My Catalina Startup Disk space has disappeared after trying to merge partitions

Hi,

During a merge of a partition in the selected Hard Drive (which has a capacity of 2TB) I somehow managed to "disappear" 1TB of space.

There is only 1 container within that has 2 partitions.

The only container recognises only 1TB (999.4GB to be exact) - see below

In the container I have 2 partitions (one was created automatically when I upgraded to macOS Catalina:

and Catalina-Data which is the admin


So my question is, how do I make the Container disk2 recognise the full 2TB space that should be available? Preferably the solution wouldn't consider reinstalling the whole macOS Catalina again :)


Thank you in advance.


Kind Regards,


Mac Pro, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 9, 2020 7:47 AM

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20 replies

Nov 11, 2020 2:02 AM in response to TheoDorius

What shows up when you select the disk, then click the Partition button?

If the old partition is free space after the Catalina partition, you should be able to remove that partition and merge it with the Catalina partition.

If the old partitions before the Catalina partition, you will have to erase the disk and restore from your backup or reinstall and Migrate.

Partition a physical disk in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

Nov 11, 2020 2:54 AM in response to TheoDorius

Try running First Aid on the physical disk (not the container or volume).

Do you remember if the Catalina partition was made before or after the one you deleted? If it was after, you can’t recover the space without erasing. Or, you could clone the Catalina partition to the missing one (if it is found), then remove the original Catalina partition and merge the space with the cloned partition.

Nov 11, 2020 12:05 AM in response to Lanny

Hi, thanks for replying, but it has nothing to do with removing Windows. I do not want to remove Windows, and I have not removed Windows Bootcamp from my computer.

As you can see above, (screenshots) my bootcamp still exists, and I still need it.

I was trying to merge my old partition of mac OS High Siera with the new OS Catalina. I had separated two partitions on the same disk (as explained above) and when I tried to merge the High Siera partition after a successful upgrade to Catalina, it "disappeared". Am I wrong? Is there any way to fix this?

Nov 11, 2020 2:16 AM in response to Barney-15E

Last login: Wed Nov 11 10:42:10 on console

theo@Theo-Mac-Pro ~ % diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *1.0 TB   disk0

  1:            EFI EFI           209.7 MB  disk0s1

  2:         Apple_HFS HD           9.0 GB   disk0s2

  3:    Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP        990.9 GB  disk0s3


/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *2.0 TB   disk1

  1:            EFI EFI           209.7 MB  disk1s1

  2:         Apple_APFS Container disk2     999.4 GB  disk1s2


/dev/disk2 (synthesized):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   APFS Container Scheme -           +999.4 GB  disk2

                 Physical Store disk1s2

  1:        APFS Volume Catalina - Data     467.2 GB  disk2s1

  2:        APFS Volume Preboot         45.9 MB  disk2s2

  3:        APFS Volume Recovery        731.7 MB  disk2s3

  4:        APFS Volume VM           1.1 MB   disk2s4

  5:        APFS Volume Catalina        11.2 GB  disk2s5


/dev/disk3 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *4.0 TB   disk3

  1:            EFI EFI           209.7 MB  disk3s1

  2:         Apple_HFS Theo          4.0 TB   disk3s2


/dev/disk4 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *2.0 TB   disk4

  1:            EFI EFI           209.7 MB  disk4s1

  2:         Apple_HFS Back Up         2.0 TB   disk4s2


Nov 11, 2020 2:40 AM in response to TheoDorius

No, I followed part of it, I didnt want to merge the partition of Bootcamp, I didnt want to remove Bootcamp. But only merge APFS partition,

Well, then, what did you do? There are several responses to that question in your link. The highest rated answer was to use BOOTCAMP Assistant.

There was another that used diskutil.


The link I posted is what you should have done, but none of that gives any hints as to why you do not see any free space or something indicating the rest of the drive is somewhere. I don't know if even erasing it will provide the solution, but that's all I can think of at this point.

Nov 11, 2020 2:49 AM in response to Barney-15E

Indeed,

I used the diskutil, and terminal commands that were suggested on the site....

I don't want to erase the disk unless Im sure that it will actually solve the problem. Its also the startup disk of my computer.

Then we leave this open, if there is a solution to be found in the future.

As I read on that site, some others had a similar or same result, but no replies to their issues, that is why I opened this discussion. By the way Bootcamp Assistant is not supported on my computer it says.

Thank you very much for your efforts :)!

Nov 11, 2020 3:04 AM in response to Barney-15E

The Catalina partition was made BEFORE the one I deleted. Because I wanted to see if Catalina would actually be installed on my computer. So I had made 2 partitions, the first was High Siera (which was my startup disk) and then the new partition Catalina. When Catalina was a success installation, I migrated everything, checked is everything was ok and then I tried to merge ..... (etc)


I tried First Aid as you said, it says operation successful but nothing changes

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My Catalina Startup Disk space has disappeared after trying to merge partitions

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