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Canceled Boot Camp Parition, Now Disk Capacity Reduced

I hastily started to partition my disk to install Windows 7 with Boot Camp before I realized that I needed Win7 on DVD to install it this way, so I canceled the partition after a few minutes. I had planned on having a 20GB partition for Windows.

Afterwards, I clicked "Get Info" on my Macintosh HD in Finder and it showed 140GB used, 70GB available, and 230GB capacity (should be 90GB available... difference being that 20GB I was going to set aside for Win7). I went into Disk Utility and tried to verify the drive (no repair option) but it didn't help. Under the "partition" tab, it didn't even show the disk as partitioned. So then, I tried re-booting into the Mac OS X installation disk and ran Disk Uitility from that and was able to click repair. It said it worked, but now "Get Info" on Macintosh HD is showing 140GB used, 70GB available, and 210GB capacity. So all it did was reduce the capacity of the disk by 20GB. My question is--how do I completely undo the partition and restore the hard drive to 140GB used, 90GB available, and 230GB capacity? When I run Boot Camp, there is no option to "Restore drive" or anything... it's just the same partitioning options it gave me the first time I ran it. Any help much appreciated... thanks.

13" MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jul 19, 2009 11:25 PM

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5 replies

Jul 20, 2009 9:41 AM in response to drew879

The reason "repair" did not restore your system to a single partition is because multiple partitions are not "errors". As such, there wasn't anything to repair. You indicated that Disk Utility did not see multiple partitions. You generally need to select the entire drive to see the partitions. If you have clicked on one of the partitions, it will only show that partition. As Kappy suggested, you should use the BootCamp utility to manage your partitions. It is common to have other problems if you try to manually remove the partitions using Disk Utility. The BC utility should allow you to restore your system even if you did not install Windows after creating the partition for it.

Jul 23, 2009 2:02 PM in response to JoeyR

Boot Camp was probably about 10% done with partitioning my drive when I closed it (by hold-clicking it on the dock and selecting "quit"). When I open the Boot Camp Assistant now, it takes me to the same "Create a Partition for Windows" wizard as it did when I first opened it. This makes me think maybe it never actually created the partition, but has tricked the OS into believing it did?

When I open Disk Utility, it shows "232.9 GB FUJITSU MHY2250BH Media" as the main drive, and at the bottom of the screen when it's selected, shows its capacity as 232.9 GB. Then underneath the hard drive, it shows a tabbed-in "Macintosh HD" with a capacity of 232.6 GB, 44.8 GB available, and 168.1 GB used. But this is where I'm confused... 44.8 GB available + 168.1 GB used equals 212.9 GB total. But the capacity is 232.6-232.9 GB depending on where I look. It seems that the 20 GB discrepancy has got to be from the failed partition.

Sorry for this horrible description--it's probably obvious that I'm new to Macs. Any suggestions would be much appreciated... just want that 20 GB to be available again.

Jul 23, 2009 2:10 PM in response to drew879

Try this:

Open Boot Camp Assistant and create a new Boot Camp partition. Use the default of 32 GBs. After Boot Camp reports success in creating the new partition use it to remove the same partition. Then see if your drive has been returned to normal. If this does not work, then you will need to take a different approach by using Disk Utility to remove the partition that was created originally but cancelled.

Canceled Boot Camp Parition, Now Disk Capacity Reduced

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