Dual Boot Help

Hey everyone, The other day I tried partitioning my HD for a dual boot and it said something about the HD needing formatted, I am already running OS X on it so it didn't seem like it would already be formatted. Is there anyway I could format without wiping my drive? I have a time machine so keeping all my info would be no issue if I have to wipe in the end. I also have one more question, is OS X Snow Leopard compatible with my hardware ? (late 2011 MBP 13") I was planning on running Windows 8 but had an Idea for Snow... Thanks

No Snow Leopard is not the OS used when new - it should have come with OS X.7 Lion on it, OS X.7.2 to be precise, unless it is an older model than late 2011. No going back in OS as a rule of thumb. What it came with is where it should be, other than upgrading. Why are you partitioning the hard drive? If for BootCamp, the utility does that for you. Go into BootCamp, print and read the guidelines. It was formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when the operating system was installed.

harryb2448 said:

No Snow Leopard is not the OS used when new - it should have come with OS X.7 Lion on it, OS X.7.2 to be precise, unless it is an older model than late 2011. No going back in OS as a rule of thumb. What it came with is where it should be, other than upgrading. Why are you partitioning the hard drive? If for BootCamp, the utility does that for you. Go into BootCamp, print and read the guidelines. It was formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) when the operating system was installed.

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Sorry I mis-recalled the error message, here is the original "Couldn’t modify partition map because file system verification failed." Sorry about that. And I wanted to have the ability to boot Snow Leopard (I have the install disk) with Mountain Lion and Windows so I can run PPC applications like photoshop CS2. Either way I'm unable to partition and BootCamp runs into the same issue. Thanks

BootCamp must be installed on a formatted drive with one single partition and BootCamp makes it own partition and formats it during the process. If you want Snow Leopard may well be best to think of an external hard drive.