Unable to Partition Drive (for Boot Camp)

[MrCrilly]

Greetings all.

I am trying to partition the HDD in my Macbook Pro 13.3" late '09 unibody/aluminium model into two partitions. I want an extra 20 GB partition for Windows XP SP3 to be installed via Boot Camp.

Before I present the screen shoots and everything I've done so far, I'll give you the information regarding my machine:

OS X version: 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3.

This can be verified through this screenshot:

Boot Camp version: 3.0.1 (313)
Disk Utility version: 11.5 (298)

The first thing I tried was to partition the drive via Boot Camp's interface. Here is the first screenshot of the initial setup of Boot Camp just before the "Partition" button was pressed:

(I've pressed the "Partition" button in this screenshot and THEN realised I needed a screenshot).

After about a five minute wait, the progress bar moves forward to about the 30% mark and then produces this error message:

With this error in mind, I decided to try partitioning the drive via Disk Utility. Here is the initial screenshot before any changes were made:

I then made the following changes to the partition layout:

After the changes where made I hit the "Apply" button and got the following prompt that confirmed the changes I was about to make:

I confirmed these changes and Disk Utility began to process my request, firstly by verifying the disk and then by "Shrinking Partition..." which again, gets about 30% of the way through before I get this message (note: this message is different to that found in Boot Camp):

I can do nothing but "OK" this prompt and quit Disk Utility. After this error I decided to perform a repair of the permissions and the disk its self via Disk Utility, starting with the verification of the disk permissions, followed by a repair. I then did the same steps again, but for a repair of the disk, but the "Repair Disk" option was never made available because there was nothing to repair.

After this I tried the partitioning again, and it failed again (exact same reasons) and as such I tried to perform the tasks from Disk Utility but this time from a Snow Leopard installation disc, thus OS X was not booted and "Repair Disk" would be available. No joy.

I don't understand why I can't partition my drive. Can anyone shed some light onto this? Perhaps someone has come across this issue before now and found a solution?

Regards.

 

[TattooedMac]

My fault

Misread post

Cheers

 

[MrCrilly]

Perhaps you failed to read this part of my post:

Greetings all.
...

After this I tried the partitioning again, and it failed again (exact same reasons) and as such I tried to perform the tasks from Disk Utility but this time from a Snow Leopard installation disc, thus OS X was not booted and "Repair Disk" would be available. No joy.

...

 

[eliehass]

I have found that defragging can sometimes help in this situation. iDefrag usually does the trick for me, but its not free...

Another solution (although very annoying) is to back up your HDD, re-install the OS, Set up the bootcamp, and then put all of your old stuff back.

 

[chas_m]

I have found that defragging can sometimes help in this situation.

Usually this error message indicates a large temp file hasn't been disposed of properly, OR severe fragmentation.

Easy solution to either case: clone to an external, boot from clone, wipe the original drive (zero it out for best results), clone back (or restore from TM if you use that). It takes a while, but it works very well.