Missing hard drive space after using "diskutil erase volume free free" command

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Missing hard drive space after using "diskutil erase volume free free" command

I'll try to keep this short..

Half my hard drive (250GB) was partitioned for Bootcamp to run Windows 10.
One day something went wrong and I couldn't boot into Windows even after a bit of troubleshooting.
I tried to "erase" the Windows partition via Disk Utility, but instead made another disk partition, dividing up the available space even further.
Tried Bootcamp Assistant anyway, but it would only let me "Download the latest Windows support software from Apple" and required a USB thumbdrive to update.
Went into Terminal to attempt to combine the extra disks/partitions, but received some error messages I can no longer recall.
Did a Google search and found a recommendation for "diskutil erase volume free free".

The last step is where I'm at now. Erasing the disks made them disappear entirely, and now I'm basically missing 250GB of drive space. This is what "diskutil list" shows me:

Thanes-MacBook-Pro:~ thanemarshall$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage Mac OSx 250.1 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Mac OSx +249.8 GB disk1

Logical Volume on disk0s2

0A861AD7-006F-4373-ACCD-01C7C9FE2861

Unencrypted

Thanes-MacBook-Pro:~ thanemarshall$

I'm afraid to further proceed without much direction.

MacBook Pro 13", 10.13

Posted on Feb 12, 2019 10:20 AM

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Answer 1

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nathaniel253 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 12, 2019 1:21 PM in response to nathaniel253

I finally got this figured out after 3 afternoons of trying to resolve this issue... This solution piggybacks off someone who had a similar issue about 4 years ago (yeah, did some serious digging.)

Make sure to backup your computer before starting any of this. I didn't have much on my laptop so I just let it all get dumped.

I had to:

Disable FileVault
Revert my CS to JHFS+ using *diskutil cs revert*
Verify by using *diskutil cs list* - it should say "No CoreStorage logical volume groups found"
Merge disks by typing *diskutil mergePartitions jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk0s3*

Success! This will remove Recovery HD, so now I have to re-install OSX to get it back. Hopefully this helps anyone in the future unfortunate enough to have this same issue.

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Answer 2

nathaniel253 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 12, 2019 11:08 AM in response to nathaniel253

I just noticed in Disk Utility that it shows Mac OSx as having 249.76 GB of space. When I click "partition", it shows Mac OSx with 250GB and "free space" with 250GB. Mac OSx can be shrunk to about 14GB before it hits a smaller hashed out portion of the pie chart. If I click on the "free space" portion, it then shows the entire free space portion of the pie with the same hashed out pattern as the 14GB of space for Mac OSx, but I can click the "-" button to remove "free space" and have Mac OSx take up the entire 500GB. It then allows me to modify the name of this new partition and the amount of space it'll take up, and is locked into the format of "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". When I click Apply, it confirms that free space will be removed and Mac OSx will be resized. I click apply and then it notifies me that this is the boot drive that I'm about to partition, and that the display might freeze during the process. I click continue, and the software runs for maybe 2 seconds before I get an error message. "Operation failed...

[Details]

Running operation 1 of 2:

Running operation 2 of 2: Remove "--"...

An internal error has occurred and the disk for one of the specified operations could not be found. This may be a temporary issue, try again.

Operation failed..."

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Missing hard drive space after using "diskutil erase volume free free" command

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