OS X version 10.9 Bootcamp - cannot format partition

I can clearly see that this is an issue that several people have already run into, however I STILL cannot figure out how to get past this road block. I will start from the beginning.
I have a MacBook Pro OS X 10.9. I purchased and downloaded Windows 8.1 from the Windows store. In addition to the Windows 8.1 download, I was given the Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade download. I downloaded the 64 bit .iso file.
Using Bootcamp Assistant, I initiated all the options: I downloaded the .iso file to my thumb drive (8gb SanDisk Cruzer), downloaded the Windows support files and install Windows 7. I was asked to partition the disk as I desired and after the disk was partitioned, the system booted up the Windows setup. Awesome.
I was asked what language I preferred, what version of Windows I was installing and to accept the license agreement. Then I get the "choose where you want to install Windows" window. There are 4 partitions. The fourth partition is named BOOTCAMP. I highlight that partition. I then click "drive options (advanced)".
Here is where I run into an issue I haven't heard anyone describe. If I highlight any of the other partitions, the format icon that looks like a little eraser, if you will, is colored a light gray and appears to be active. Unfortunately when I highlight the BOOTCAMP partition, that icon is shrunk and red like it is not an option to choose.
If I click it anyway, it gives me a caution message about possibly losing information. I have the options of pressing "ok" or "cancel". I am never given the option to choose which format. If I go ahead anyway and press ok, it appears as though windows is moving forward with installation but it never moves past expanding Windows files... I'm stumped!
I have already spent hours on the phone with Apple Support... what am I missing?!

Check topic E3 at this webpage: Time Machine - Troubleshooting. See if it can shed any light on the issue.

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Bootcamp problem cannot format windows partition

I have tried numerous times to run bootcamp to install Windows on new Macbook 13" Retina. It always hangs at the stage where windows tries to format the BOOTCAMP partition. It says it cannot format it
I contacted Apple support who said that I could use disk Utilities to format the Bootcamp partition - no I can't! I have the partition shown in Disk Utility but there is no option to format it. There is an option to erase it with NTFS greyed out and it says in the info that it is in Windows NT file system
Any ideas - I have been trying this for weeks now
I bought Parallels but that was useless - even after giving over most of the 8GB memory to Windows it kep freezing / going slow?
How do I persuade my Windows install disk that the drive - called Untitled - is NTFS and that it can install (Windows 7) on it
Very frustrated as all this worked first time on both my iMacs
Help please

Personally I have had no experience with this problem but maybe these urls will have some useful info.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20061565-263.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329899-263.html
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Boot-Options-Change-To--EFI-Boot--in-Mac /615006

Bootcamp fails to format partition

System: Brand new 15" MBP with Retina display, 8 GB ram and 500 GB SSD
Problem: Running Bootcamp to install Windows 7, I get as far as choose the partition to install in and select 'Bootcamp'/options/format. 3-5 seconds later it drops out, the partition is no longer called 'Bootcamp' and I get a message that Windows cannot be installed on this partition. I've restarted, erased and recovered, all to no avail. It states to check the installation logs for more details but I can't find the log anywhere.
I really hope somebody has an idea what to do next! Unfortunately I really do have to find a way to run W7 because of some specific applications I use.
Terence Watts

I just successfully installed Windows 8.1 Update 1 on BootCamp on Mac OS X Yosemite. Here is a step by step I just wrote, hope it helps y'all:
How to successfully install Windows 8, or above, on Mac OS X Mavericks or above:
Requirements:
1- Windows OS ISO Image file
2- An 8GBs USB Flash Drive
3- A good Internet connection as you will need to download the Windows compatible drivers for your Mac
Steps:
1- Open up Disk Utility and create an additional partition for Windows formatted as ExFat. 100GBs, or above, is recommended as update to the operating system, as well as Apps requiere space on your HD or SSD [This step can be done during Mac OS X's installation process]
2- Open up BootCamp Assistant
3- Make sure only the 'Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk' is checked and your USB Flash Drive plugged in and click 'Continue'
4- Click 'Choose' and select your Windows ISO Image file
5- Select the USB Flash Drive you will be using during the installation process and click continue to confirm
6- Once done, restart your Mac and hold down the 'alt/option' key on your keyboard to bring up the Boot Menu
7- Select the USB Flash Drive named Windows, not the UEFI Boot
8- Install Windows as you normally would
* Remember to press and hold the 'alt/option' key, and select the Windows Partition, whenever the installation process requires your Mac to restart
* http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj945423.aspx
* http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/install-windows-on-mac

Cannot format hard drive on macbook pro.

Hi, I am trying to run bootcamp and install Windows but am having no luck. When I try to partition the drive through bootcamp it tells me that it cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. The message also says to format the drive after backing it up and partition after that. I have backed up my drive and am trying to erase the disk but the erase disk option is grayed out when I click on my disk to be formatted.
Also, I tried to partition the hard drive without using bootcamp, and it will not allow me to format the partition to FAT, or anything other than OSX Extended Journaled.
What am I doing wrong? Also, if I try to verify the disk for repairing it, Disk Utility freezes and I have to force quit it. My only thought in reading this is that maybe I should partition through Disk Utility if it will work, format to OSX Extended, and then format the partition to NTFS after. Is this the best way to do this.

plorelle wrote:
Hi, I am trying to run bootcamp and install Windows but am having no luck. When I try to partition the drive through bootcamp it tells me that it cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.
this happens because your drive is too fragmented and bootcamp assistant can't find a contiguous piece of free space to make the bootcamp partition.
The message also says to format the drive after backing it up and partition after that. I have backed up my drive and am trying to erase the disk but the erase disk option is grayed out when I click on my disk to be formatted.
What am I doing wrong?
you can't erase a drive while you are booted from it. how did you back up the drive? you need to make a bootable clone and test that it works. boot from the clone and repartition (not erase) your main hard drive using the partition disk utility. then clone the clone back. boot from the internal and try using bootacmp assistant again. keep in mind that you need to leave plenty of free space on the OS X partition after you create the bootcamp partition. at least 15% of the OS X partition should be free to avoid disk fragmentation issues.

BootCamp cannot create new partition on drive free space.

Hi Folks,
I am hoping for some advice here. I am running OS X (10.5.6) and wish to use Boot Camp to created a partition to install Windows XP SP2 for some gaming. My machine is a late 2007 MBP 2.4GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 340GB WD transplanted hard drive.
I have about 180GB of free space for a new partition to be created for the XP install.
When I fire up the Boot Camp Assistant tool, I am immediately informed of the following:
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition."
"Back up the disk and use the Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using the Boot Camp Assistant again."
+ I have never had more than one partition on this drive.
+ I installed the drive new with no partition and used a tool named 'Carbon Copy Cloner' to transfer data from the original drive onto this drive, the machine booted right away and I have been using it without issue ever since.
+ I have run Disk Utility to 'Verify Disk', 'Verify Disk Permissions' and 'Repair Disk Permissions' all ran with no problems and completed successfully.
My question is, how can I make a usable backup copy of the drive to restore back to the drive after performing the re-format?
Can I use the Carbon Copy Cloner software for this? I want to make sure that the resulting internal drive is bootable, etc.
I have been running Time Machine as well and have a disk full of backups from that app, but I have no idea how to use it to restore the drive to it's current state after re-partition and format.
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions.
John

So today I used the free "trial" version of SuperDuper to create a bootable clone of my primary internal drive.
It was about 100GB and took a long time to copy onto USB 2.0 external SATA drive, but it worked.
SuperDuper provided the option to make the copy the boot device as well. After reboot, I used OS X Disk Utility to erase primary drive.
I then performed the operation in reverse, copying the entire contents back to the original location.
After a reboot, I ran the Boot Camp Utility and received the same aggravating message which I received before.
How can I be sure that I am actually re-formatting the target drive in order to consolidate free space? Is this my issue? When I performed the erase operation, I skipped the "zero out free space" step. Am I using the correct utility to prepare the target drive?
Once again, any and all help is greatly appreciated.
Regards,
John

Hard disc wont partition to load bootcamp It says that the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved

Using Bootcamp Assistant I cant partition my harddrive - get message "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved" The following instructions have been followed with no result "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." This is a bit sketchy for someone like me. Do I back up the whole system ie the OS as well or just my data? Can anyone help please?

First take a look at this docuemnt, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2414. When you backup your hard drive it is best to back up all files and the OS, a better option would be to clone the hard drive with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Bootcamp Yosemite 10.10.1 "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition."

I'm trying to install Windows on my Mac via Bootcamp. I start up Boot Camp Assistant, the introduction pops up, I press continue and then I get this error message.
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows."
So I head over to Disk Utility, the only partitions I have are Macintosh HD and EFI. I thought there might be some hidden partition, so I went into debug mode in Disk Util and there's nothing (Also used terminal, I'll put results below*). So that brings me to my current problem; it's already "formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume" and I can't make it "partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows." because this error message prevents me from doing that. Maybe there's an easy fix, but the information provided is so unhelpful/circular it makes me want to laugh and punch something at the same time. I saw that someone fixed this problem by merging their partitions, but as I already have the minimum number of partitions so that wouldn't fix anything (unless EFI is unnecessary, which I'm fairly sure it isn't).
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diskutil list
sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
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   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
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I had a similar issue after doing a fresh install of Yosemite. Bootcamp assistant seems to want a Core Storage scenario before it will continue.
To convert your drive use the following command in Terminal:
diskutil cs convert disk0s2
Bootcamp will then let you proceed as normal. Be warned though!
After the windows install completes you may end up with something like my situation:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/27472857?ac_cid=op123456#27472857

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' I was able to format with the original firmware, but now I have updated it with the new version and cannot format it! Creative, please help!

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Roberto Neigenfind
Bravo Tecnologia
www.bravotecnologia.com.br

Hi Barbara,
Flash Professional CS5.5 is a 32-bit application which can be installed on computers with either 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems.
You can purchase this by Adobe's backward Licensing policy :
" Adobe allows program members to order a current-version license but use a prior version. These members can contact Adobe Customer Service to request a serial number for the earlier version if they do not already have one. Prior-version software is available via ESD and can be purchased through standard resellers. The program member must follow all guidelines of the current-version EULA. "
Please check the doc : http://www.adobe.com/volume-licensing/policies.html

After upgrading to Yosemite, I had to upgrade my iPhoto, now the full res versions of my images cannot be found.

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I don’t mind mountain climbing but anything serious to do with a computer scares me silly.
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Hi!
I am getting the error:
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition. The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Jounraled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows."
I read up some on google, but all of them says that they have crated a partition and that is the problem, I only have the standard "Macintosh HD".
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Can anyone help me? It's driving me crazy.
Thanks.

This message, and threads like yours got asked daily for over two years, now it is only a couple times a week!!
Is it so hard to follow through? you were to have backup already, clones are best, then erase/format and restore.
Then partition.
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OS X version 10.9 Bootcamp - cannot format partition

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