Q: Recover Free Space after Deleting Bootcamp Partition
After installing a new SSD, and recovering the back up from Time Machine, I've deleted my Boot Camp partition on my MBP using Boot Camp Assistant. The Boot Camp partition, though MS-FAT was no longer bootable after recovery, and I thought I'd start again and use Winclone to recover my Windows backup. The Boot Camp delete result looks fine:
XXXs-MacBook-Pro:~ name$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *960.2 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 959.3 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
But when I look at the storage, I find that I've gone from 113GB on my MacIntosh HD partition (or so my prior Time Machine backup says) to well over 300GB. The 118.5 GB Boot Camp partition has gone, but the "Other" segment seems to have grown to 284GB.
I see lots of solutions online for recovering free space after Boot Camp removal, but they don't seem to apply to me. Many are for failed Boot Camp removals using Disk utility. A number involve CS, but I have no Core Storage. I've tried booting into recovery and repairing. I've tried multiple reboots to clear the space.
Any ideas, please?
MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), Late 2011 with Boot Camp Win10
Posted on Aug 3, 2016 8:15 AM
The categorization of files is done using Spotlight (Mac Basics: Spotlight helps you find what you're looking for - Apple Support) and can be rebuilt (Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support) . In most cases, the longer Spotlight has been running, the more precise the categorization and classification.
In your case, if you look at the 'Movies' or 'Photos' category, you can see a noticeable difference between the external disk and the new internal disk. You currently do not have Bootcamp.
If the categories all add up to the full disk size, then all your disk space is accounted for. You have the ability to block certain parts of your Mac's disk from being indexed, which can lead to an incorrect view.
There are specific scenarios when during the Bootcamp process, users can have disk space in the Free Space category, which is obvious by looking at lower level disk layout. You do not have that specific case.
Posted on Aug 7, 2016 1:14 PM

