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Can't remove Free Space after deleting Windows via Boot Camp

I deleted Windows partition via Boot Camp. Now there is a Free Space on my disk which can't be removed nor allocated to macOS Partition with an error -69716.



What I've tried:


First Aid and removing Free Space Partition both failed.


In Terminal my output after command diskutil list is:


/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *500.3 GB  disk0

  1:            EFI ⁨EFI⁩           209.7 MB  disk0s1

  2:         Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩     300.0 GB  disk0s2

          (free space)             200.1 GB  -


/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

  #:            TYPE NAME          SIZE    IDENTIFIER

  0:   APFS Container Scheme -           +300.0 GB  disk1

                 Physical Store disk0s2

  1:        APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩      15.4 GB  disk1s1

  2:       APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.4 GB  disk1s1s1

  3:        APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩         477.9 MB  disk1s2

  4:        APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩        1.1 GB   disk1s3

  5:        APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩           1.1 GB   disk1s4

  6:        APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD – data⁩   223.7 GB  disk1s5


So I've tried this: Can't Remove Free Space partition in Disk… - Apple Community

  • Boot into Local Recovery and temporarily disable SIP
  • Boot into Internet Recovery
  • Run diskutil list internal and find the APFS container. The disk should be named diskN with the number N
  • Run
    • diskutil unmountDisk diskN
    • fsck_apfs -s -o -y /dev/rdiskN


but unfortunately the last step was unsuccessful, I got another error message:

failed to enable crypto I/O mode for container /dev/rdiskN


After this I was not able to find any more solutions. If you please have any suggestions how I can fix this "Free Space", I will be glad to hear from you.


Thank you.


MBP 15" 2015

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Sep 24, 2024 6:42 AM

Reply
4 replies

Sep 27, 2024 1:51 PM in response to michal_vitalos

Here are some command line instructions for merging empty/free space and Windows partitions back into the main APFS Container used by macOS:



I wrote a post in two other threads where users were unable to reintegrate a Windows Bootcamp partition back into the macOS APFS Container. Every user's situation may be slightly different, but here are the links to my other two posts which can be used as a starting point and a template to possibly resolve the issue without needing to erase the entire drive & start over from scratch. The instructions & suggestions may need to be modified for some situations.

Merge (free space) item back into APFS Container -- HWTech - Apple Community


Merging multiple partitions back into APFS Container -- HWTech - Apple Community


Before making any attempts to modify the partitions, you should make sure to first have a good backup since modifying partitions is always a risky endeavor. Also, make sure to disconnect all other external drives as well.

Nov 7, 2024 8:05 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you for the reply.


Unfortunatelly not of the advices helped. In the end I solved it with a Time Machine back-up and complete reinstall of the system, where in Recovery mode I formatted the whole disk, so I got back to one 500 GB storage and from there reinstalled Mac and later made new partition for reinstalling Windows with Boot Camp.


It is an easy solution, it just take a while to do all of it.


In the first place, I wanted to do a more elegant solution.. but what can we do.


Thank you all for your inputs.

Can't remove Free Space after deleting Windows via Boot Camp

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