Troubleshooting: kCantAllocateErr
Determining contiguous (unfragmented file system) free space...ERROR: can't allocate the required space [-40006], msg ="Cannot allocate minimum amount of contiguous free space (1GB)
This message arises with the recondition command. This is not a malfunction or bug.
Reconditioning requires enough unfragmented space to work efficiently; with too little unfragmented space the process might not work efficiently. In most cases, it indicates that the drive has been heavily used and/or is low on free space.
If the drive is over 90% full, performance might be suffering in other ways also.
Suggested workarounds
Make space on the drive
Usually there is ample junk on a drive to free up at least a few GB, which can sometimes be enough to create contiguous free space:
- Reboot the system; this cleans up temporary files;
- Quit applications that might be using disk space for temporary reasons eg Photoshop.
- Empty the browser caches;
- Put any unnecessary files into the trash, the empty the trash.
Clone and restore the drive
This approach has the added benefit of defragmenting the Mac OS X file system.
- Clone the drive to a backup (two backups strongly recommended!;
- Boot from one of the cloned drives;
- Erase the drive with Disk Utility, then recondition it;
- When done reconditioning, clone back to the original boot drive.
- Reboot on the original boot drive.
Note: making a clone of the boot drive on a regular basis is a good practice for backup purposes.
Copyright © 2008-2010 diglloyd Inc, all rights reserved