Boot Camp 1.1 won't partition "because some files cannot be moved"

[xopher]

I was trying to create a Windows partition using the Boot Camp Assistant v1.1 on my 15" Macbook Pro. I have plenty of free disk space, close to 40GB of it, and I have used Disk Utility to verify and repair the drive and permissions. Firmware is the current version available from Apple (Boot ROM ver. MBP11.0055.B03, SMC ver. 1.2f10).

However, every time I try to create a 20GB partition for Windows using the Boot Camp Assistant, I receive the attached error dialog stating "Your disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved." and prompting me to back up and reformat my disk as a single Journaled HFS+ volume, which it already is.

Also, per the recommendation of a coworker, I looked in the /var/logs/system.log file and noticed the following error:

Sep 1 14:55:30 chmac kernel[0]: hfs_truncatefs: couldn't reclaim space on Macintosh HD

Has anyone else encountered this? Any known solutions?

[smz]

i am having the exact same issue - and am still at a loss as to why it is happening - have you had any luck yet?

black macbook 2ghz
1.25gb ram
10.4.7

[xopher]

Actually yes, I did resolve the issue, I simply forgot to come back and update this thread to indicate how.

I was able to resolve this by deleting a couple large (greater than 1GB) files and then Boot Camp was able to partition. I used an application called Disk Inventory X to give a graphical display of the files on the disk, making it easy to identify and locate large files.

[texanpenguin]

Incidentally, I was having the same problem with my brother's MacBook Pro. For him, deleting files wasn't the solution.

I had read all over the Internet that the problem was with Parallels/Crossover and their images, so we tried moving those files off onto an external, and deleting the applications themselves, but to no avail.

Luckily, we DID FIND A SOLUTION.

We had to defrag the disk. That's not always an easy task on a Mac (and normally something of an exercise in futility) but luckily we had a Universal copy of Tech Tool Pro which we left defragging overnight (not a quick process) and Boot Camp worked just fine.

So there you go, iDefrag, Tech Tool Pro, whatever: defragmenting fixes the problem.

[smz]

I tried removing all large files on my drive - I went so far as to leave no file over 150mb on there. To no avail - i am still recieving the "because some files cannot be moved" error. This leads me to believe that it is the level of fragmentation on the disk as previously mentioned and not the existence of large files alone. I am going to defrag using techtool and will report back.... wish me luck.

[skonnard]

The only deterministic solution to this problem is to buy some defragmentation software like iDefrag and compact the drive. Once you do, the problem with go away. See my full post on the subject:
http://pluralsight.com/blogs/aaron/a.../09/46388.aspx