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Bootcamp cannot partition.

Watabou

Watabou

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Feb 10, 2008
3,426
759
United States
Hey guys. I need help. I cannot understand this error Bootcamp gives me when it tries to partition.

When I try to partition it, it takes about 10 minutes, by that time, pretty much everything is frozen. After that time has elapsed, it gives me this error. What am I doing wrong? What files cannot be moved? I went to Disk utility but I don't know what to do here. I remember I deleted the previous Windows partition that I had. I don't have Windows installed anymore.

So why is this error showing up? Thanks.
 

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I kept getting the same error message and first tried to do an archive and reinstall but that didn't solve the problem. So I decided to just do what the message suggested and did a reinstall and use the latest time machine backup to restore.

There are one or two apps out there (iDefrag...) who might be able to solve that problem but I don't trust them.

Oh and yes, I did try to move large files (like my Parallels VM).
 
Well I do have some really large files like my music and movies folder.

What does iDefrag do?

If possible, i don't want to do a clean install because I don't have the money to buy a Time Capsule so I can't do backups via hard-drives. I only have tons of DVD but that will take huge amount of time.

EDIT: Erdegeg, after you did a clean reinstall of Leopard, did the problem go away?
 
So wait, what are my actual options here? Clean reinstall is the last option I want to take, if nothing else works.
 
First, I'd use DiskInventoryX to check if you have large files. Then you'd have to move them to an external drive and try boot camp again.
If that doesn't work, try iDefrag.
If that doesn't work, you'd probably have to do the reinstall and restore thing.
 
You can try to Erase Free Space from the Erase tab of Disk Utility, that may clean up files that were deleted, but are still being stubborn ...

But,

The most common answer I see is to clone the drive to an external using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, erase the internal drive, then clone back to the internal ...

It's several hours of work, but it might be worth a shot.
 
r.j.s said:
You can try to Erase Free Space from the Erase tab of Disk Utility, that may clean up files that were deleted, but are still being stubborn ...
Click to expand...

Yeah I've been eyeing that one for a while. From what I can understand, it writes all zeros on all the deleted files.

But the name scares me. I tried doing that and my remaining disk space began to whittle down so I skipped it and then got my disk space back. What exactly happens during the Erase Free Space?
 
Watabou said:
What exactly happens during the Erase Free Space?
Click to expand...

Exactly as you thought. It writes 0s over all the free space.

While it is happening, you might notice the free space fluctuating, it's normal.

I'd try erasing the free space before I took the time to clone, erase and clone back.
 
I'll try that then. It says it takes 39 minutes. I report back here if the problem goes away. If not, then I'll buy an external hard drive and do the reinstall.
 
Well so the Erase free space thing didn't work.

I had to do a reinstall. No worries though, I backed up my data and all.

It works now. So thank you.
 
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