[xcapepr]

Yes I searched but my question hasn't been answered in any of them.

Got a new MBP with the 120 GB HDD but I had a 250 GB WD external drive that I wanted to use in the MBP.

I connected up the external drive to the machine and I did a zero pass on it and formated it as an Apple drive with Journaling enabled. Then I used CCCloner to clone the factory install over to the new drive.

I opened up the MBP the second day of owning it and installed the 250 GB WD Scorpio drive and used the original drive in the external enclosure as a Time Machine drive.

Now I can't install Boot Camp, I get the "cannot partition" error. The volume is only one partition and Journaling is enabled. I tried doing a verify and an erase empty space with no luck. What else can I do short of reinstalling everything again?

[Eriamjh]

My guess is the wrong formatting method was used.

Too late for you, but I think you will have to boot from the original discs, reformat the 250GB, reinstall the OS, then run boot camp on it, repartitioning it for windows, then clone your old install from the 120GB disc over the other partition, thus restoring your system to original.

[ghporter]

Which "cannot partition" error did you get? It's possible that your CCC image was a "perfect" image-including all the fragmentation of free space that sometimes shows up on a new Mac. Your drive probably has a bunch of non-fragmented files scattered all over it, leaving the free space so fragmented that there isn't enough contiguous free space for any new partition.

Since you have access to an external drive for Time Machine, maybe you could do another full backup, but this time either use a different cloning tool (like maybe SuperDuper instead of CCC) or configure CCC to make the image compact (or even compact as it's restoring). Whatever you do, you need to get your drive unfragmented, both in defragmenting files (probably done by OS X already) AND in defragmenting free space.

[hookem2oo7]

sounds like APM partition scheme was used instead of GUID

[xcapepr]

Thanks ghporter, the fragmentation thing sounds reasonable. Any tools that may defrag it? Ive had the same issue with Windows and partition resizing tools.

The error I get is:
The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.

Here is a screenshot of my Disk Information:

[Art Vandelay]

Your drive is the wrong partition type. You need to repartition it using the GUID Partition Table partition map scheme.

[xcapepr]

right Recloning to the 120GB drive now, It was the GUID thing al along. Thanks to al of ya! I guess I would have to open the MBP again to take the dirve out or use a second Mac with mine in target disk mode to re-clone the image back to the 250GB drive.