The Windows 7 Install Debacle

I guess that title might be a little bit extreme, but it hasn’t gone as smoothly as I’d hoped.

I need to have Windows installed on my iMac for classes I’m taking that use programs that are only Windows-friendly, so this week I decided to bite the bullet and give it a shot.

The first thing I did was to clean up all the duplicate files and unnecessary programs cluttering my hard drive.

This was not fun.

I started with my photo library, which took only about 3-4 hours.  What a nightmare.  iPhoto dupes all of your files if you have it set to do so in the preferences, which of course we had done.  I deleted about 4,000 photos and we still have almost 5,000.  Yikes.

After that, the mp3 files and programs were a breeze.

I use this great program to show what items are taking up the most space on the drive, called Disk Inventory X.  It uses what the devs call “treemaps” to show the files as squares or rectangles in one large picture.  It makes it easy to see where you’re wasting space.  It runs incredibly slow, however, so be prepared.  Here’s a screenshot:

The yellow is my photo library.  Out of control, I know.  That lavender next to it is World of Warcraft.  And I don’t even play it anymore.

So, I fired up Boot Camp and attempted to partition a new drive for Windows.  Every time, however, it tells me I need to re-format with a journaled drive.  So, now, I’ve tried every alternative to that possible, using the maintenance and repair program Onyx, running Disk Utility, but no luck.  So, looks like a complete format.

God knows how long it’s going to take me to backup all my files online, since I don’t have an external hard drive.  Once that’s done, however, I can get this thing wiped and hit the ground running.

I’ll keep you informed on how it goes.

Because I’m sure you’re all dying to know.

~ by skirkster on January 25, 2009.