk utilities.

....what now? lmao

Thanks Guys

This is where it really may help to drop into a terminal. In Terminal.app,
type "diskutil list" to get a list of your partitions. You'll get
something back like this:

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *298.1 Gi   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         200.0 Mi   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            297.6 Gi   disk0s2

Explanation:

Here I have 1 disk named "disk0". It is partitioned using a GUID partition
table. It contains two partitions, "disk0s1" and "disk0s2". Partition one,
"disk0s1" is the EFI partition. It's there for boring technical reasons we
don't need to go into. It's only small: 200 Mi = 200 binary megabytes
(1024^2 = 1024 x 1024 bytes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte). The
main partition, disk0s2, has the volume name "Machintosh HD". That is the
one on which the operating system resides, and that's what needs to be
resized by the Boot Camp assistant.

You may have more or fewer entries with different numbers, depending on
what sort of disks you have attached, how many, and how they are
partitioned.

Once you have such a list of partitions, you can use "diskutil info ..."
to find out more information about a particular partition. For example, I
would type "diskutil info disk0s1" to get information about disk0,
partition 1.

If I may, I'd suggest trying these two commands, and returning to us with
what they tell you.