The disk cannot be partitioned because some files could not be moved

Hi guys,
I removed my bootcamp partition to clear up some temp space and expanded the Mac OS partition up to the fullest size again using Boot Camp Assistant.
The first thing I noticed was that when I restart to computer gets stuck on an ugly BIOS looking screen with a message something along the lines of "no bootable partitions could be found", Easy way round is to hold down the ALT key which brings up a sole Mac OS button to boot from.
Now I try and make a little partition again using the assistant and it won't let me because it says "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files could not be moved". It then advises to back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended volume before restoring again.
Is there anyway to fix this lot without going through doing this.
Will Boot Camp Restore re-instate the OS as well as my user files?

I had a similar problem when I undid my boot camp partition to make it larger. I tried to make it 50 GB which gave me the same error about the files not being able to be moved. I didn't get the "no bootable partitions" error. I changed the size of the partition to 47 GB and ran the boot camp assistant. It stopped while partitioning and I have to force quit to stop it. I restarted the assistant and made the partition a little larger to 48 GB and it partitioned finally. My suggestion is to ry adjusting the size of the partition and see if that allows you to make the partition at least. For you other problem, I'm not sure... From what I gathered from other forums, the drive might be fragmented which causes the partition error. There is no free defragment tool for mac (dunno why) but they exist.

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HT4818 When I try to partition my hard drive for Windows 7, I get an error saying The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. I have a 2006 Macbook Pro I believe and I really need assistance as soon as possible.

I have Windows 7 Premium Home and I have downloaded the Drivers and when I click Boot Camp Assistance to partition my hard drive, it says, "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. 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." I can't do any backup really because I don't have an external hard drive to work with. I tried repairing disk permissions but that did not do anything. I really need a lot of help with this with some easy, step-by-step tutorials or something. I believe I have a 2006 version of Macbook Pro(4,1).

Once you have obtained an external drive and connected it you will 'clone' your internal drive to it.
Download Carbon Copy Cloner (it is not free but there is a fully functional trial version which is). Use it to clone your internal drive to your external drive. When that is done you will reboot from the clone and use Disk Utility to erase the internal drive (choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) as the format (this is normally preset, but check). Make sure to give the external drive a 'distinctive' name, don't want to get drives mixed up in this process.
Once that is done you will use Carbon Copy Cloner (from the clone) to restore the external to the internal.

Bootcamp - The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

I know what you're thinking; this question has been posed before. But my circumstances are different.
Sooo I bought a brand new Macbook Pro 15" Retina, late-2014 model on Monday. After some initial setup (moving my music, downloading programs etc.) I moved onto the last thing I needed to do - set up bootcamp (primarily for gaming I admit).
Specs: 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
1TB PCIe-based Flash Storage - In total the files I moved onto it left me with about 890GB free on the HD.
At this point I had made sure everything was updated as far as I was aware.
I received the error message "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved." I was trying to make a 151GB partition but also tried going down to 40GB and received the same message. I tried several solutions I found online including booting in cmd+s and typing in some codes, I checked the disk with disk utility and it was fine.
Nothing much for it and I was feeling lazy, I backed up with Carbon Copy Cloner (I much prefer this program to time machine) and reformatted. Clean install of OSX Yosemite and the Macbook looked like it had just come out of the box. Before I even attempted to restore using CCC I started up bootcamp again: same error. With essentially a brand new Macbook Pro right out of the box, near to 1TB HD space free.
I've taken it to the local Apple store but they "Don't have any support for bootcamp in-store" and I'm out of the house for 12 hours a day with work (I'm actually at work now). Plus you know, I require food and such, so I don't get much time to get in touch with Apple support directly.
The guy at the Apple store recommended Parallels or Visualbox; note that I want to use bootcamp. I like the extra power and I have a copy of Windows 8.1 from a previous Macbook Pro that worked wonderfully through bootcamp. This should work as far as I am concerned and I don't want to accept anything less to be honest.
Any ideas?

Hi Loner T,
Thanks for your suggestion, however I did a step wrong and I am facing another bigger problem.
Step 1 was to use time machine to backup OSX, looks like I failed to do that, and only backed up the data instead. Because after I erase my internal disk, I cant restore from TM.
So now the situation is that I can't access my HD, can't reinstall Mac to that hard disk (it is not detected), Cant use DU to repartition the hard disk as well, option not selectable.
What can I do now?

Bootcamp - the disk cannot be partition because some files cannot be moved

Hi, I have been using boot camp for a while and everything was working fine but over time, windows were picking up some virus so I did a stupid thing of removing the whole partition thinking that I can re-partition again and install a clean windows system.
But to my horror, I got an error message saying "the disk cannot be partition because some files cannot be moved". So I decided to defrag my MBP, after almost 14 hours later the MPB is defrag but I am still getting the same error.
Looking around, I found this quote "On a side note, it actually doesn't have anything to do with fragmentation. It has to do with compacting the disk so that no files are on the outer sectors of the drive. You could have a 100% no fragmented file system but still have gaps between data and data on the outer sectors of the disk. They need to be moved to the inside of the disk. Boot camp will usually do this for you but the problem is if a system file, swap or something can't can't be moved while the OS is running is out there it can't be moved.. thus the error."
Bottom line is what can I do to install bootcamp again? will wiping OSX and reinstall from Time Machine solve this problem? I don't want to waste another day wiping everything when it's not going to work.
Thanks in advance for any help!

Just a quick update, I made sure I had the latest backup on my Time Machine and then I wipe my MBP and restore from Time Machine. The restore was completed however, when I try to boot up from my MBP, it wouldn't start.
I get to the Apple logo screen with the loading icon under that and it stays there forever. The only thing I can do is a hard shut down (press the power button for 10 seconds).
This is turning into a bit of a nightmare!

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.

Boot Camp 2" The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be.."

*" The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved."*
I'm seriously at wits end with this problem, and still looking for a solution. If any of you want to chime in with an answer, I will eternally grateful.
Oh, and just to get it out of the way;
+"defrag your drive with ____"+
Tried it, didn't work.
+"repair your drive using Disk Utility"+
Tried it, didn't work.
+"restore your OS using the start up disk."+
Tried it, didn't work....and now have to upload all my music files the hard way. Why can't iTunes just take it from your iPod? Who knows.
+"Try lowering the Gs to be partitioned."+
Tried lowering it to 30g, didn't work, and can't sacrifice more.
+"use an external Hard drive to copy your Hd...."+
No. I'm not about to blow money on an external HDD, nor do I feel like I should have to.
Specs: Boot Camp 2.0, Mac OS X 10.5.8. (didn't see a way to DL the newer version of Boot Camp.)
Message was edited by: Jtanny

How large is your HD and how much room do you have left?
There can't be ANY files at all in the new partition and there must be room in the old partition to move the "loose" files back to the old area.
I think I read that most "Defrag" programs won't move an "Anchored" file. Meaning it's used buy the 'Root' part of the Mac OS. If any of those files are in the new partition Boot Camp won't install over it, or move it and will just give a warning about not being able to move the files, etc. And it's not suggested to move it unless you knew what you were doing.
"+""use an external Hard drive to copy your Hd....""+
+""No. I'm not about to blow money on an external HDD, nor do I feel like I should have to.""+
What are you going to do when your internal HD dies?
They "rarely" give you any warning at all. You can get an External for as little as $50+- at Amazon, EggHead, etc, just get the size you have now or slightly bigger and then you have a "Backup" drive for the Mac AND Windows to use. Apple even has a BackUp program you can use. At the very least if your internal HD dies then you have another bootable drive to use until you buy another one.
Unfortunately, if you want the Windows install, your best best would be like @Csound1 mentioned, get CCC or SuperDuper and "clone" the drive onto another HD and just copy it back. Takes a couple of hours and your done. Copying it back like that automatically defrags the files as they are copied back. You CAN'T just copy/paste the HD onto another drive as the Finder can't copy the invisible" Root" files.
OR you can wipe the hard drive and start fresh and then spend a half a day to reinstall the Mac OS, then Software Update everything, then install all your third party applications, update those, music, movies, etc, then install Windows, etc.
"""+restore your OS using the start up disk+."""
+""Tried it, didn't work....and now have to upload all my music files the hard way. Why can't iTunes just take it from your iPod? Who knows.""+
I don't think "Restore" works because you may have some "Root" files that don't get erased?
And "Restore" only reinstalls the MAC OS and nothing else, so you shouldn't of had to do anything with ITunes. You definitely want to back everything up anyway, but in theory, it doesn't touch any applications or 3rd party stuff.
+"Specs: Boot Camp 2.0, Mac OS X 10.5.8. (didn't see a way to DL the newer version of Boot Camp.)"+
Boot Camp "Assistant" reboots and set's up Boot Camp to partition, install drivers and start the Windows installer. Boot Camp is actually an exe program. If you have done the Mac Software Update it's probably as high as you can get with 10.5? Go to the Boot Camp main page and check out the "downloads" section and see if they may have a manual download for you. You also can update the Apple drivers from the Windows side once you get there.

What are the steps if; the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved

I'm to install windows XP software, and I can partition the disk. If state, "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files canot be moved." What are the steps to complete partition to install windows XP?

Ok what happens with Bootcamp is it needs to carve out a contiguous free space at the bottom of your hard drive.
If it can't do that then it can't make the partition.
What has happened is there are some files down in closer in the bottom part of the drive, this occurs if you've had a hard drive nearly full, performed a software update, installed programs and then removed some files leaving parts and large empty spaces.
So what to do to fix this?
Well your going to have to learn how to clone your OS X boot partition, with all your programs and files to a external drive, which you can then hold the option key and boot from it.
Then you run Disk Utility from the clone, erase the OS X partition on the internal drive and clone everything right back.
This will place everything in order, move everything up and nice and compact at the top of the drive, which will allow you to make a BootCamp partition as big as you have room for.
It will also make your comptuer perform a bit faster too.
Cloning back and forth is rather safe, because you always have a hold option key bootable clone, either on the internal drive or the external drive, your computer will work from either.
What you don't want to use is Defrag software, that moves things around while the computer is running and messes things up quite a bit and really doesn't optimize as well or as safely as a clone.
In fact I just assisted a person who did just that and royally messed up their machine, requiring a complete rebuild of everything.
So read through this thread of mine and grasp things and you'll be cloning your boot drive in no time.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201
Remember that cloning can't clone Filevaulted drives or Bootcamp partitions, also it only (at this time) clones the OS X partition, which for Snow Leopard is the whole drive usually (minus Bootcamp partition.)
However if your on Lion, Carbon Copy Cloner doesn't quite yet clone the hidden Lion Recovery Partition, so when you clone you won't have it on the external drive but the computer will boot off the external drive just fine without it.
So when you go to erase the Lion internal drive, you need to erase only the OS X Lion Partition not the entire drive before reverse cloning.
You should make a Lion Recovery USB if you have Lion, as only through Lion Recvoery can you reinstall Lion now. Instrucitons are in my thread.
The way you can tell if your selecting a partition or a entire drive in Disk Utility is how far left it is.
The far left are devices and the slightly indented items are partitions or media using that device.
Good Luck

Boot Camp Problem (The disk cannot be partitioned because some files...)

Hey! So here i am. i open up Boot Camp Asistant, get to partioning. start partinoning then after about 5 minuets i get this message:
*The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.*
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.
I have checked in Disk Utility & More and i am not sure hoe to fix it.
Here is a picture of both my "Disk Utility" and the Boot Camp Error:
BC ERROR: http://twitpic.com/ehre1
Disk Utility: http://twitpic.com/ehrdo
So if you could help me out here it would be great, as i have just brought a copy of Win XP SP3 and i really wanted to play my new game :P
Thanks
—Alex

First I can't say I'm a MAC expert, so keep that in mind. But if I tell you my interpretation of that issue, which I also have actually, it might help. I think the probably is that when you partition a HD you can't really be on it, so the Mac needs to allocate enough memory which is either the minimum needed for windows or the amount you choose then separate those needed memory cells from the other memory cells used by the Mac so it can create the partition. Then formats the memory in the partition. However if there isn't enough unused consecutive memory cells then the Mac needs to move files to create consecutive memory cells to partition. But, as you can see, sometimes those files cant be moved so the Mac needs to have the entire hard drive formated so the files can be moved. At that point the partition can be inserted without an issue. Of, course the idea of formatting your HD is not exciting to say the least. Its not hard but it can take awhile to do and then you'll have to reinstall all the third party programs you have. An alternative idea to explore is to use the firewire port on the Mac [if you have one] and you likely do. And get an external HD to run through that and put windows in the external HD. Firewire is a higher speed data transfer option then USB. You can run programs through firewire just as USB does to a lesser extent. But there are limits. So it may, in the end, not work for what you want.
But I think what it's telling you is you need to format your entire HD. But, like I said I'm no expert. If you find the solution let me know. Like I said, I have the same problem.

Boot camp "the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved." what to do?

I am attempting to reinstall windows on my MacBook via bootcamp. I have done this before but at the advice of the genius bar today, uninstalled it due to some problems. Now I am reinstalling but after being told the partition size was too small, after making it larger, I am now getting a message that says "the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved". I don't know how to get past this. Any advice? What is the proper partition size for windows? Thanks in advance.

Hi,
In essence the BootCamp Assistant cannot find a free contingeous diskspace of the size you want to use for WIndows partition/installation and thus fails.
The easiest approach is to clone your OSX to an external harddisk, reformat your internal harddisk and then restore your OSX from the external HD to the internal one.
This 'defrags' the OSX volume so that the BC Assistant can find the diskspace he needs.
SuperDuper and/or Carbon Copy Cloner can do this quite 'painless'.
A Time Machine backup also works.
There are also some commercial solutions for defragging like iDefrag and Drive Genius.
For Windows XP the partition size should be at least 10GB plus the diskspace needed for the Windows programs and files you work with.
Regards
Stefan

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved is the error?? please help

i want to donwload windows and i have a cd for it but the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved is the error.please help i dont have the cds that came with the imac . can time machine work for this?

You will need to get the original DVD that came with your iMac it you are using Mac OS X 10.6.8 or if you have the Snow Leopard DVD that will work. Follow these instructions,http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2414

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved (BOOT CAMP)

"The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved
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."
I came across this message a few hours ago and did a quick but thorough research on the topic. It seeeds that the only solutions available were:
-To move large files onto an external drive
-Defragment the hard drive
-Reinstall Mac OS X
I was not willing to do any of the latter two, being time consuming and somewhat hard to do. But then, I came across this post on macworld:
"...thanks to a tip elsewhere, I booted off my Snow Leopard install disk (hold the C key as you boot until the language selection screen appears.) From the Utilities menu on the install screen choose Disk Utility, then Repair Disk"
This appears to be the easiest, less time consuming solution to this popular problem.
(from http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=72767)

For some it works,and always worth a try.
Of course the instructions are to backup your system first which some fail to do.
And repairing should just be normal thing, done regularly, though I prefer to boot from my bootable backup (clone) instead of a DVD.
sometimes even SuperDuper erase and restore works, but in 5% of cases even that doesn't (or the user did something we can't see and didn't occur to them).
If the DVD works, then something was likely wrong to begin with is my own feeling, plus the fsck command should be easier and do the same.
Lion has a hidden feature to check the health of all partitions, all, from the Recovery mode partition.

"The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moves.

I have seen so many threads about this, but in addition to the solution i was hoping to find out what exactly this problem means. Dont we use disk utility first to partition the drive and then run bootcamp? or do they both do the same thing.
thanks

when that message appears it either means that the windows partition is still on the mac HD or there are some corrupted files on the HD.. there are several ways to solve it, most involve the use of disk utility. in recovery mode, we can validate the HD and then followed by repair. this will patch up any corrupted files on the HD. generally removing the windows partition can be done via bootcamp assistant, in which you press the restore button to completely remove the partition. by doing so, it will also resolve the above message. alternately, you can use disk utility to remove the partiton. this can be done by entering disk utility and clicking on your main HD. under partition options tab, you should see your main HD partitioned into windows and mac HD. you can press the button located at the bottom to remove the windows partition followed by restoring the mac space by dragging the bracket downwards. this is a manual process to remove the windows partition and restoring the mac HD. likewise, this will resolve the issue at hand... quite alot of words but i hope it answers your question.. xD

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

everytime i try to partition my hard drive i get this error message.
im not exactly sure if it means to burn it to a disk or back it up on a separate hardrive.
any help with this matter would be GREATLY appreciated
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

Hi Travis,
have a look at this just started thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2449678&tstart=0
In essence the BootCamp Assistant cannot find a free contingeous diskspace of the size you want to use for BootCamp Assistant and thus fails.
The easiest approach is to clone your OSX to an external harddisk, reformat your internal harddisk and the restore your OSX from the external HD to the internal one.
This 'defrags' the OSX volume so that the BC Assistant can find the diskspace he needs.
Regards
Stefan

Boot Camp Assistant says "The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved." What can I do?

I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate on my MacBook Pro that runs OS X Lion. I have read through a lot of the other threads and I think I understand that the I need a clean, defragged part of the hard drive to do this on. Boot Camp Assistant tells me to "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." That's all good and everything, but I don't have any idea how to do that. I don't want to risk losing any of my data and I don't want to download any "freeware" to try and help me accomplish this task. I would like a step by step guide on how to make this work. Also, is there anyway that I could have prevented this error? I don't understand why Boot Camp Assistant is even on my MacBook Pro if everyone that uses it will get the same error. I have done nothing but taken it out of the box and started using the Apple software that came installed on it. If there is not a simple way to do this in the Disc Utility, then I don't want to do it at all. I really don't like the idea of putting all my data on an external hard drive just to have this done.

Just installing OS updates and programs will
Write the installer
Uncompress the file at say 7x and write the actual installer in a free area that often may be anywhere but at the far end of the partition is common.
Write new version or copy of the files being changed/updated (myfile.new and myfile.old)
Delete the entry in the directory for the temp files and versions.
A program that can show your hard drive and where files are and where free space is, and show fragments.
OS X tries to eliminate small files with fragments when they are rewritten and when it can find contiguous free space to write the new file.
That can actually work against you, as it might fragment the free space also.
When a drive gets down to 20% free space there is a performance hit, you are using slower areas of the drive (inner tracks are usually 50% slower) and having more trouble finding filles and where to write files.
Clone Mac OS is one of the easiest and safest methods.
Click on source (Mac Harddrive), click on or drop the backup partition / drive into target icon.
Click "Run"
you end up with bootable (test it to be certain) exact copy.
Unplujg and keep it on a shelf
Update it before you inistall a new version etc of OS X or make changes.
Have two: one safe on the shelf from Week #1 and new Week #2
Disk Utility can do that.
With huge hard drives free space should not be an issue. The lack of a feature to defrag as part of Boot Camp or Disk Utility is why there are iDefrag and others, but they are slow and best run from.... a 2nd hard drive running OS X rather than from CD. and never great idea to do w/o backups or on live system.

I am trying to download windows 7 on my macbook pro but it keeps saying the disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.

Its all in the title. I am trying to use bootcamp to download windows 7 on my macbook pro mountain lion, but I keep getting this error. I tried going to Disk Utility, and my active volume already is formatted under Mac OS Extended (Journaled), so I don't know how to fix it. I already backed up the volume on an external harddrive. Also, everything under the volume I wanted to edit is greyed out, and when I try to restore the backup that I created via time machine, it pops up with another error that says "Could not unmount volume "/" (Resource Busy).
Please be gentle, I'm used to using windows and don't know like anything about computers. If someone could give me a detailed explanation for these errors and a solution of how I could correctly download windows on my mac I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

Try a restart.
If that doesn't fix the problem, shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application unistaller. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.
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The disk cannot be partitioned because some files could not be moved

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