HELP PLEASE! Cannot repartition BootCamp

I have a 500 GB 2010 MacBook Pro with OSX Lion that I purchased used with several hundred GB of music and videos on the hard drive (torrented?), and I later added a 93 GB Windows 7 partition. I also have a 500 GB external hard drive that can be used for backups.

After the BootCamp portion was filled, I decided to expand the amount of space allocated. First, I tried Paragon Camptune X, which seems like a great product but crashed repeatedly and did not make any progress. I then tried backing up with Winclone, deleting the partition, making a new partition, and restoring, but while attempting to shrink the size of the Mac OSX partition in Disk Utility I received the error message:

"Partition failed with the error:

The partition cannot be resized. Try reducing the amount of change in the size of the partition."

Next, I tried using iDefrag after learning that defragmenting the hard drive might help. Even though the hard drive's free space is 83% fragmented according to iDefrag, the program works only for about 5% of the total space, then crashes. I delete the file that iDefrag reports every time but to no avail, whether I use the Compact or Full Defrag algorithms.

Time Machine crashes while halfway backing up my hard drive, citing a file that cannot be copied, and SuperDuper crashes about 10% into the process.

I also tried repeatedly verifying and repairing the hard drive and permissions in the Recovery partition's Disk Utility repeatedly. While it seems like the drive has been repaired, each time the same obscure files are repaired the exact same way in permissions - I'm not sure if this matters or not.

I would really really love to fix this problem and expand BootCamp, and I have searched and searched for a solution but with no success. Any help, advice, or suggestions will be tremendously appreciated!

Thanks,
Alex

I've used camptune many times and never had an issue. Sorry you did.

Just for future info. You should have used the bootcamp assistant to delete the partition and then have it create a new one.

However, to try and resolve your issue please boot into the Lion Recovery Partition (hold R on startup) and run disk and permissions repair from there).

Once done try to get Disk Utility to expand the OSX partition to the full size of the disk

Thanks

I originally tried running disk and permission verification and repair through the Recovery Partition, but it did not seem to help with the partitioning. I successfully resized the Mac OSX partition to full size, but I still receive the error message

"Partition failed with the error:

The partition cannot be resized. Try reducing the amount of change in the size of the partition."

whenever I try to repartition the Mac OSX partition.

Also, I only deleted the Bootcamp partition through Disk Utility because I was following the Winclone directions (steps 11-13) on this page: twocanoes software | Resizing a Bootcamp Partition with Winclone. Should I have used Bootcamp Assistant to remove the partition instead? I am reluctant to use another Windows 7 license for re-installation since I have already installed W7 once.

I am pretty sure that corrupted files from the music and videos torrented by the previous user are preventing the partitioning from completing, but I would like to keep them if possible.

Are there any other possible ways to resolve this problem, or should I use an incomplete .inProgress backup file and reset OSX Lion through the Recovery Drive?

I successfully resized the Mac OSX partition to full size, but I still receive the error message

"Partition failed with the error:
The partition cannot be resized. Try reducing the amount of change in the size of the partition."

Click to expand...

What gave you the error? The bootcamp assistant or Disk Utility?

You should always use the bootcamp assistant to manage the bootcamp partition. I think the Winclone info is out of date. I don't believe it's up to date and supported any longer. Edit: looks like they do now support Windows 7 and Lion.

If I were you I'd return the partition to full size (I think that's where you are now). Then do a time machine backup.

Once complete use the bootcamp assistant to try and create a partition.

Going forward once you do get to the point of installing windows again you use the same licence you don't need to use 'another' licence.


As an aside, if there is questionable data from a previous user I would delete it without question.

My gut feeling is that with CampTune, Winclone and disk utility all giving you errors there's some, yet to be discovered, disk error at work here. Whether that's a physical issue or a software issue isn't clear.

Personally I think I'd delete the previous owners content, do a time machine backup then do a clean install.