To better facilitate backups, I have decided to create a dedicated partition on my external hard drive for Time Machine to use. This is a 300GB disk (don't laugh) with 116 GB of music on it (mostly in the iTunes library) plus some other original AIFF files. Disk Utility reports that there is 163 GB of free space on it. When I try to create a partition of about 100GB (or even 75) it gives me the "Partition failed with the error: No space left on device". I get this even if I just try to resize the original partition. I tried rebuilding the directory with Disk Warrior and it didn't help. If I give it a small enough partition to try- say 25 GB or so- it will work. Much above that though, and it always gives me the "No space" error.
I should mention that this disc, without any partition, was used for a while as the Time Machine backup disc. I don't remember why we stopped backing up, but I think it had something to do with running out of space.
I told Time Machine to use the (unpartitioned) disc once again as the backup disc, and it started backing up to it. I stopped it before it got too far.
Could there be files on there that I can't see that are taking up space? I did the "Erase free space" thing in Disk Utility but that didn't seem to clear out any more space. Like I said, it reports that there is 163 GB of available space.
I need to be able to Time Machine the startup drive so that I can install Snow Leopard and also re-do the Boot Camp thing so I can re-install Windows XP, as my wife will have a need to use the dark side for work starting next week. I'm trying not to spend any money, so getting another drive isn't really an option and neither is getting another partitioning utility, as they seem to run about $40-$50 dollars or so, and I can't be sure that they will work either.
Any ideas on this?
Thanks-
Val
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