12-03-2008, 12:04 AM

I'd like to preface this entire post with the fact that I am a computing novice.

Boot camp will not let me partition a drive--it tells me that certain files cannot be moved and I have to reinstall the operating system. I have unable to defragment the drive--there don't appear to be any demo programs that can do it. I was wondering if the following will work: make a time machine back up, reinstall leopard, and then restore with time machine. Will this restore all of my applications (such as word), and settings just as I had them. My hope is that they will put everything on the hard drive in an efficient manner so that it can be partitioned. I am concerned that I will lose some applications--specifically Microsoft office. Thanks for your help.

12-03-2008, 12:05 AM

I'd like to preface this entire post with the fact that I am a computing novice.

Boot camp will not let me partition a drive--it tells me that certain files cannot be moved and I have to reinstall the operating system. I have unable to defragment the drive--there don't appear to be any demo programs that can do it. I was wondering if the following will work: make a time machine back up, reinstall leopard, and then restore with time machine. Will this restore all of my applications (such as word), and settings just as I had them. My hope is that they will put everything on the hard drive in an efficient manner so that it can be partitioned. I am concerned that I will lose some applications--specifically Microsoft office. Thanks for your help.

12-03-2008, 01:25 AM

It'll be easier if you just boot from your Mac restore disc, fire up Disk Utility, and do a Repair Disk.

12-03-2008, 08:42 AM

I did a "disk repair" after booting from the CD, and I got the same result. So, what do I need to do to be able to partition my drive, and how do I do it?

12-03-2008, 02:25 PM

Originally Posted by lcp0209

I did a "disk repair" after booting from the CD, and I got the same result. So, what do I need to do to be able to partition my drive, and how do I do it?

Your choices are limited:

1. First make a backup of everything to an external HD using Time Machine or something like "SuperDuper" or "Carbon Copy Cloner". Boot with your install DVD disk 1 and use Disk Utility to erase the drive. Partition and format the drive using HFS+. Re-install OS X and the included applications from your original disk set. Boot to OS X and use the Boot Camp assistant to create a partition for Windows. Once the partition has been created successfully, restore everything from the backup you made.

2. Now the easy way.... Buy iDefrag and use it to remove the fragmentation from the drive.

Coriolis Systems :: Products :: iDefrag

Regards.