frankfromwatsonville

Q: My Mac Mini with 500GB on HD but only shows 276 available.

I think is is split using Bootcamp when I purchased to load PC programs like Excel and Word.. I think there may be half the drive I am not using. But it only shows the 'Windows partition where you are supposed to pick section you want. Where is the rest of the drive? Thanks

iOS 9.3.2, Mac Mini

Posted on May 23, 2016 5:56 PM

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Q: My Mac Mini with 500GB on HD but only shows 276 available.

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  • by Rysz,

    Rysz Rysz May 23, 2016 11:31 PM in response to frankfromwatsonville
    Level 7 (20,242 points)
    iTunes
    May 23, 2016 11:31 PM in response to frankfromwatsonville

    You're not being very clear, but...

     

    Launch Disk Utility from the Applications > Utilities folder. It will show you how your disk is partitioned.

    If you want to see how your disk space is used, select About This Mac in the Apple menu, then click on the Storage tab.

  • by frankfromwatsonville,

    frankfromwatsonville frankfromwatsonville May 23, 2016 11:57 PM in response to Rysz
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    May 23, 2016 11:57 PM in response to Rysz

    This is the info I have:

    APPLE HDD

    Location  internal

    connection SATA

    partition drive Guild Partition Map

    S.M.A.R.T verified

    Capacity 500 GB

    Child count 3

    Type disk

    Device disk 0

     

    Then it shows my one drive as below:

     

    Capacity 276Gb

    used 255Gb

    Device Disk 1

     

    The Partition Device shows:

    one large blue circle all filled in with no partitions. with 277Gb in the circle.

    Format OSx Extended (journaled) what ever that means.

     

    Thanks for any help.

     

    Frank

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass May 24, 2016 12:34 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville
    Level 10 (187,938 points)
    Desktops
    May 24, 2016 12:34 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville

    Take

    How to take a screenshot on your Mac - Apple Support

    and post a screenshot of what you are seeing in Disk Utility.

    To post click on the camera icon in the menu bar of the reply box and select the screenshot file

  • by frankfromwatsonville,

    frankfromwatsonville frankfromwatsonville May 24, 2016 12:20 PM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    May 24, 2016 12:20 PM in response to lllaass

    here are three screen shots"Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 1.10.50 AM.pngScreen Shot 2016-05-24 at 1.10.42 AM.pngScreen Shot 2016-05-24 at 1.10.36 AM.png

  • by frankfromwatsonville,

    frankfromwatsonville frankfromwatsonville May 24, 2016 8:58 PM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    May 24, 2016 8:58 PM in response to lllaass

    Finally a SnapShot that you can read. The top one shows the partition as only ONE with 277GB of space.

    The second one shows the disk as a line with the 277GB but below you see there is 500.11 GB of space, or at least there should be.

    The third is the partition I am using and how it is used.

    Somewhere there must be another partition that is not being shown? or is my computer just already filled?

     

    Thanks for any help. and nice to know how to take screen shots - so thanks for that..

    Frank

     

    Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 8.51.11 PM.pngScreen Shot 2016-05-24 at 8.50.36 PM.pngScreen Shot 2016-05-24 at 8.50.55 PM.png

  • by lllaass,

    lllaass lllaass May 25, 2016 12:39 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville
    Level 10 (187,938 points)
    Desktops
    May 25, 2016 12:39 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville

    Run Boot Camp Assistant and see if you can see the hidden bootcamp partition.

  • by frankfromwatsonville,

    frankfromwatsonville frankfromwatsonville May 25, 2016 12:50 AM in response to lllaass
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    May 25, 2016 12:50 AM in response to lllaass

    That directs me to the Start Up program in Systems Preferences and that shows only one disk. I hesitate to follow through with the instructions to Install Windows. Thanks for your time.  Frank

    Screen Shot 2016-05-25 at 12.46.50 AM.png

  • by keg55,Apple recommended

    keg55 keg55 May 26, 2016 8:59 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville
    Level 6 (8,368 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 26, 2016 8:59 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville

    I have no answer as to where the rest of your drive went.

     

    But to fix this, I would create a current back up then restart using an external drive or method (Internet Recovery - Command+Option+R). Then select the drive (not the partition underneath) and repartition to 1 partition formatted as OS X Extended (Journaled) with the GUID partition scheme. Check the total space to see if you recovered it all. Then restore using your back up.

     

    If you are able to create a clone, that would be better than boot from the clone and do the above Disk Utility steps to repartition/format. Then clone from the external back to the internal.

     

    Both of the paragraphs above will probably NOT put a Recovery HD on the drive. You could simply reinstall OS X El Capitan over itself to recreate the Recovery HD. This will not touch your apps, user accounts or data.

  • by frankfromwatsonville,

    frankfromwatsonville frankfromwatsonville May 26, 2016 9:12 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    May 26, 2016 9:12 AM in response to keg55

    Thanks - sounds like a project when I have a lot of time as this is much more than i usually get into. I am wondering ; Is the bar that shows what is taking up space on the HD include the programs (word, excel etc. etc. )? Perhaps under 'other'? Or is the programs taking up the rest of the drive I think is missing?

     

    Thanks

     

    Frank

  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 May 26, 2016 9:19 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville
    Level 6 (8,368 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 26, 2016 9:19 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville

    I have no idea why the rest of the space is hiding. It almost seems like a Bootcamp partition may not have been removed properly using Bootcamp Assistant or something went haywire when using BCA.

     

    I only know whenever I had an issue like this, doing what I explained in my prior post always got my space back to where it should be. I realize it's painstaking and time consuming, but if you're able to clone your internal (Me & Friends) partition to preserve/back up your system, that would be the preferred way since you can boot from the clone and work externally then clone back. This way you shouldn't have to reinstall anything.

  • by frankfromwatsonville,Helpful

    frankfromwatsonville frankfromwatsonville May 26, 2016 9:20 AM in response to keg55
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    May 26, 2016 9:20 AM in response to keg55

    Thank you and all. I will give that a try.

  • by keg55,

    keg55 keg55 May 26, 2016 9:28 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville
    Level 6 (8,368 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 26, 2016 9:28 AM in response to frankfromwatsonville

    There is one other thing you can provide to maybe help us.

     

    Open Terminal and type diskutil list and post your output here (see example below). This should show us all the partitions. Maybe we'll see something that isn't in the DU GUI. You'll see my example shows a drive of 251GB and underneath everything that makes up that 251GB.

     

    $ diskutil list

    /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0

       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1

       2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            250.1 GB   disk0s2

       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3