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Level 1

94 points

Is there any way to free up space that was once Bootcamp partition?

Hello.

I had Windows installed in a Bootcamp partition on my Mac hard drive, but it was taking up far too much space and I wanted rid of it. However, I think I might have goofed...

I opened Disk Utility and clicked on the Partition button at the top so that the pie-chart diagram was showing on the left-hand side. I made sure that the Bootcamp partition was highlighted and then I clicked the minus sign underneath to remove the Bootcamp partition, and then clicked the Apply button.

I'd assumed that this would instantly free up the 92GB or so that it had been taking up, so that I'd have a lot more free space on my Macintosh HD, but when I looked at how much storage was used and free the figures were identical to what they had been before.

I'm now thinking that I should really have erased the Bootcamp partition before I deleted it.

I have a feeling that a load of space on that Macintosh HD is now full of stuff that is completely unusable, because it's no longer in it's separate Bootcamp partition, but I cannot work out how to remove it to free up the space as intended.

Is there any way out of this predicament please?

I'm running macOS 10.13.1 on a late-2010 MacBook Pro with a 500GB SATA hard drive fitted.

MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13)

Posted on Nov 17, 2017 7:15 AM

Best reply

VikingOSX

Community+ 2024

Level 10

111,383 points

Posted on Nov 17, 2017 10:11 AM

A long line of expletives have preceded you over the years. 😉

The simplest fix is to live with it (if you can), and redo the drive when you are ready.

Unless you already have a bootable USB stick with High Sierra, you will need to download (just click Download button) the installer, and then let it set in your /Applications folder. Then, follow this Apple guide to making a bootable USB stick for High Sierra from the Terminal. It says 12GB, but an 8GB stick will suffice.

Ideally, you would have run Time Machine one last time before you boot from the USB stick. Some would even encourage you to run SuperDuper, or Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate to another external drive — for added backup protection.

Shut your Mac down. Connect to a power supply, and Ethernet cable (though wireless will work). With the bootable USB stick inserted, press and hold the option key as you boot again. You will see an array of your boot drive icon, its recovery partition, and the High Sierra USB stick.

Eventually, you will get to the installer interface. You want Disk Utility from the Utilities menu, identify your boot drive by its top device name (500MB blah blah), and click Partition. Enter the name: (e.g. Macintosh HD), the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and the Size: 500 GB. Then apply. When it is done, exit from Disk Utility, and proceed with the clean installation on the newly partitioned boot drive. Use Time Machine when asked to restore from the last backup.