Trouble installing Bootcamp on new SSD

[Cevans19]

Hi all, new poster here-

I'm having trouble installing a new bootcamp partition on my late 2013 iMac that has just had a crucial mx500 2TB SSD professionally installed. The mac came back from them working perfectly with a 2TB APFS partition with High Sierra installed and all my old data transferred.

There are a few facets to the problems I now face getting bootcamp up and running-

1) On my first run through using bootcamp utility to install a fresh version of windows 10 in the usual way (aiming for a mac partition of 1.25GB and windows of 750GB), I got as far as booting up into the windows installer where it asks which partition to install windows on to. I had previously been able to use the 'sliding bar' in bootcamp to select the partition sizes as above. Unfortunately, when I came to select this partition, the windows installed said that this partition could not be used, and needed to be formatted. I continued as the installer requested, 'reformatted' that partition in the installer, but was still unable to continue and install on that partition. Has anyone else come up against this/think why this may be?

2) After exiting the installer and booting back into High Sierra, I see that my Mac partition has indeed reduced in size to the desired 1.25TB, with the remaining 750GB marked as 'free space'. I find I am unable to resize my existing mac partition back to 2TB to start 'afresh'- I cannot drag the mac partition slider to take this space up, and when I try to 'delete' the free space, I get an error message- I will try and post some screenshots below. Can anyone provide a fix for this?

3) Interestingly, the bootcamp assistant suggests a slightly different story to the above. It seems to think that my Mac partition is still at 2TB (see screenshots). N.B- I have approx 360GB of data on my mac partition currently. When I try to click through again on bootcamp assistant, I get an error message stating the the drive cannot be formatted. Again, why would this be and how can I fix it?

I'm really stuck here and don't know how to proceed! Any help moving forward would be appreciated! Ill put as many relevant screenshots below as I can.


Bootcamp assistant errors-

https://ibb.co/njxO6n
https://ibb.co/bZc1sS
https://ibb.co/h8iKe7


Terminal readout of disk utility-

https://ibb.co/k6ykK7


The three disk utility views of the drive/container/mac volume-
https://ibb.co/h9GuCS
https://ibb.co/exDkK7
https://ibb.co/mfzQK7


The four steps I have tried to delete the free space-

https://ibb.co/dyowRn
https://ibb.co/jfOVmn
https://ibb.co/cPruCS
https://ibb.co/gSzsz7


Many thanks everyone for your help, Chris.

 

[MacDawg]

I'm gonna guess that your issue is related to the SSD being APFS
A quick Google search shows multiple hits

 

[Cevans19]

I'm not sure thats the issue here, Bootcamp should create an NTFS partition on the drive separate to the APFS container so I can't see why that should be a problem. This article seems to suggest this: https://blog.macsales.com/42830-can-apfs-be-used-with-time-machine-boot-camp-and-file-vault

 

[TheBruno]

I have dual booted on my SSD w/APFS no problem. I did have some struggle early on, but I don't remember getting any partition errors.

 

[Cevans19]

I have dual booted on my SSD w/APFS no problem. I did have some struggle early on, but I don't remember getting any partition errors.

Ok, may I ask if you just went about installing bootcamp in the normal way? What struggles did you have?

 

[TheBruno]

Ok, may I ask if you just went about installing bootcamp in the normal way? What struggles did you have?

I started with a partition in Boot Camp Assistant, much like you I assume. Windows installation itself had some trouble, so I ended up booting the installation from a USB thumb drive. The problem you're experiencing with the partition though is not something I ever saw. I have a new 27" iMac with a SSD, so I assume it's a similar setup as you.