Bootcamp Partition Error: "Files cannot be moved"

[techno91]

No need for iDefrag...

Note these steps were tested with Snow Leopard, as requested:

To partition with disk utility:

1. Start disk utility, its located inside Utilities in Applications.
2. Click on your hard drive to the left.
3. Click "Partition"
4. Click the first partition, mine is called "Mac OSX".
5. Click the "+" sign on the bottom.
6. Click the new partition and change the size and type according to my instructions above.
7. Click apply.

Follow the rest of the instructions I previously posted. Let me know if it works for you. I tried this on 2 macs that had the problem, and it works!

 

[Coolbreeze84]

Note these steps were tested with Snow Leopard, as requested:

To partition with disk utility:

1. Start disk utility, its located inside Utilities in Applications.
2. Click on your hard drive to the left.
3. Click "Partition"
4. Click the first partition, mine is called "Mac OSX".
5. Click the "+" sign on the bottom.
6. Click the new partition and change the size and type according to my instructions above.
7. Click apply.

Follow the rest of the instructions I previously posted. Let me know if it works for you. I tried this on 2 macs that had the problem, and it works!

It won't let me make the partition. It gives me the following message

Partition failed with the error:

Could not modify partition map because filesystem verification failed

Does that make any sense to anyone?

 

[Stephen Dowling]

This happened to me before, and I managed to fix it. I booted from my Snow Leopard disk and ran disk utility and verified and repaired the disk AND the disk permissions. I hope you get it all sorted out!

 

[Coolbreeze84]

This happened to me before, and I managed to fix it. I booted from my Snow Leopard disk and ran disk utility and verified and repaired the disk AND the disk permissions. I hope you get it all sorted out!

It worked! Thanks a lot. Repairing the disk solved my problem

 

[philamac]

This was happening to me, where Bootcamp Assistant said it could not partition my drive because it was unable to move files... and I found that my particular problem had to do with the fact that I use VMWare Fusion to run virtual machines. These virtual machines must be completely shut down, not suspended or anything else, shut down. After I shut down my virtualized win7 machine, Bootcamp Assistant was able to partition my drive.

So if anyone else is running VM Fusion or any other virtualization, I suggest giving that a try, before doing all the other ones.

 

[omsahmad]

Delete some files.

When partitioning so that I can install XP, bootcamp claims that specific files cannot be moved, making it so that I am unable to install XP.

It then orders me to ~gasp~ back my files, and reinstall OSX.

Anyone else have this error message?
I wanted a 14GB partition, and that would leave about 16 additional gigs free on the OSX partition


I am NOT reinstalling X! Anyone got any ideas?

What is happening is not a file which you can easily remove. First make SURE you have backed everything up. BACK IT UP. Time Machine is great for this.

Shut down the computer and after it had completely turned off, turn it back on. Hold S (Command S) while the computer is turning on. It will then go in to a single user mode. It will take a couple of minutes to go through everything and most likely it will say something like "missing file" "error in file." After a while it should say Macintosh HD complete. Then type in exit. If at any time anything goes wrong type "hault" everything will stop. Then try again. Is it does not work still, make sure everything is BACKED UP and then completely restart your computer to factory setting with the little grey disk that came with. When you are going through set-up click "previously had a Mac and would like to restore with TIme Machine" and then everything will be back and Bootcamp will work. If it still doesn't work, you will have to take it to a Genius Bar and get a new hard drive. By the way if you are skeptical of doing any of these steps by yourself, the people at the genius bar can help.

 

[rafaella]

From all the recommendations, here's the only thing that worked for me, no need to reinstall OSX [just in time, i was this close to buy idefrag]:

1)Reboot holding Command + S
2)On the prompt that appears, type fsck -fy and then press enter, your HD will start to be restored
3)Wait for the restoration to be complete
4)Type reboot and press enter

and voilà, after two days of googling myself to death, i finally got my 32GB partition.

 

[Paul1969]

Start in safe mode

Had the same problem, found on an other forum to restart in safe mode, I did this and then went to bootcamp and it worked straight away, then restarted as normal and no problems whatsoever, found this just in time as I was going to go down the formatting route.

 

[dvswede]

Solution worked!

From all the recommendations, here's the only thing that worked for me, no need to reinstall OSX [just in time, i was this close to buy idefrag]:

1)Reboot holding Command + S
2)On the prompt that appears, type fsck -fy and then press enter, your HD will start to be restored
3)Wait for the restoration to be complete
4)Type reboot and press enter

and voilà, after two days of googling myself to death, i finally got my 32GB partition.

Thank you! That fixed my issue as well. I had a 2010 imac with 1TB drive and was using <250G of it. Still I couldn't create a 160GB partition. Running fsck found two minor problems with the disk and after reboot it worked flawlessly.

I wonder if the disk got corrupted when I copied things over from my other mac using the tranfer program. It seemed to hang at 100% so I had to kill it but all files where on my new mac. Other then that I also had a parallells VM (that I deleted).

So once again thank you for the simple fix.

 

[balamw]

2)On the prompt that appears, type fsck -fy and then press enter, your HD will start to be restored

For those adverse to Single User mode and the Terminal. You should be able to get the same effect from booting from the grey OS X disc that came with your Mac or SL upgrade disc if you used one.

Once Booted run Disk Utility from there and repair your disk (just another name for fsck - file system check).

B

 

[senorgrand]

Defrag works

I finally tried idfrag and that did the trick. I was even able to do it "online", so no boot disk necessary. I only need windows for a game or two, so 20 gig was plenty.

This is what I tried before iDfrag did the trick:

1) Rebooting
2) Rebooting into "safe mode"
3) Deleting some large files
4) Using disk first aid

I've got an SSD drive, so iDfrag only took 45 minutes for 120 gigs.

NOW I'll delete parallels...

 

[thegreatdivorce]

I'm getting this error, too. In the past, I created an XP partition with no problems. Now, wanting to do it again, I tried, got the error, ran Compact with iDefrag, and ... still got the error!

This is what iDefrag shows now:

Should my next step be fsck -fy?

 

[balamw]

I'm getting this error, too. In the past, I created an XP partition with no problems. Now, wanting to do it again, I tried, got the error, ran Compact with iDefrag, and ... still got the error!]

Should my next step be fsck -fy?

It won't hurt, but you may also want to try using iDefrag when booted to another disc if you haven't already.

B

 

[thegreatdivorce]

It won't hurt, but you may also want to try using iDefrag when booted to another disc if you haven't already.

B

I did that with iDefrag. Just ran fsck and it repaired something, ran it again, and it came back ok. We'll see.

 

[APtalent]

This was happening to me, where Bootcamp Assistant said it could not partition my drive because it was unable to move files... and I found that my particular problem had to do with the fact that I use VMWare Fusion to run virtual machines. These virtual machines must be completely shut down, not suspended or anything else, shut down. After I shut down my virtualized win7 machine, Bootcamp Assistant was able to partition my drive.

So if anyone else is running VM Fusion or any other virtualization, I suggest giving that a try, before doing all the other ones.

I'll have to give this a try. Last time I tried my virtual and parallel machines were suspended.

 

[thegreatdivorce]

Update, all is working well, thus far. After running fsck -fy a couple times (until it comes back "everything is a-ok"), and then it let me partition and install W7.

 

[zodiac909]

Alright peoples, here's my solution to this problem:

I had Parallels installed, my HD was almost full (2GB left) and I wanted to install XP via BootCamp. So, I deleted large files, and uninstalled Parallels. That gave me 18GB free space, but BootCamp still wouldn't work: 'some files can't be moved'...

After trying everything here I thought to myself: What does BootCamp try to do? Yes, it tries to create 5GB (or whatever size you choose for your XP partition) of CONSECUTIVE FREE disk space. Since BC is running from within OS X: if you have programs running that have been installed recently, they're probably stored at the 'end' of your HD, therefore BC tries to move 'em to the 'beginning' of the HD, which won't work if the files are in use. Hence: some files can't be moved.

Solution:
Get iDefrag, and take a look at your HD. In my case, a lot of scattered data was sitting around all over my HD, so it was impossible for BootCamp to create a 5GB partition at the end of the HD, although I had a total of 25GB free space (I deleted whatever I could). Since iDefrag won't work from within OS X (it can't move system files that are in use) you have to get Coriolis CDmaker (Comes with iDefrag if you buy it). This will let you burn a bootable CD with iDefrag on it. Restart from CD, let iDefrag run a Full Defrag (took 8 hours on my 80GB drive) and then you have a beautifully defragmented HD with all the free space at the end of the drive. This will allow BootCamp to set up the new partition in just seconds....



And I'm not gonna tell you where to get the programs, use your imagination

Okay so i got iDefrag and CDmaker but when i choose which type of computer i have on CDmaker the license agreement comes up but never lets me click on "accept"
any ideas??

 

[thewiseguy]

In a whole 'nother world

I have watched a few youtube videos on how to use bootcamp and complete the whole procedure easily and smoothly.I noticed that when they all click on bootcamp assistant and start it goes to the partition.On my 1TB iMac it is showing me another page asking if I have some disks or if i wish to download something.The download doesn't work and I never got these disks,when I use the disk option it is allowing me to partition then it says something else.
Could someone help me please I have 902GB left and the minimum memory to partition is 20GB which is fine as I only want the minimum just to run a game I stupidly downloaded after not seeing that it is not mac compatible.Thanks

 

[balamw]

On my 1TB iMac it is showing me another page asking if I have some disks or if i wish to download something.The download doesn't work and I never got these disks,when I use the disk option it is allowing me to partition then it says something else.

Some versions of Boot Camp Assistant have this flaw. There was a thread that posted a way to download he drivers by finding the link in the software update XML file.

Can you be more specific? Which particular 1 TB iMac do you have? What is the "something else" it says? ...

B

 

[blkwhtrbbt]

Alright peoples, here's my solution to this problem:

I had Parallels installed, my HD was almost full (2GB left) and I wanted to install XP via BootCamp. So, I deleted large files, and uninstalled Parallels. That gave me 18GB free space, but BootCamp still wouldn't work: 'some files can't be moved'...

After trying everything here I thought to myself: What does BootCamp try to do? Yes, it tries to create 5GB (or whatever size you choose for your XP partition) of CONSECUTIVE FREE disk space. Since BC is running from within OS X: if you have programs running that have been installed recently, they're probably stored at the 'end' of your HD, therefore BC tries to move 'em to the 'beginning' of the HD, which won't work if the files are in use. Hence: some files can't be moved.

Solution:
Get iDefrag, and take a look at your HD. In my case, a lot of scattered data was sitting around all over my HD, so it was impossible for BootCamp to create a 5GB partition at the end of the HD, although I had a total of 25GB free space (I deleted whatever I could). Since iDefrag won't work from within OS X (it can't move system files that are in use) you have to get Coriolis CDmaker (Comes with iDefrag if you buy it). This will let you burn a bootable CD with iDefrag on it. Restart from CD, let iDefrag run a Full Defrag (took 8 hours on my 80GB drive) and then you have a beautifully defragmented HD with all the free space at the end of the drive. This will allow BootCamp to set up the new partition in just seconds....



And I'm not gonna tell you where to get the programs, use your imagination

Will any disk burner work? Does it have to be THAT software?

 

[blkwhtrbbt]

What is happening is not a file which you can easily remove. First make SURE you have backed everything up. BACK IT UP. Time Machine is great for this.

Shut down the computer and after it had completely turned off, turn it back on. Hold S (Command S) while the computer is turning on. It will then go in to a single user mode. It will take a couple of minutes to go through everything and most likely it will say something like "missing file" "error in file." After a while it should say Macintosh HD complete. Then type in exit. If at any time anything goes wrong type "hault" everything will stop. Then try again. Is it does not work still, make sure everything is BACKED UP and then completely restart your computer to factory setting with the little grey disk that came with. When you are going through set-up click "previously had a Mac and would like to restore with TIme Machine" and then everything will be back and Bootcamp will work. If it still doesn't work, you will have to take it to a Genius Bar and get a new hard drive. By the way if you are skeptical of doing any of these steps by yourself, the people at the genius bar can help.

Back it up to what? An external hard drive? or can it be on the HD volume within the computer?

 

[balamw]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

Time Machine typically wants to back up to either an external or Time Capsule/NAS. If you had enough room to back everything up to your internal you most likely would not see this error.

B

 

[hinchesk]

iDefrag worked

It was $30 well spent... downloaded/installed iDefrag 2.1.0, ran Full Defrag on the Macbook and Bootcamp partitioned the drive fine afterward... 50Gb partition.

Onyx, fsck, perm repair, disk repair, cache cleaning... none of it worked.

 

[madmaxmedia]

It was $30 well spent... downloaded/installed iDefrag 2.1.0, ran Full Defrag on the Macbook and Bootcamp partitioned the drive fine afterward... 50Gb partition.

Onyx, fsck, perm repair, disk repair, cache cleaning... none of it worked.

Thanks for posting, I guess there are just different problems that can occur that result in the same error message.

The fsck command has fixed the issue 2 different times for me, but obviously it depends on what the problem is.

It would be nice to have a sticky thread that has collected all the different options, and listed in order of suggested use. So the least expensive/ time-consuming options would be higher up, and then you go down the list until hopefully 1 has solved your problem.

 

[Chitzui]

SOLUTION ~ 100% Working

Hey Fellas,

you drive me really crazy with all your shittalk. I nearly spend 30 Precious dollars on a worthless crap software called iDefrag or something.
Well you bitches, here is a 100% working way to do it without spending 1 ****ing $:
(write following steps on paper)

1. Insert the MAC installation CD into your Mac.
2. Reboot and Hold the "C" key down.
3. Choose language.
4. Select "Utility" (or something) in the navbar on the top of the screen.
5. Select Disk Utility.
6. Select your Disk.
7. Press "Repair Disk" and wait until it finishes.
8. Press "Repair Disk Permissions" and wait until it finishes.
9. Reboot.
10. Open your Boot Camp Assistant (I kno you kno how to find it!)

-> Now it'll work at 99% sure.

I tried this on 100 Macs with the same problem and 99 times it worked. No Joke.
DO NOT BUY iDefrag or some other ******* paying tools unless you have ******** of money and want to support some poor dudes. But in that case you would better send your money to me 'coz I really solved the issue.
iDefrag however could work at a 75% rate.
Other tools might have a similar working %.
But mine is free and no risk. It is actually what Apple Support Team advised me to so !