Can't partition hard drive

Hi and welcome to Discussions,

Now, I know there's another topic on this, and I know it says I need to make a bootable copy and reformat the hard drive, so my question is this: is my time machine backup a bootable copy?

See section 14 of Pondinis Time Machine FAQs http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018

And how to I go about reformatting the hard drive? That option is grayed out for the hard disk.

The option is greyed out because Disk Utility can not format a disk from which Mac OSX has been booted.

Boot from the Snow Leopard install DVD, reformat the internal drive using disk utility in the utilities menu.
Quit disk utility and select 'restore system from backup" from utilities menu. Follow the instructions.

Regards

Stefan

Before you go to the trouble of doing a complete format/reinstall of your drive, try specifying a smaller Boot Camp partition size (in Boot Camp Assistant).

I am replying to your post because this is the most recent thread on this topic. Put simply, I had the exact same problem. After reading countless posts on multiple forums, I felt the need to come back and make my mark somewhere; especially because so many people encourage reformatting. While good intentions are behind such suggestions, I find them to be unhelpful.

Drive Genius fixed the problem. The drive needs to be defragmented. However, certain computers have files that are always in use (therefore locked) and Boot Camp Assistant cannot move them for you. With Drive Genius, and probably others out there, you need to boot up into their software so every file on your Mac can be moved; because using their boot-up disks, you are not booting up into your Mac.

Now, the problem is this software costs money. If you cannot swing it, then yes, reformat. However, if you can afford the software (which is good software to have in case your hard drive ever has problems) then create a bootable CD and solve this problem. But rest assured, reformatting your Mac is NOT the only answer.