Boot Camp fails to create a Windows partition because it can't move files

Question

I'm running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on a mac with a 320 GB drive, 167GB free space, and I can't get Boot Camp running. The wizard starts creating the Windows partition, but fails with a message claiming it cannot move some files. The message suggests to back up my hard disk, reformat it, restore my files, and re-run Boot Camp wizard.

The problem is: Though I do have backups (Time Machine), I don't feel like formatting my hard disk right now :-)

I found a thread in some forum discussing this problem. The suggestion was to defragment my volume with iDefrag, and lots of people claimed that solved the issue. So I went ahead and got iDefrag 1.7.1, created a bootable DVD and chose the "compact" setting recommended before partitioning - but still no luck with Boot Camp! So how do I get this working?

Fun note: last year, I briefly set up Boot Camp with 10.5, and it worked perfectly. Probably I did not use that much hard disk space back then...

Answer 1

Had your exact problem. To solve it I used TechTool Pro's bootable DVD to perform free space consolidation (they call it volume optimization).

Answer 2

iDefrag fixed this for me - you need to do a full defrag, not just a compact. Compact just removes the spaces between the files - (directory fragmentation) you want to defrag the files too.

Cloning the drive and format/ re-install will do it, too but it's a lot of work as you say in your question.

Might be worth checking there aren't any problems with the drive by repairing in Disk Utility too before the defrag.

Answer 3

After a few hours of tinkering and not wanting to attempt defragmenting due to time limitations, I booted into safe mode (hold Shift while booting) - finally Bootcamp Assistant worked!

Answer 4

If defragmenting didn't work you're only option is to format. I've ran into this issue numerous times and a format was the only way to get it to work. Sorry.