04-05-2012, 01:23 PM

Hi, I've been trying to instal windows seven for days and i cant get it to work. The exact error message is (which im sure many of you have seen on the forums)

"The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved, Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."

Mind you, I still have 180 out of 500 gigs of hard drive space free.

I really really dont want to buy an external drive or cloud storage or anything.
So after i had this error message the first time i scoured the internet for a solution that didnt require the recommended backup/restore, and found that many people solved this problem by defragging their system. So, some quick background history, I wanted to run windows, but i didnt want to spend money so i never bothered to do it, until my friend told me he had an extra copy, so i thought great, no money needs to be spent. Now I had to buy idefrag to defrag my hard drive to get rid of this error, its only 30$, kinda sucks but no big deal. SO i bought it, ran full defrag and compact, also read that i should verify disk permissions, repair disk permissions, verify disk, and repair disk (all in disk utility). After doing ALL of this, i still get the error message that files cant be moved -_- . I've seen some suggestions about partitioning from the instal disk, which i would do if i had the instal disk, its back at home buried somewhere while im at college.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what i can do to get this copy of windows running without having to spend any additional money?


Running Lion on 2.3 GHz MBP with 8 gb DDR3 with 500 gig hard drive

thanks everyone

04-05-2012, 05:39 PM

Spend some of that money and purchase your very own copy of Windows 7. Do not partition from the install disk, Bootcamp does the partitioning and formatting for you. Print and read the guidelines in Bootcamp Assistant.

04-05-2012, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by harryb2448

Spend some of that money and purchase your very own copy of Windows 7. Do not partition from the install disk, Bootcamp does the partitioning and formatting for you. Print and read the guidelines in Bootcamp Assistant.

I have my very own copy, he gave me a sealed, brand new copy of windows 7, i wasnt partitioning from the instal disk, i was partitioning through the second step of boot camp assistant, and thats where i got the error message.
So I DID try to do the partitioning through boot camp, where the error occurred.

04-05-2012, 08:41 PM

The error message is deceiving because it doesn't tell you what's wrong. The problem is that your hard drive is fragmented and even though you may have 180 GB of free space, it's not contiguous.

The cure is to make a Time Machine backup, erase the hard drive, reinstall, and restore from Time Machine. Try again. It should work. Let us know.

04-05-2012, 08:44 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

The error message is deceiving because it doesn't tell you what's wrong. The problem is that your hard drive is fragmented and even though you may have 180 GB of free space, it's not contiguous.

The cure is to make a Time Machine backup, erase the hard drive, reinstall, and restore from Time Machine. Try again. It should work. Let us know.

I dont have anything to back up my hard drive to. And the defrag should have taken care of the fragmented hard drive, and even if the defrag wasnt entirely successful, the compacting after the defrag that i ran should have given me atleast a little bit of contiguous space

04-05-2012, 08:49 PM

Which defrag program did you use? And which method? I have iDefrag installed and I have found the only effective method of defrag is to boot from the iDefrag DVD and run a full defrag. (Which can take many hours.)

Also, you really need an external hard drive to make backups. How are you doing your backups now without one?

04-05-2012, 09:36 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

Which defrag program did you use? And which method? I have iDefrag installed and I have found the only effective method of defrag is to boot from the iDefrag DVD and run a full defrag. (Which can take many hours.)

Also, you really need an external hard drive to make backups. How are you doing your backups now without one?

I used idefrag (As i said in my OP...i feel like half of the replies to my OP have been because people didnt read the post fully), so i used idefrag, ran a FULL defrag THEN a compact, it took about 8 and a half hours. And i back up by sharing important files with my mac desktop

04-05-2012, 10:59 PM

I can't tell you why iDefrag did not work, it should have. A full defrag with compaction should have consolidated the free space unless there was not enough room on the drive.

The only other suggestion I have is to try what I suggested above. You will need to purchase an external hard drive though.

Unless you want Windows installed to play games, you can always use virtualization instead of dual booting. (Parallels, Fusion, VirtualBox)