Description:When you set up your computer to run Windows via Boot Camp for the first time, you will have to partition the drive. The Boot Camp assistant will help with this, and for most people this should work flawlessly. However, in some situations the setup will not complete properly.
Adam Duguay --
"I'm trying to install Windows XP Professional on my MacBook Pro. When I run the Bootcamp assistant to partition the drive, it tells me that it can't move some files and that I should reformat my drive as a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled)."
Bootcamp's instructions state a few requirements for proper installation; however, not all requirements are properly addressed. As described in the documentation, besides needing Intel hardware and a copy of Windows, you will need at least 10GB of free drive space. This requirement is stated rather incompletely, since by its wording you may assume that as long as your hard drive has 10GB free, then you can install Boot Camp and run Windows. The 10GB is just a minimum of what's required for Windows to run properly when booted into Boot Camp.
Much more is required than the 10GB minimum to install Bootcamp, since you will need to take into account the fact OS X needs free drive space for managing items in the system memory ("swap" or "virtual memory" space). The amount of space required will vary depending on the usage, but a good ballpark number is to leave at least 10 percent of the boot drive empty for proper function. Without this free space, the computer will slow down and files will get fragmented. Therefore, for a minimum Boot Camp installation on a 160GB drive, you will need 10GB for Boot Camp and roughly 15GB for OS X, bringing the total to 25GB free. For a more ideal 50GB partition, you will need an additional 11GB free for OS X. Again, these are ballpark figures, but it's a rule of thumb that should work for most people.
Beyond the space requirements for Boot Camp, you might be prevented from partitioning the drive by the Bootcamp assistant, even though you have plenty of free space on the drive. Technical problems on the drive can prevent partitioning, but if this is the case, it poses a serious problem to all data on the disk, and we recommend backing up your data and checking the drive first with "Disk Utility" and more thoroughly with a third-party drive maintenance package (see below).
With technical problems aside, the most common reason for Boot Camp installation failing is the lack of "contiguous" free space. In order for the drive to partition, it must have the free space available in one big chunk. If you have filled and emptied your drive many times, chances are you have fragmented and potentially unmovable files scattered throughout the drive, which will prevent the drive from being partitioned properly, or at least partitioned in a safe manner. This may occur even though OS X has advanced disk caching techniques that are supposed to combat fragmentation.
There are a couple of ways to tackle contiguous space problems on a drive, and after you have performed one of these methods, try running Boot Camp setup again.
1. Use a drive utility to defragment the volume.
Many drive utility software programs have options for defragmenting files on a drive. This will move all files from their current location and organize them in one location on the drive. This will "free up" space for partitioning and should help this problem for people who have access to these utilities. Some common ones are:
- Drive Genius (http://www.prosofteng.com)
- Disk Warrior (http://www.alsoft.com)
- Tech Tool Pro (http://www.micromat.com)
2. Back up and restore your files to the boot drive.
Another method for defragmenting the drive is to make a bootable clone or some other full backup of the drive, format the drive, and then immediately restore the files back to the drive. This will put all the data in one spot and allow partitioning to continue properly. If you have a Time Machine backup of the drive, you can boot off the Leopard DVD and restore the whole system from the latest backup. Alternatively, you can create a clone on an external drive using the third-party "SuperDuper" (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) or "Carbon Copy Cloner" (http://www.bombich.com/software/index.html) utilities, boot off that drive, and then clone back to the internal drive, which should accomplish the same thing.
Additional information and discussion can be found here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1935412&tstart=0
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