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Although my HD is only at 40% of its total capacity I cannot create a partition larger than 3.96 GB. This tells me that my OS is scattered all over my drive. What can i do to fix besides backing to an external drive and reinstalling? Can anyone recommend a good defrag software, freeware if possible? What are the possible causes of this mishap.
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I believe that logical partitions have to be contiguous, so even if the file's under 20mb are fragmented, than you won't be able to create another partition (over 3.96GB) until you defragment the disk entirely, i'm not sure how you would do this on a mac, though windows has a built in defragmenter, but it can only defragment NTFS, and FAT32, and your OSX partition is GUID-HFS if you have a lot of photos, or small files (MP3's, Photos, Apps, Ect.) that are >20MB than the built in defragmenter won't defrag them, your best bet would be to look for a Mac OS X Disk Defragmenter.
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Im looking for one but they seem to be pretty expensive.
I would agree with you, however he says the drive is under 40% full, so I doubt that many files could cause 3.96gb to be the only largest continuous space available.
However the easiest defrag is just backup all your files to a drive (or another computer in target disk mode) and restore.
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Mac OS X has built in defrag for files larger than 20 MB, so that would not be your problem. Are you using boot camp or disk utility to create the partition? You may want to try the other, especially if you are using boot camp, not only does disk utility give you more control, it has a log.
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I have tried using both bootcamp and disk utilities, no luck with either one.
Apple just offered to help, i have to take the treck to the nearest Apple store.....75 miles away. :O(
> ... he says the drive is under 40% full, so I doubt that many files could cause 3.96gb to be the only largest continuous space available.
To create a new volume, the "Free Space" must be...
A ) continuous
AND
B ) located at the end zone of the previous volume
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Yeah, it was fragmentation. Confirmed at the Genius Bar, i Kicked and moaned till I got free Parallels 5 software for my long ride to the Apple store.
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