Bootcamp Help - Missing Partition

Last login: Fri Sep 16 22:40:29 on console

bens-mbp:~ Ben$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 369.3 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

bens-mbp:~ Ben$ diskutil cs list

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

bens-mbp:~ Ben$ sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

Password:

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=500277790720; sectorsize=512; blocks=977105060

gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 977105059

start size index contents

0 1 PMBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

409640 721379272 2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

721788912 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

723058448 254046579

977105027 32 Sec GPT table

977105059 1 Sec GPT header

Update: I might be an idiot. I went to disk utility in recovery mode and deleted the disk. Somehow I thought it was a good idea and went to the partion menu, and long story short, I accidentally created a new partition. I'm unable to delete it. I try using the partition menu and selecting the minus button, and when I run it, it says "Couldn't unmount disk. Operation failed." I went ahead and reran the terminal commands in the recovery mode; this is the output. "Untitled" is the new partition. I really appreciate your help. At this point I just want to wipe the computer and backup to my time machine backup (I was smart enough to make one before starting all of this.) I could techically do so to the 270 GB untitled partition, but I would be almost out of space. It seems to me that Recovery HD is holding the space I lost previously.

-bash-3.2# diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 100.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 130.6 GB disk0s3

4: Apple_HFS Untitled 269.3 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme +2.1 GB disk1

1: Apple_HFS OS X Base System 2.0 GB disk1s1

/dev/disk3 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +5.2 MB disk3

/dev/disk4 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk4

/dev/disk5 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk5

/dev/disk6 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk6

/dev/disk7 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk7

/dev/disk8 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk8

/dev/disk9 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +6.3 MB disk9

/dev/disk10 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +2.1 MB disk10

/dev/disk11 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +1.0 MB disk11

/dev/disk12 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk12

/dev/disk13 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk13

/dev/disk14 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +1.0 MB disk14

/dev/disk15 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +6.3 MB disk15

(diskutil cs list showed the same result as before)

Threw this error:

-bash-3.2# diskutil mergePartitions jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk0s4

Merging partitions into a new partition

Start partition: disk0s2 Macintosh HD

Finish partition: disk0s4 Untitled

Merging partitions encountered error "Couldn't unmount disk (-69888)".

The erase will not occur.

All partitions in the following range must be unmountable: After, but not

including, the first partition; up to, and including, the last partition.

Update: I tend to be a little impatient so I stayed up last night looking for a solution to the problem. I thought I was running into all of the errors because I was still booted from part of the internal hard drive. So, in case you're no longer interested, I've fixed the problem. I really appreciate your help getting there.

What I did:

1) Created a bootable OS X usb from this guide

2) Booted from usb, then opened disk utility to make sure nothing had changed

3) Opened terminal in recovery mode

4) ran command: diskutil mergePartitions jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk0s4

(that is where your help was really valuable; this time it didn't throw an error and worked successfully)

5) Once the full partition was back, I reinstalled OS X from the usb, and then downloaded my files from my TM backup.

I woke up today to a working computer with its full partition space again. LonerT, I greatly appreciate all of your help, even though I was sometimes too impatient and caused new problems. But I highly recommend this solution to anyone experiencing similar problems.

One last question: Any idea what caused this problem to begin with? I saw lots of posts with similar albeit different problems using bootcamp. Did I make a rookie mistake? Should I just not try again or is there a better method?