The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. idefrag didnt solve the problem. Please help, maybe i did something wrong

This is an error that sometimes occurs when trying to install Windows on a Mac via the Boot Camp Assistant.

1. Reboot the Mac into Single User Mode by holding Command+S during boot.
2. At the command prompt, type:
   

   1	/sbin/fsck-fy

3. When fsck is complete, type exit or reboot to reboot.
4. Boot the Mac as usual, verify the disk again in Disk Utility, and continue with the Boot Camp Assistant.

Try the above step it will work for you

While iDefrag is generally a very good program, it is not the be-all and end-all.

More fundamentally, however, is the fact that you have not provided enough information for anyone to assist you.

1. What is it you are trying to do, exactly?

2. I assume that some part of trying to achieve whatever you are trying to do has led you to try and defrag your computer to consolidate all the files at the beginning of the HDD (among other things). Did you create an iDefrag boot CD/DVD and run iDefrag from the CD/DVD? iDefrag is significantly limited in what it can do when you are running it on the same partition you are trying to defrag.

3. Are you trying to re-partition your boot partition while running from it? Because again, that is very difficult to do (and almost certain to lead to disaster when you force it to happen). How are you trying to partition the drive? Are you using Disk Utility, iPartition, or something else?

"The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved." is not a problem; it is an error message. We need to determine what the problem is in orer to help you fix it.

I assume you're trying to create a Windows partition using Boot Camp Assistant, you did not post the full error message either.

The reason you can not create a partition is because you do not have enough contiguous space, your drive is fragmented. iDefrag hardly ever works and if you read around this forum you will find many others who were or are in the same predicament.

Here is how to fix all this

BACKUP

If you are attempting to do this without backup, stop now and don't continue until you do.

Once you have an external drive:

Clone your drive to an external using CCC or DU, erase your internal drive, clone from the external back to the internal, run Boot Camp Assistant, it will work now.

Get Time Machine working again.

zuzugp wrote:

My time Machine isnt set up so i cant back up my files.

Well you need to resolve that backup issue first and combined we will solve your other issue.

Get a new blank external drive either the same size or slightly larger than your boot drive and open Disk Utility in your Applications > Utilities folder.

Select the external drive makers name on the far left and click Erase and Security option > Zero all data on the new external drive, let it complete it will take some time.

If your on 10.7, the Erase function and select the next to the far right option, that's a Zero Erase, the 7x takes too long and isn't necessary as the Zero erase is enough to map off any failing sectors.

Once that is finished, download the free to use (donations) Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the OS X drive (10.7 partition) to the external drive using the default settings, just select drive A and B and click clone. Wait for this also takes some time.

Hold the option key down and select the cloen to boot from, check it out, it's a exact copy. Cool.

i read on the apple forms that idefrag works and solves that problem. I payed money, and defraged my computer and i still get that error msg!

You got burned, because iDefrag doesn't move data in that fashion, it only attempts to defrag files and still leaves data on the area where your trying to create the Bootcamp partition.

Your solution is to option key boot from the clone, Zero erase the OS X partition and reverse clone back onto the drive/partition. Provided you have the drive space avaialble for Bootcamp, then all the free space will be avaialble at the bottom of the drive to create the Bootcamp partition.

see this

BootCamp: "This disc can not be partitioned/impossible to move files."

zuzugp wrote:

Yup. I am trying to use boot camp to set up windows 7. And from reading all the replies, i am now giving up hope in achiving this with out buying the external drive and backing up.

Any suggestions what i can try to do with out backing up?

Do not attempt this without an external drive, one of the consequences if the procedure goes wrong is that you will not have Windows and you will not have Mac either, and with no backup you don't want to be there.

Hello, This is what happend to me and how I got my mac run windows 7 again. My windows 7 got infected with a virus so I had to restore the entire partition with bootcamp utility, after that I tried to create the partition again to reinstall my windows 7 but surprise I could not partition it, instead I got a message :

so this is what you have to do to make it work, insert the mac OS dvd into the drive, restart the machine, then press letter C to boot from the dvd, after the lenguage selection, go to disk utilities, and make a repair, restart the machine try bootcamp, it should work now.

There is a quicker solution you should try before erasing your entire hard drive. It is officially mentioned in Apple's support and it worked for me.

I got the exact same error ("cannot move large files") when trying to partition. One thing that can cause this error is corruption of the hard drive's file nodes. This can be repaired with Disk Utilities (pre-Lion: boot from the install disc and run disk utilities, post-Lion: restart your mac in Recovery mode (command-R when booting) and run Disc Utilities from there). Once in Disk Utilities, do a Repair on your boot drive. If Repair finds and repairs any errors, it it then likely that the Boot Camp partitioning will then work afterwards, as it did for me.

You should still back everything up before doing this of course, just in case. But your hard drive will not be erased in the process, and if all goes well you shouldn't have to use the backup.

Worked like a charm. Thank you for being an island of sanity on this thread.

I was having the same problem. I did not try to defrag. I used the solution posted by ds store. It worked perfectly for me!

Keith Hamilton

Thanks nobium723. Your solution did the trick for me. Thank goodness I didn't have to reformat and start all over like others had to.

thehotrod wrote:

Thanks nobium723. Your solution did the trick for me. Thank goodness I didn't have to reformat and start all over like others had to.

Correctly done a clone/restore operation takes about an hour, no data is at risk at any time.

Hey I've been looking all over for solutions to this problem, and nothing I try works. I'm ready to just do what it says and use disc utility to format it as a single mac os extended (journaled) volume, but I can't figure out how to do that, and nobody has provided a solution. Could you please help me? Ive just backed up to time machine. Im in disc utitilies and cant figure out how to format. Under the erase tab there is a drop down box that says Mac os extended (journaled) but the box (as well as everything else in this tab) is grayed out and I cant do anything. Ive selected the disk on the left but nothing. Under the raid tab, there is also a drop down box that says the same thing, but I don't really know what raid means, and i dont really know what boot camp is telling me to do.

It sounds like you may be attempting to erase the partition that you're running from. For obvious reasons, you can't erase the MacOSX instance that you're currently running from and you can't erase Disk Utilities while you're currently running it! To erase this partition, you absolutely need to boot from a separate disk or else boot from Apple's recovery partition (command-R during startup).

If you didn't do that, then you should try my tip above about doing the disk repair first, you may not even need to erase the partition at all.

Note: RAID is something else, don't use that tab.

I still don't get why this works, my hard drive has 170gb left with a total of 250gb and won't even partition a 20gb partition.... I can't use the backup thing because I have no external harddrive :/ So... please help 😟 I used to have windows 7 but a virus got on my computer and I had to delete the permission 😟

Someone please find a solution without using the backup using disk utility.