Drive can't be partitioned- Nothing really works.

[Rho]

Hey folks, name's Rho. I've lurked around these forums for a while, but couldn't find any help, so decided to sign up.

So, I've had my iMac for quite a while now (I'm not entirely sure about the specifics off the top of my head, but it's got 1TB space), and I've been running Windows 7 by means of Boot Camp for a few months, and everything was fine, but I was short on space with 50GB (I use Windows 7 for gaming), and decided to wipe it & make a new partition with more space, 250GB.

Now, I've run into the same problem as hundreds of others on these forums, the fact that I can't partition the drive because Boot Camp doesn't like big & fragmented files (I'm paraphrasing). I've tried a few things on the forums, including buying & running iDefrag, which is a popular solution, but it doesn't help.

Now, the problem is, either I have absolutely no clue how the backing up/Time Machine works, but I simply don't have an external hard-drive big enough to function as a proper back-up method (Well, we have a shared one, but TM said it wanted to wipe the current data on it, which was a big no), so I can't do what Boot Camp wants me to; back up my iMac, wipe it, restore.

The thing I'm confused about is that, up until 3 hours ago, Boot Camp was running perfectly fine. Now, I've read that removing a Boot Camp partition can leave fragmented files or make it harder for Boot Camp to create a new partition (I only glanced at the post that said that, it was something like that, right?), and I'm running out of ideas.

I'll take any and all help, though be gentle, this is my first post on the forums (on any forums, really), and if I skipped some vital information, just ask.
Thanks in advance.

 

[JTag]

I just had the same problem a few days ago. I used TechTool Pro 5 to consolidate the used space on my drive but that did not solve the problem but it may have helped. It finally got it to work by letting Disk Utility to make the partition and using Bootcamp afterwards.

 

[.md]

Hey folks, name's Rho. I've lurked around these forums for a while, but couldn't find any help, so decided to sign up.

So, I've had my iMac for quite a while now (I'm not entirely sure about the specifics off the top of my head, but it's got 1TB space), and I've been running Windows 7 by means of Boot Camp for a few months, and everything was fine, but I was short on space with 50GB (I use Windows 7 for gaming), and decided to wipe it & make a new partition with more space, 250GB.

Now, I've run into the same problem as hundreds of others on these forums, the fact that I can't partition the drive because Boot Camp doesn't like big & fragmented files (I'm paraphrasing). I've tried a few things on the forums, including buying & running iDefrag, which is a popular solution, but it doesn't help.

Now, the problem is, either I have absolutely no clue how the backing up/Time Machine works, but I simply don't have an external hard-drive big enough to function as a proper back-up method (Well, we have a shared one, but TM said it wanted to wipe the current data on it, which was a big no), so I can't do what Boot Camp wants me to; back up my iMac, wipe it, restore.

The thing I'm confused about is that, up until 3 hours ago, Boot Camp was running perfectly fine. Now, I've read that removing a Boot Camp partition can leave fragmented files or make it harder for Boot Camp to create a new partition (I only glanced at the post that said that, it was something like that, right?), and I'm running out of ideas.

I'll take any and all help, though be gentle, this is my first post on the forums (on any forums, really), and if I skipped some vital information, just ask.
Thanks in advance.

Hello, Rho! I have an iMac (late 2009 27" i7 edition) as well and came across the same problem.

Just to be sure, you're getting this error, correct?




I removed my XP partition because I wanted to upgrade to Windows 7, so unfortunately I had the same problem. Also not having a time machine as well as not having a spare external HDD to back up media was a pain, but I thought it over and decided enough was enough, I needed a Windows partition desperately. So I decided to go with reformatting my Mac OSX for a clean install, insert the disk, run the application, waited a couple of hours to do its thing. iMac restarted and he's the real kicker finding out that my HDD didn't reformat to a clean install but a downgrade (I think), a few of the applications such Evernote and others that I had on Mac OSX were missing (but missing in the way of my Macintosh needed upgrading for them to work, as the error told me). I wondered and thought about it, could it be possible that Bootcamp will work after this and astonishingly, it did. I partitioned a 106GB Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. After finishing the installation for my windows partition I installed drivers, etc. I rebooted so that SL will boot up then upgraded all the essentials that the apple software updater wanted me to do. The best part about it obviously was that I was not missing any applications/documents or any media in general.

So this could've been done by absolute look or something that I haven't acknowledged. Try it, I guess... you've got everything to lose.