Lost space after a failed windows10 installation
Hello and good day,
TL;DR is there a simpler fix to regain lost space from a failed windows installation rather than backing up and reinstalling macOS?
Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Hello and good day,
TL;DR is there a simpler fix to regain lost space from a failed windows installation rather than backing up and reinstalling macOS?
The external installation will do several things.
You can also achieve the same thing by downloading macOS High Sierra from the App store and How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support to boot from it. Be aware that the bootable installer does not have a local Recovery HD.
Apple has an article How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support. I prefer to run the commands by hand to ensure there are no issues.
Once in Terminal, we need to erase both internal physical disks. Booting in Recovery can renumber disks, so we need to be careful on the next steps. If you run diskutil list, you will see two internal drives. One is your 120GB SSD part, the second is your 2TB HDD part. I will call the SSD as disk0, and HDD as disk1. If they are different, adjust the steps accordingly.
Steps should be
F5D64E6C-7796-48E9-955E-46429D58A9BF
Give the current state, you do not know where the real Recovery partitions ends, even though you know where it starts. How will GParted let you determine the end? You will need to guess. I do not recommend it.
If you are feeling adventurous on your corporate Mac, try the steps I recommended. The GParted method can cause worse problems.
mikelis wrote:
Thanks for Your help, but sorry, this didn't fix nothing at all
here's what I did:
booted into recovery hd (cmd+R)
selected reinstall macOS
it takes hella time to install and then brings me back to my desktop with everything already restored
FD reports being 1.8tb
System partition still at 1,17tb
Did you choose an external disk to re-install macOS? The default is the internal disk, which will not correct anything.
mikelis wrote:
is there anything else I can do?
You need to install macOS on an external disk, which has nothing else on it.
Thanks for the quick reply
I have one 2tb fusion drive, it's a mid 2017 iMac running 10.13.3
I have already read that, I don't understand what do You mean with Gdisk steps, sorry
Right now the bootcamp assistant offers to make a partition of my already shurnken drive, disk utility sees 1,4tb, yet I can't get it to use even that, stuck at 1,17tb
No, I don't even have a spare 1tb drive right now 😟
here goes:
Ms-iMac:~ m$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme 121.3 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 314.6 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 120.9 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 1.8 TB disk1s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 231.2 GB disk1s3
/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS Macintosh FD +1.2 TB disk2
Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
24CCDA84-B157-4ED3-B9E4-C0E766BBA9AA
Unencrypted Fusion Drive
Ms-iMac:~ m$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group F5D64E6C-7796-48E9-955E-46429D58A9BF
=========================================================
Name: Macintosh HD
Status: Online
Size: 1889854971904 B (1.9 TB)
Free Space: 710889717760 B (710.9 GB)
|
+-< Physical Volume 41F006BA-3BE8-4829-9052-FCEFA08EA6EF
| ----------------------------------------------------
| Index: 0
| Disk: disk0s2
| Status: Online
| Size: 120883990528 B (120.9 GB)
|
+-< Physical Volume 336A6945-19CB-4000-8402-FF4071278D36
| ----------------------------------------------------
| Index: 1
| Disk: disk1s2
| Status: Online
| Size: 1768970981376 B (1.8 TB)
|
+-> Logical Volume Family DEC88FF7-781B-4876-9112-4499F63BA3F9
----------------------------------------------------------
Encryption Type: None
|
+-> Logical Volume 24CCDA84-B157-4ED3-B9E4-C0E766BBA9AA
---------------------------------------------------
Disk: disk2
Status: Online
Size (Total): 1173110521856 B (1.2 TB)
Revertible: No
LV Name: Macintosh FD
Volume Name: Macintosh FD
Content Hint: Apple_HFS
LVG Type: Fusion, Sparse
mikelis wrote:
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 231.2 GB disk1s3
This is a known bug in High Sierra. It does not correctly merge the disk space back into the main Fusion drive, leaving it instead merged into the Recovery HD. The Recovery HD should be only ~650MB, but this is 231GB. The safest solution in this case is a TM backup/erase/rebuild Fusion drive/restore.
The other option is to use Local Recovery, if it works, install macOS on an external disk, erase Recovery HD on the internal disk, and re-install macOS from the external disk, which will again create the correct size Recovery HD, leaving Free Space at the end. The Free Space can be converted to a FAT partition which BCA should merge, but it can again cause the same issue, which becomes an infinite loop case.
Dang, I've been reading all these forum posts, they were mostly a couple years old, I really hoped an easier fix would be around. It wont work if I just back up my data and then do a fresh install trough the command+r recovery menu, then restore?
mikelis wrote:
It wont work if I just back up my data and then do a fresh install trough the command+r recovery menu, then restore?
Command+R used the Recovery HD, which is now 230GB. Please try to boot into Local Recovery HD and test if it works properly? If Command+R works, you cannot erase the partition that you are using to run Recovery Console. 😉
mikelis wrote:
Since I don't have a backup drive and I'm kinda willing to risk it, maybe You happen to know how I could resize these partitions in terminal?
You can convert the large Recovery HD to free space, and run Disk Utility to try and merge the space, but merging HFS into a CS LV is not supported. You will need to erase underlying disks, not partitions.
Then whats the point of booting macOS from an external drive? will I be able to resize those partitions there trough disk utility?
sorry, I'm super dumb today, basically I need an osx livecd to manage the disk when it's not mounted?
Thanks for Your help, but sorry, this didn't fix nothing at all
here's what I did:
booted into recovery hd (cmd+R)
selected reinstall macOS
it takes hella time to install and then brings me back to my desktop with everything already restored
FD reports being 1.8tb
System partition still at 1,17tb
is there anything else I can do?
D/L'ing High Sierra image to create the 'LiveCD'
I hope this finally does it.
Because this is starting to be sad with big dose of funny - you overpay roughly 1k $ per machine to save yourself some headache and then run into some .. headache. I'm dissapoint 😀
mikelis wrote:
D/L'ing High Sierra image to create the 'LiveCD' I hope this finally does it.
If you follow instructions. 😉. Since you have a Time Machine backup of macOS, there is no longer any need to install macOS on the external disk.
You originally had
No, I don't even have a spare 1tb drive right now
then
I accidentally wiped one of my drives, so now I have a backup drive.
There are two different methods, depending on the first state or the second state being the current state.
Before we go further, can you post the output of
diskutil list
diskutil cs list
Since you have an external TM disk now, there is no need to install macOS. Once we know the current state, we can decide what are the next steps. Again, do not wipe the TM disk, keep your backup or create one now.
Lost space after a failed windows10 installation