Please help! New Mac Mini Fusion Drive Nightmare!
Hi all,
I just received a new Mac Mini today that has the 1TB Fusion Drive installed. After successfully migrating all of my files to it, I went to create another Mac partition on the Fusion Drive. Towards the end of the partioning process, an error of 'invalid request' occurred and I am now left with a large chunk of the drive that is classified as 'Free Space'. Oh well, no worries right? Just format the free space, right?
Nope.
Disk Utility is not letting me do ANYTHING with 340GB of 'Free Space' anymore. If I choose to format it to any format, click 'Apply', and then click 'Partition', Disk Utility flashes the words 'Preparing to partition disk...' and then just does NOTHING. Everything is greyed out as well in terms of the 'Options...' button. I have tried every possible option that Disk Utility offers with no luck at all.
So basically I am just completely stuck and can't access that 340GB of Free Space anymore. I tried to restart using Command-R and doing a repair disk that way but Disk Utility just says the partition map is fine and doesn't report any other errors during the repair or verify disk processes. I'm not opposed to just blowing the entire Mac away and restoring it back to factory condition, but can I even do that? Won't it just revert OS X back to its original state but leave the partitioning untouched?
Does anyone have any advice? I have never seen Disk Utility error out during a partition operation and have certainly never seen behavior like that before. I read somewhere that Macs with the Fusion Drive have a special version of Disk Utility and I'm wondering if this version just isn't stable?
I'm totally stuck and would appreciate any help anyone might be able to offer.
Thank you!
Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)