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
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.
Posted on May 26, 2016 8:59 AM






