Boot Camp won't let me partition because files cannot be moved

Question

Hello, i just purchased Leopard so i could use windows (again) on my mac... after uninstalling it a long time ago back when i had Tiger and bootcamp beta.
anyway, the problem i'm having is the same as a few people: it won't let me partition my disk because some files cannot be moved, and that i need to format the disk to a single partition - Mac OSX (Journaled), even though it already IS.
most suggestions have been to erase and restore, or back up your computer on time machine... but the problem with that is i have a large amount of space being used on my external (for photos, movies, music), which would not otherwise fit on my HD, and as a result there is not enough room on my external to back up with Time Machine.
so what can i do to get Boot Camp Assistant to partition my disk so that i can install windows?

Answer 1

thanks for the advice - i finally managed to get it to work!
after a bunch of research i found out that it is in fact because the disk is fragmented that bootcamp assistant is unable to partition the disk (despite the many false claims that OSX does not need to be defragmented).
i didn't feel like paying for iDefrag and waiting to get it in the mail, so i downloaded the iDefrag demo and was able to see exactly where the fragments were (many of them were surprisingly mp3 files), and then i could manually delete their corresponding files to free up continuous space. (where before i couldn't even make a 5GB partition, i was able to finally make a 15GB partition after deleting about a dozen music files)
for anyone who wishes to try this, the way it works is that in order for the partition to be created, it requires a certain amount of free, CONTINUOUS space. Your computer says there is a certain amount of free space on it, but not all of it is continuous, in other words there are bits and pieces of stuff (fragments) littered throughout areas of "free" space.
When you run the iDefrag demo, there is a bar at the bottom with lots of colors which represents all the stuff on your HD. The free space refers to any area of white, and fragmented files are in red. The info bar will tell you exactly what file is being represented by the area of color when you click on it.
The idea is to find large areas of free space (white). If there are a few bands of non-red color in those areas it's OK, but you want to locate all the fragmented files (red) in those areas, find out what they are, search them in the finder and delete them (the info bar will tell you the file name, which will very likely be an mp3, as well as it's exact location on your computer). But be careful because if you don't know what you're deleting, you may screw up your computer.
If you buy iDefrag ($35.00), you can simply defragment and optimize your computer. This will take a long time (~5 hours), but you dont have to do any manual labor, and in the end your computer will be beautifully defragmented: all the free space will be clumped together in one big section of your hard drive and it will be completely continuous, so you can make a much larger partition (depending how much free space you have to begin with).