Disk Utility Problems

[Curtis 92]

This problem wants to make me throw my MacBook out of my Windows haha can anybody help me out and tell me what my problem is...

thanks

 

[oculus42]

You have too much stuff, or have had. Your hard drive has data in part of the space you want to turn into a new partition and can't or won't move it (not sure about the technical details on that level).

If you have the space, you could back up, format with the partitions before installing the OS, and then install/restore.

 

[Curtis 92]

Your telling me information that is not going to solve this thread. explain abit more if you can

 

[oculus42]

To be sure that my assumption is correct, I will follow up with three questions:

1. How much free space do you have on your Mac's Hard Drive?
2. Have you ever had less free space than that? If so, how little?
3. How large are you trying to make the Boot Camp partition?

My guess is there is not enough free space at the end of the drive to create the Boot Camp partition. If that is the case, there are three options:

1. Reformat the computer and partition it before you put everything back. I recommend Time Machine for backups in this case.
2. Try to make a smaller Boot Camp partition. I recommend Time Machine for backups in this case (Apple recommends backing up your data before resizing a partition).
3. Use a program like Drive Genius 2 to defragment your hard drive in an attempt to free up enough space at the end of the drive. Just to be thorough, I recommend Time Machine for backups in this case, as well.

 

[Curtis 92]

I have 88GB of free space on my HD, I have had less free space than that and made a Partition. im trying to make the partition 30GB

 

[oculus42]

Did you originally make the partition with Boot Camp and are now trying to resize it?

To the best of my knowledge (and I may be wrong) you cannot otherwise change the partition table on your boot device. You could boot from the installer DVD and format the drive, but short of that, I do not think you can do what you want...

You *might* be able to reabsorb the partition and then use Boot Camp to create a new, larger partition, which you could then format HFS+, but I'm speculating wildly at this point.

 

[Curtis 92]

No, I'm trying to make Partition with Disk Utility and its saying this ******** its really annoying me. plus i havent got an external hard drive to do time machine but i will invest in buying one in later life.. Im trying to make a partition on my hard drive so i can use it as a backup so i can install Leopard and then install Snow Leopard with a fresh install..

 

[oculus42]

No, I'm trying to make Partition with Disk Utility and its saying this ******** its really annoying me. plus i havent got an external hard drive to do time machine but i will invest in buying one in later life.. Im trying to make a partition on my hard drive so i can use it as a backup so i can install Leopard and then install Snow Leopard with a fresh install..

To the best of my knowledge the Boot Camp software is the only Apple-provided way to resize your boot partition. Try using the Boot Camp Assistant to create a partition, then format the partition in Disk Utility for your backup.

I can't guarantee it will work, or that your data will be safe, but I have used Boot Camp to partition the boot drive on three computers without data loss.

 

[Curtis 92]

Nope tried that as well this time its saying "some files cannot be moved" via Boot Camp.

 

[Curtis 92]

"PROBLEM SOLVED"

I used brought iDefrag because I thought that would solve the problem and it did... I'm so pleased =D