[Geofries]

I've done this several times no problem, now all of a sudden today it's telling me "The disk cant be paritioned because some files cannot be moved. And it tells me to back up the disk and us e disk utility to format it as a single mac osx extended joural volume.

What's this about? I seriously cannot be bothered with backing up my entire system. I dont even have anything to back it up to.

But whats weird is if I partition with a mere 5 gigs it works, but anything above does not. Like I say I've done this before no prob. Any thoughts?

[ibook_steve]

I'm confused. Are you trying to partition your internal boot disk? While booted from that disk? A small partition I guess would work if you have that much free space on the disk.

Steve

[Geofries]

Sorry for the confusion. I'm using bootcamp, trying to reinstall xp. So its trying to partion my hdd

[ghporter]

You have enough fragmentation on that disc, and of big enough files, that the Boot Camp Utility can't move stuff to create a large enough contiguous space for your partition. Clean up the drive's contents to reduce how much is used, then do a full backup and restore-an image backup and restore should work. Really this is a pretty simple thing to do, but it will take some time. On the other hand, Apple really does suggest that you back up your data before you use the Boot Camp Utillity to partition your drive, so that gets you that thing done.

[Geofries]

I don't want to sound stupid, but exactly how do I do a "full back up", and a "restore an image back up". And by "clean up the drives contents", do you just mean delete unnecessary files?

If it has to be done it has to be done, I just want to know exactly how to do it. Will I need to reinstall osx? Does this involve formatting the entire drive?

Thanks in advance for your patience.

[Geofries]

Having all sorts of problems, now I'm trying to create a disk restore image and everytime it tells me "resource busy". Can anyone help me I'm struggling here.