Boot Camp: “The Startup Disk Does Not Have Enough Free Space to Be Partitioned” — Fix
To install a second operating system on a Mac, such as Windows 7, you need to create a second partition on the disk — that’s what Boot Camp Assistant is for. But you may get an error: “The startup disk does not have enough free space to be partitioned”.
How to fix it
- Check the free space. Windows 7 needs at least 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit), and with room for programs it’s better to set aside 30 GB or more. The Mac’s disk must have more free space than the size of the new partition.
- Free up space: empty the Trash, delete large files or move them to an external drive.
- Check the disk with the built-in Disk Utility: select the disk and click “Verify Disk”, and if there are errors, “Repair Disk”.
- If there’s already enough space but the error keeps coming back, the free space is scattered across the disk and files that can’t be moved are in the way. Defragmenting will most likely help here — for example, with iDefrag.
- On a MacBook, turn off Time Machine local snapshots — they can take up “free” space. In Terminal:
sudo tmutil disablelocal
After creating the partition you can turn them back on with
sudo tmutil enablelocal. - The most reliable method, if nothing else helps: make a full backup with Time Machine, erase the disk, restore the system from the backup and run Boot Camp again — after a restore, the files are written to the disk without gaps.
