# Boot Camp / Disk Utility can't add partition



## Lightbreaker (Sep 14, 2010)

Hello, I'm very new to Macs so I came to post here.

I'm planning to install Windows 7 on a MacBook with Leopard 10.5.8. The problem is I can't make a partition with either Boot Camp or Disk Utility.

Whenever I use Disk Utility, and in the Partition tab, I add a new partition, with a new name, and a certain size (I decided 20GB), the "Apply" Button is not lit, meaning I can't apply changes.

Whenever I use Boot Camp, it won't partition. I used those three options; the Use 32GB, Divide Equally, and Continue (which leaves me to only 5GB for Windows). There is some error telling me with the words "that I must backup", "...in Disk Utility", That's the only thing I can recall since I don't have my Mac with me at the moment.

Also, burning a Snow Leopard Install disc fails. A "Finishing disc" status suddenly gets up while the "burning disc" progress bar's just halfway. It also takes too much time with the "Finishing disc" status and then flashes a fail message. I burned the disc with batteries so I must try doing it with the adapter plugged in.

Sorry if this took so long, and I appreciate any help, very much. Thank you.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

What Mac do you have? How big is your hard drive, and how much free room do you have? What format is the disk? Also, sometimes there are files that end up at the end of the disk that can't be moved, and if that is the case, then you can't repartition the disk. 

You can't burn a Snow Leopard install disk. You can only get it from Apple as a retail package.


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## Lightbreaker (Sep 14, 2010)

If I'm not mistaken, it's a MacBook Core 2 Duo, 2 GB DDR2 667 RAM, brought about last year. It has 112GB hard drive, and about 48GB free space. The disk format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

I can recall that yes, there is an error that there are some files that can't be moved, so I can't repartition. Are there any solutions to this problem, as much as possible, without doing backups and doing a reformat (if that is possible in a Mac) and do a clean install?


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Of course you can reformat and then reinstall, and that is your only option if there are files that can't be moved, unless you can figure out which files are not moveable, and just remove them.


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## Lightbreaker (Sep 14, 2010)

Are there any programs that can figure out what those files are? Or a defrag program?

Well, my Leopard Install Disc is quite misplaced, I must do some heavy searching for it. As much as possible, I must not reformat and reinstall since this will be a ton of stuff to backup.

But if there's really no way other than finding the unmovable files, well I must really reformat.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

As for backing up, you really should be doing it regularly (I admit, I don't do it either, but I should.). I recommend getting an external drive that is bigger then your internal drive and use Time Machine to do a back up. Then when you reformat, install OS X, and then create some dummy account to use to run Boot Camp to partition the drive, then let Time Machine restore your account, and delete the dummy account.


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