Partition problem

Hey everyone,

I am new to the forum and am having a slight issue with my MacBook (late 2008 aluminum 13" 2.0Ghz, 160gb, upgraded to 4Gb ram with 10.5.8).

I partitioned my hard drive with bootcamp so that I could install windows xp with sp2. I installed everything, updated everything and it was great. Then I stupidly realized that I didn't allow enough room for a large game I wanted to install (insert comments here!)

So, I deleted the Windows partition with bootcamp and went about the process to add another partition that would be more than big enough. But, bootcamp wouldn't allow it. I got a message stating, "the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. Back up the disk using disk utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using bootcamp assistant again.

Now, that sounds very obvious and I am backing up my system on an external hard drive now with time machine.

I am a newb, so I wanted to know if backing up with time machine, then doing what the assistant suggested will fix my problem. It's quite intensive so I was wondering if there was a way around it or not. Will I run into any other problems? Is it easy to restore from time machine? Do I do something differently when reinstalling?

Thanks for any assistance.


Adam

One more thing, when i create the new partition and add windows xp, it will prompt for formatting if I recall correctly. The game I am installing is 15Gb. I have heard that fat32 won't allow files bigger than 4gb? Is this correct? Does this mean I need to format NTFS? If so, will I run into any problems? Or will windows xp and my Mac os still work great on their individual partitions?

You can use Time Machine, erase and format as suggested, then back up from Time Machine and start Bootcamp all over again and yes NTFS format as the partition will need to be at least 40GB for XP and that game. If you half the drive, 80/80GB, you may well run into the size problem all over again as 160GB is not a large hard drive.

Once set up you can use a program called Camptune to change the size of the Windows partition. It costs $19.95.

Thanks very much for the reply harryb2448. I appreciate it.