Can't create boot camp partition on new macbook pro

Question

Hi all. Having an odd issue installing boot camp on my 2011 Macbook Pro. When I try and create a partition it gives me the following error message:
"The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved."
It goes on to tell me that I need to reformat my drive and try again. Seems a little extreme and even worse, I'm wondering if this will work considering that I still have over 600GB of free space available on my drive. Thought I'd post here and see if anyone has had a similar issue before harassing support.

Answer 1

If you look at the pdf guide in Boot Camp Assistant, step one is to backup. Common sense before altering, installing new OS, and should be required of anyone even if just updating Mac OS.
Now, having fragmented space: Apple never considers defragging free space and says Mac OS X defrags some files, and that having more than 25% free should not impact Mac OS performance.
So I think that covers Apple support for their own OS.
When you install updates, applications and such, the patches are compressed, expanded, space is fragmented, and some vendors often choose to write their updates to the far end of the drive in order to leave high access for other portions.
the best and perhaps only way to move files is to boot from another hard drive, rather than pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and try to shuffle files.
I would never recommend using only built in tools. I don't advise Apple DU First Aid as the sole utility for maintenance and repairs for Mac HFS file system. nor would I use TimeMachine alone. They are free and there and better than nothing.
Create a bootable backup clone of Mac OS for one.
Repair your internal drive.
Try using Boot Camp Assistant; or iDefrag; or Paragon CampTune (yes, it can be used to install Windows partition as well as resize partitions now or later if needed). Does a better job.
The use of x86 Intel cpus opened up new possibilities. Some unintended or not foreseen I guess too. A competition challenge to see who could install Windows on a Mac first and easiest took place in 2006. Apple came in later with their beta. but Boot Camp Assistant has always been a weak, lame, partitioning tool.
Macs and users using gparted and other tools? and try to stop the hand-holding concept? unlikely.
A better tool? there should be, and not only that, it really needs to just be rolled into Disk utilty as one more feature and tab along with other tools - so integrated and if you want to create, resize, remove an MBR slice and Windows partition, you can.
Paragon lets you create a partition, and also they have their own NTFS driver so you don't need to format BOOTCAMP (MSDOS/FAT32) during the install phase later.
Of course installing Windows in a VM doesn't have all the trouble of dual boot native install and given RAM and processor resources, can be more than functional enough for many.
With Windows 7 you can install and have a Windows-only computer, remove all traces of Mac OS (and boot OS X off 2nd drive, either with two SSD + hard drive or eSATA or Intel 'Bolt' interface as well as FW800.