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Disk Utility and Partitioning

So I used the MiniTool Partition Wizard on Windows to free up some space for my Macintosh partition, however when I switched to MacOS, Disk Utility doesn't show the free space that should be available. My MacBook has a total of 251GB of storage but Disk Utility only shows 201GB. I even used the command "diskutil list" on terminal and it shows that I do have free space. How do I resize my Macintosh partition with the free space?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.1

Posted on Oct 11, 2022 6:38 AM

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Posted on Oct 11, 2022 8:46 AM

You cannot use a Windows tool to modify a Mac drive since a Windows tool is not aware of Mac specific issues and setups. You must only use Disk Utility or BootCamp Assistant to make modifications to the partition layout of a Mac drive. BootCamp Assistant must be used if you have Windows installed since even Disk Utility won't work correctly to modify or reclaim space used by Windows. I'm not sure it is even possible to adjust the size of the Windows partitions even using BootCamp Assistant except to reclaim the space for use by macOS. At this point you can try adding the space back into the Windows partition, but I'm not sure that will even work. You may need to erase the whole physical drive and start over by reinstalling macOS and Windows BootCamp and restoring from a backup.


I highly recommend you have a good backup before attempting any more partition modifications since you could lose access to the data on both the macOS and Windows partitions including not being able to boot from either one. Modifying partitions is always risky even when using BootCamp Assistant for installing or removing Windows.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 11, 2022 8:46 AM in response to Itsuto

You cannot use a Windows tool to modify a Mac drive since a Windows tool is not aware of Mac specific issues and setups. You must only use Disk Utility or BootCamp Assistant to make modifications to the partition layout of a Mac drive. BootCamp Assistant must be used if you have Windows installed since even Disk Utility won't work correctly to modify or reclaim space used by Windows. I'm not sure it is even possible to adjust the size of the Windows partitions even using BootCamp Assistant except to reclaim the space for use by macOS. At this point you can try adding the space back into the Windows partition, but I'm not sure that will even work. You may need to erase the whole physical drive and start over by reinstalling macOS and Windows BootCamp and restoring from a backup.


I highly recommend you have a good backup before attempting any more partition modifications since you could lose access to the data on both the macOS and Windows partitions including not being able to boot from either one. Modifying partitions is always risky even when using BootCamp Assistant for installing or removing Windows.

Disk Utility and Partitioning

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