Disk won't unmount to erase and partition

Question

Level 1

0 points

Disk won't unmount to erase and partition

I currently have a single 300GB partition on my 500GB hard drive (I previously had a 200GB bootcamp partition in the extra space). I'm trying to reformate the whole hard drive with a fresh OSX install with a single 500GB parition.

My problem is I'm unable to repartition as Disk Utility tells me I'm unable to unmount the disk. I've tried doing this both in recovery mode (command-R at restart) and also from a bootable USB drive.

The unused space on the harddrive just shows up at grey unused area in disk utility.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)

Posted on Dec 27, 2013 2:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

May 26, 2015 8:51 AM in response to kevlavery

Someone covered this here. Spotlight is sucking on your disk, not allowing it to unmount. Go into the Activity monitor, look for fsk_ process, kill it, then go back and "erase" again. It'll work. You can search this on the forum. They also recommend killing it in terminal, but I was worried about that because I have not used that command line before. Killing it in AM worked fine.

Reply