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Missing HDD Space

Hi!

I own a late-2012 Mac-Mini Model. My HDD supports 500GB, and did so when I first got it. Around last year, I attempted to use Bootcamp to have a Windows partition of 250GB and my Macintosh HD partition the other 250GB. The problem was that it didn't work and Bootcamp pretty much wrecked my whole computer. So, I reinstalled my whole system. Unfortunately, after I went into recovery mode and reinstalled OSX, I was left with only 250GB on my mac. The windows parition did not exist, and it was empty space that I couldn't add to my Macintosh HD. I was fine with 250GB though, however, just yesterday I successfully got Windows 10 on my bootcamp! But I only can give it 80GB as I need the other 170GB for my Macintosh HD! The windows partition needs more though! What do I do? I want the full 500GB back. I'll put a screenshot. It seems stupid how 250GB is just sitting there and is not available after reinstalling OS X or now. So, to recap, I have lost 250GB of my HDD and I don't know where it is or how to get it back. Last time I reinstalled OS X, It did nothing. I really don't want to reinstall OS X or Windows since it took me hours to all nicely set up. I also own bought applications that would be a hassle to reinstall.

Thanks! -Christopher

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Feb 16, 2016 6:25 AM

52 replies

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 19, 2016 9:39 PM in response to ChrisOnForums

http://gparted.org/liveusb.php

Feb 19, 2016 9:53 PM in response to Loner T

The link to the download does not work. The link below it does, but it says for some architectures and it shows a list of different downloadable files. What should I do?

I think the website is not up.

Edit: It's working now. I'm gonna attempt this lol. I'll tell you shortly how it goes.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 19, 2016 9:54 PM in response to ChrisOnForums

If you have already downloaded the ISO, use http://gparted.org/liveusb.php#linux-method-d . OS X has the dd command available in OS X Terminal.

Please ensure the value of N in diskN points to the USB flash drive (use diskutil list in Terminal window). Format the USB as MBR/FAT in Disk Utility. I modified the command for OSX.

sudo dd if=/path-to-gparted-live.x.y.z-w.iso of=/dev/diskN bs=4M; sync

Feb 19, 2016 10:18 PM in response to Loner T

I tried the command with replacing the "N" as "1s1" which is my USB's device name. It gave me this error code:

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=/path-to-gparted-live.x.y.z-w.iso of=/dev/disk1s1 bs=4M; sync

dd: bs: illegal numeric value

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$

Oh wait...I didn't really replace the name of the .iso with the actual name of the file I have...if that's related to the error.

Yeah no, I still get the error.

So yeah, I got this:

Last login: Sat Feb 20 00:59:53 on ttys000

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=/path-to-gparted-live.x.y.z-w.iso of=/dev/disk1s1 bs=4M; sync

Password:

dd: bs: illegal numeric value

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=/path-to-gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1s1 bs=4M; sync

dd: bs: illegal numeric value

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 20, 2016 6:45 AM in response to ChrisOnForums

1. Use /dev/disk1

2. The 'if' qualifier needs the full path of the ISO local to your machine. What you are using is a place-holder as an example.

Feb 20, 2016 10:33 AM in response to Loner T

Ok, so I substituted the placeholder of the file's name & path with the correct path/file name.

I also changed the "disk1s1" to the proper "disk1".

Still the same error.

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4M; sync

dd: bs: illegal numeric value

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$

What should I do? Thanks.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 20, 2016 10:35 AM in response to ChrisOnForums

Remove the ';' after the 4M and the sync command and retry.

Feb 20, 2016 11:25 AM in response to Loner T

Still getting the same error.

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4M

dd: bs: illegal numeric value

Feb 20, 2016 12:00 PM in response to Loner T

I did the same command except with the "M" from "4M" as lower a lower case "m", so "4m". Now it says no file found, must be something with the path.

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4m

dd: /downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso: No such file or directory

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$

Now what lol?

Edit: I tried again this time but removing the "/" before downloads and now it says that the resource is busy.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 20, 2016 1:07 PM in response to ChrisOnForums

Use a "~" in front of the /Downloads like this...

sudo dd if=~/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4m

Feb 20, 2016 4:02 PM in response to Loner T

Now it says this:

Last login: Sat Feb 20 13:48:33 on console

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$ sudo dd if=~/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4m

Password:

dd: /dev/disk1: Resource busy

Christophers-Mac-Mini:~ Christopher$

No, I'm not using anything on the USB. It's empty and is doing nothing.

Ugh, error after error lol.

Edit: I went to Disk Utility and my Generic Flash Drive had a thing, I guess considered a partition, below it...so I unmounted it. Now I put in the command but nothing happens. There is no information sent back to tell me something in the Terminal.

Feb 20, 2016 4:09 PM in response to ChrisOnForums

With all these errors, I feel like this isn't going anywhere. My USB became unreadable by mac so I had to erase it and reformat it. I forgot the format it was in but I was pretty sure it was FAT format, so I put it into that. I'm not too sure what to do from here.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 20, 2016 4:10 PM in response to ChrisOnForums

Are you returned to the command prompt? Also, your example are using /dev/disk1, which is very dangerous. Please ensure you are using the device name corresponding to the USB.

Feb 20, 2016 4:22 PM in response to Loner T

Ok. Let me send you two screenshots. My USB's device name is disk1, however, below it is "Chris' USB" which is disk1s1. I tried both in the command; sudo dd if=~/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4m andsudo dd if=~/downloads/gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1s1 bs=4m

Both either way end up saying "resource is busy" and I don't know what to do.

So, what device name should I be using and why is it saying "resource is busy"?

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 20, 2016 5:08 PM in response to ChrisOnForums

Here is my test with a 1GB USB flash drive. The commands I entered are highlighted.

-rMBP:Downloads $ diskutil erasedisk fat32 GPARTED MBR disk1

Started erase on disk1

$<3>Unmounting disk

$<3>Creating the partition map

$<3>Waiting for the disks to reappear

$<3>Formatting disk1s1 as MS-DOS (FAT32) with name GPARTED

$<3>512 bytes per physical sector

/dev/rdisk1s1: 2043968 sectors in 255496 FAT32 clusters (4096 bytes/cluster)

bps=512 spc=8 res=32 nft=2 mid=0xf8 spt=32 hds=128 hid=2 drv=0x80 bsec=2047998 bspf=1997 rdcl=2 infs=1 bkbs=6

$<3>Mounting disk

$<3>Finished erase on disk1

-rMBP:Downloads $ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 741.7 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data rMBPBCMP 258.0 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *1.0 GB disk1

1: DOS_FAT_32 GPARTED 1.0 GB disk1s1

/dev/disk3

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_partition_scheme *17.4 MB disk3

1: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk3s1

2: Apple_HFS Flash Player 17.4 MB disk3s2

-rMBP:Downloads $ sudo dd if=gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4m

Password:

dd: /dev/disk1: Resource busy

-rMBP:Downloads $ diskutil unmountdisk disk1

Unmount of all volumes on disk1 was successful

-rMBP:Downloads $ sudo dd if=gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=4m

66+1 records in

66+1 records out

277872640 bytes transferred in 115.425746 secs (2407371 bytes/sec)

-rMBP:Downloads $ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 741.7 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data rMBPBCMP 258.0 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: FDisk_partition_scheme *1.0 GB disk1

1: 0xEF 3.2 MB disk1s2

/dev/disk3

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_partition_scheme *17.4 MB disk3

1: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk3s1

2: Apple_HFS Flash Player 17.4 MB disk3s2

-rMBP:Downloads $ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1

Disk: /dev/disk1 geometry: 1015/32/63 [2048000 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

2: EF 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 526968 - 6264] <Unknown ID>

3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused

Missing HDD Space