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MBP 5.5 Win XP on 10.7, Not enough free space!

R

rotter2142

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 9, 2011
17
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I'm running 10.7.3 on a MBP 13 Mid 2009 Model.

The problem is that my HDD is 160GB and I have 16.8GB free space on it. All other data is very important and I can't delete it.

I want to install XP Performance edition on this system. I was hoping that I could create a partition of 10GB using the latest bootcamp and a win7 installation disc and then later proceed to install Xp on it.

The problem is that even after doing the Repair Disk(Boot-time) and Repair Disk Permissions I'm still getting that Boot camp requires 10GB of free space on it.

Is there a work around this?

Thanks in advance.
 
hmm not that I can think of.

Options:
-Backup to external media/location.
-Upgrade HD in MBP
-Create Free space (move some of your data to a temp location), do the install, get it all sorted, copy the data back on.

sounds like you need to have a clear out of stuff though.
 
If I do copy my data somewhere else temporarily say clear up 25GB and then proceed to Bootcamp, will it allow me to create a partition of 10GB or the minimum size will be higher than that?

If the minimum is higher than 10GB how do I get around that?

I really don't require (or have) that much space. I just need 10GB for the Bootcamp as I'll be running XP on it.

PS: And as HDD prices are really high I really can't afford an upgrade right now.
 
Update:
I cleaned up 26GB of space and am planning for a 20GB partition.

Tried all the methods.

Repair Disk in boot time, Repair Permissions and all.

Now I have the error that "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved"
 
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rotter2142 said:
Update:
I cleaned up 26GB of space and am planning for a 20GB partition.

Tried all the methods.

Repair Disk in boot time, Repair Permissions and all.

Now I have the error that "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved"
Click to expand...

In Terminal, type this and report back the results:
Code: 
diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk0s2 limits

Chances are you're going to have to use Time Machine or CCC to move everything off the disk, use Disk Utility to partition it the way you want, then CCC or Time Machine restore everything back. The GUI tools are extremely limited, but safe. Command line tools can do a lot more and faster, including rapidly getting you into trouble.

----------

BTW, Windows XP's requirements are only 1.5GB. So, depending on what the command above reports, it might be enough to get XP on directly and just not even deal with Bootcamp.

You realize 10.7.3 and Bootcamp 4 do not support Windows XP at all, which means no drivers. To get Windows XP drivers, you'll need a 10.6 disk, which will have Bootcamp 3.0 Windows drivers on it, then you can update in sequence. That first primary installation of Windows support drivers isn't readily available anywhere else I've found - certainly not on Apple's site, where they only have the subsequent .1, .2, .3, etc. updaters.

Anyway, point is, Bootcamp 4 will be of no help to you anyway. You can resize using diskutil, and then there's a little trick you're going to have to do, in order for XP to see this free space you've created. But I'll wait til I hear back on what the resize limits are first.
 
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For device disk0s2 QuickSilver:
Current size: 159.2 GB (159182127104 Bytes)
Minimum size: 139.6 GB (139589939200 Bytes)
Maximum size: 159.7 GB (159697911808 Bytes)

I cloned my HDD using Superduper and then restored it back again on my main HDD.

Even then it stated "not enough free space" error and then I ran Repair Disk Permissions and then I ran Bootcamp again and it gave "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved" error.

I do have the 10.6 disc with me. But now I'm considering a stripped down Win7 install instead of XP as I read that Xp 64 bit isn't supported.
 
rotter2142 said:
For device disk0s2 QuickSilver:
Current size: 159.2 GB (159182127104 Bytes)
Minimum size: 139.6 GB (139589939200 Bytes)
Maximum size: 159.7 GB (159697911808 Bytes)

I cloned my HDD using Superduper and then restored it back again on my main HDD.

Even then it stated "not enough free space" error and then I ran Repair Disk Permissions and then I ran Bootcamp again and it gave "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved" error.
Click to expand...

Windows 7 minimum system requirements, 16GB free disk space for 32-bit, and 20GB space for 64-bit. So you're right on the edge. But 159.7 minus 139.6 is 20.1.

But I believe a possible explanation is GB vs GiB. I'm not sure if Microsoft's system requirements are really GB or GiB, or if Bootcamp is adhering to one vs the other. Using bytes, free space would be 20.1GB, but 18.7GiB. It's entirely possible the Windows 7 installer will refuse to install into a space less than what it wants, which might be why Bootcamp is enforcing it.


I do have the 10.6 disc with me. But now I'm considering a stripped down Win7 install instead of XP as I read that Xp 64 bit isn't supported.
Click to expand...

Well you have a small problem here, in that you don't meet the system requirements for 64-bit Windows 7. And anything less than Windows 7 is not (officially) supported. If the Windows XP disk is at least bootable without errors, then I give better than even odds you can install it within this space, get it updated to SP3.

But unless you have a very specific requirement for fully rebooting natively into Windows, you're almost certainly better doing this in a virtual machine. A decent free one is Oracle's Virtual Box. Parallel's offers some nice features if you're willing to spend a little.

Or get a bigger hard drive if you really want to go to Windows 7 64-bit.
 
The issue in your case is that the hard drive is heavily fragmented and thus cannot be repartitioned since there isn't enough free disk space. There are two ways to solve it:

1) Get a copy of iDefrag (costs something like $20) and run it on your HDD.

2) Backup your HDD to an external HD by using either the time machine or carbon copy cloner, boot your mac with the 10.6 osx disk and run the disk utility to delete your OSX partition, create a new hfs+ partition and restore your backup into it.
 
Many people going to the trouble to move data off their hard drive, just erase the existing partition, rather than choosing the Partition tab and also changing the scheme from Current to 1 Partition. They should do the latter.
 

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First off thanks for all the help.


Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 148Gi 120Gi 28Gi 82% /
devfs 197Ki 197Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home
/dev/disk2s1 466Gi 14Gi 452Gi 3% /Volumes/Backup

I don't own a copy of iDefrag but I do have SuperDuper. What I did was backup all my files to it and then restored it to my HDD.

Isn't it the same as doing it on Time Machine?

Anyways I'll try it again on Time Machine.

Before I proceed to that I would like to confirm this

Step 1 - Create a backup of the entire drive on Time Machine.

Step 2 - Using the 10.6 install DVD, during boot-time partition the HDD into two. One being a 25GB partiton for the Windows and the other being for Lion.

Step 3 - Restore Time Machine Backup in the main partition.

Step 4 - Open up Bootcamp and it will automatically detect the partition and let me install Win 7.

One major doubt is that will Time Machine will be able to restore the backup considering that I will be backing up from a 160GB partition and restoring to a 133GB partition?

PS : I have 29GB of free space as of now.

I have 4+1GB of ram installed so I would like to got the 64bit way seeing that I'll be using windows purely for playing Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2(It is giving really low fps on Lion).
 
rotter2142 said:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 148Gi 120Gi 28Gi 82% /
Click to expand...

Ok and previously diskutil resizevolume limits command revealed about 18-20GB free. So you do have enough free space, but the resize command can't make it smaller, meaning there is some fragmentation. It's a bit of a mystery to me why there'd be fragmentation upon restoring data to a drive — this isn't anything you've done wrong, I've experienced this myself.

So another (possibly small) issue is that I'm betting you no longer have a Recovery HD partition. This is needed for FileVault 2, should ever want to use it. Or a remote system restore, should you ever need to do that on the road. This is a 620MB partition, so it's not big. But the only GUI means of getting it back is to reinstall Mac OS X 10.7. To confirm whether you have it or not, type the following:

Code: 
diskutil list
and post the results. It's best if you can highlight those results in the "reply to thread" window, and click the # button on the toolbar so that the code formatting flags are used. Makes it easier to read the results.


I don't own a copy of iDefrag but I do have SuperDuper. What I did was backup all my files to it and then restored it to my HDD.

Isn't it the same as doing it on Time Machine?
Click to expand...

Not exactly the same, but I do not believe that will alter the outcome in terms of fragmentation. Kindof a rabbit hole to find out...


Step 2 - Using the 10.6 install DVD, during boot-time partition the HDD into two. One being a 25GB partiton for the Windows and the other being for Lion.
Click to expand...

The gotcha with this strategy, is that only the Lion installer creates the Recovery HD partition. If you care about that. And the installer only will do it if there is a single JHFS+/X partition (optionally followed by unformatted free space). So you could make a 22.5GB free space 2nd partition. Then install Lion. Then update it, then do a Time Machine restore


One major doubt is that will Time Machine will be able to restore the backup considering that I will be backing up from a 160GB partition and restoring to a 133GB partition?
Click to expand...

As long as the restore partition is bigger than the amount of data being restored, yes. Time Machine does not backup the entire partition by sector. A 160GB partition with 80GB of data, will restore to a 90GB partition.

PS : I have 29GB of free space as of now.
Click to expand...

That's 18% free space, relative to the size of your current Mac boot partition. You're going to give a chunk of that free space to Windows, leaving roughly 5.5GB free for Mac OS, or 3-4% free space. This is really not advisable. It'll work, for a while. But consider that you need 4GB of temp space just to burn a DVD, and 2+ GB for the cache files various applications and the operating system produce (my user cache folder alone is 2GB right now, and I regularly trash it). I think you're going to run into problems, just a matter of time. You should plan on having at least 10% free space, probably more like 15% which is about where you are now.

I have 4+1GB of ram installed so I would like to got the 64bit way seeing that I'll be using windows purely for playing Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2(It is giving really low fps on Lion).
Click to expand...

Yeah. I think you need a bigger hard drive, or you need to move a lot of stuff off the internal drive, onto the external drive.
 
Code: 
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *160.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS QuickSilver             159.2 GB   disk0s2

When I formatted and restored my main drive the Recovery partition was deleted. I guess I don't need it right now.

I'm a college student and will be completing my course in 2 months. Thats when I start working and then i will be able to get a new hard drive. Until then...

I have already backed up using Time Machine and will partition in 2 drives.
So I'll start formatting right now.

I know the OS starts to slow down when the free space goes below 6GB but then regular cleaning of caches will solve it.

Not having the Recovery Partition won't affect the OS in any way, right? except for the inability to recover from an error, right?

Thanks for all the help. I'll post an update soon after the reinstall.
 
rotter2142 said:
When I formatted and restored my main drive the Recovery partition was deleted. I guess I don't need it right now.
Click to expand...

Again, it's an "extra" feature, not a required one, except for FileVault 2.

I know the OS starts to slow down when the free space goes below 6GB but then regular cleaning of caches will solve it.
Click to expand...

Not exactly. They're re-created almost immediately after a reboot. If this is your only contingency if you run into problems, I'd come up with a Plan B. Either removal of even more stuff of your Mac OS partition, or most likely, obliterating the Windows partition, and reclaiming that free space for Mac OS again. I don't know if Disk Utility's resize command will do this, but I know it's possible from command line using 'diskutil mergePartitions'. Read the man page carefully if you go this route. The first listed partition retains data, subsequent ones are erased.

Not having the Recovery Partition won't affect the OS in any way, right? except for the inability to recover from an error, right?
Click to expand...

Correct. And you won't be able to create a FileVault 2 volume. It is possible to create a Recovery HD after-the-fact, if you made a backup of it onto a USB stick using Lion Recovery Disk Assistant (google it) - but requires some command line surgery which is for the brave and (sometimes) foolish. I've done it dozens of times, works flawlessly so long as I don't F up the command.
 
You don't mention what you need windows for, but if it ISN'T gaming, you could perhaps install windows using virtualbox instead.

You will gain:
- snapshots (install windows, snapshot, if you ever need to go back to a clean copy of Windows, roll back to the snapshot)
- running windows in a window without needing to reboot
- thin provisioned space - i.e., it will only consume the disk space actually in use

you will lose
- 3d acceleration performance within windows.


if those trade-offs are acceptable, go to www.virtualbox.org....
 
It "has" it yes.

In practice it very often does not work (graphical glitches). It has a VERY low success rate with every game i have tested with it - the most recent version I've tested was 4.something a few months ago (admittedly it was mostly older games i was testing, but they work natively just fine).

Nothing against virtualbox - VMWare Fusion (which I now run) has similar issues.

But, point remains: If you need 3d to work reliably, run bootcamp. However, it would be worth a test, installing and getting rid of virtualbox is a lot less hassle than repartitioning.

If you don't need 3d it's a no-brainer. Virtualbox is very very good for free.
 
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