MacOS offers an easy way to install Windows on your Mac with the Bootcamp Assistant utility. Usually, this is a pain-free process which the Bootcamp Assistant guides you through. As a multi-platform developer, there are times when I need to work on both operating systems, so when I got my new 2017 Macbook Pro the first thing I needed to do was get Windows 10 Pro installed alongside macOS Mojave.
Like I said usually this is just a matter of following a wizard and in about half an hour you would have Windows installed on a separate partition, however, it was not the case this time around. When I ran the Bootcamp Assistant utility it gave me this error - "Disk could not be partitioned". No other information about the error was returned, which made it more frustrating.
The first thing I did was open Disk Utility and ran "Repair Disk". This took a few minutes, but it found some issues that needed to run in recovery mode to fix, so I rebooted my MacBook holding cmd + r to start in recovery mode. Once it booted up I ran Repair Disk again. This fixed the issue and it told me everything was all good. I rebooted, crossed my fingers and tried Bootcamp Assistant again... But it once again gave me the same "Disk could not be partitioned" error.
Before we go any further I am a developer, not an IT specialist, so follow this guide at your own risk and back up your computer or you may lose data. This post is just documenting how I fixed my issue and it may not work for you.
I decided to try the go-to method of fixing file system issues on a Mac, which is a file system consistency check. To run this you have to boot your Mac in single user mode. reboot your Mac holding cmd + s. This will boot into a black screen with white text, once the text stops streaming you'll be able to enter commands. Type the following command:
fsck -fy
File system consistency check is a command-line tool that reviews and repairs the underlying structure of a hard drive, so some data loss could occur here so please back up your data. Once it finished it said everything was OK, so I typed reboot and hit enter, to restart my mac.
When it booted back up I ran Bootcamp Assitant again, this time without any errors and I was up and running with a fresh copy of Windows within half an hour.
Summary of Steps to fix "disk could not be partitioned" Bootcamp Error
- 1 - Run Disk Utility > Repair Disk
- 2 - Run Disk Utility > Repair Disk in Recovery Mode (hold "cmd + r" on startup)
- 3 - Boot into Single User Mode (hold "cmd + s" on startup)
- 4 - Type "fsck -fy" in Single User Mode
- 5 - Type "reboot" in Single User Mode
- 6 - Run Bootcamp Assitant
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