Lost space on hard drive after removing Bootcamp partition

Question

Level 1

8 points

Lost space on hard drive after removing Bootcamp partition

I really hope someone can help with this.

I had a Windows partition which I removed before doing a clean reinstall of Mac OS.

I used the BootCamp assistant to remove the partition but someway it didn't complete and I thought I would get the space back after the clean reinstall. But now I can't partition again the hard drive and don't know how to solve this.

This is a screenshot of the Disk Utility tool, where you can see that the total capacity is 320,07 GB but under the blue bar, it shows that the total Macintosh HD partition is 238,37.

I have seen in other posts that it's useful to attach some info about disks and partition, so I'm adding those screenshots too.

diskutil list

gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

diskutil cs list

Hope someone can help with this!

Thanks 🙂

Aria

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Mar 9, 2018 1:12 PM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Mar 10, 2018 5:06 AM in response to arya-md

This is a know issue with High Sierra. If your underlying macOS volume is HFS+ (not CoreStorage or APFS), BCA fails to merge partitions correctly.

Do you have a Time Machine backup? If not, the other option is to convert your HFS partition to Corestorage and re-add the GPT entry and do the Remove/Restore again.

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Answer 2

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Mar 10, 2018 6:35 AM in response to arya-md

Yes, you will need to erase the whole internal disk. The previous erase only erased the partition, not the whole disk.

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Answer 3

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Mar 9, 2018 1:21 PM in response to arya-md

Notice the entry after GPT3. It is free space. Reboot and hold Command+Opt+R till you see the Recovery console. We need to correct this in Internet Recovery -> Utilities -> Terminal.

diskutil unmountDisk disk0

gpt add -i 4 -b 465979392 -s 159163023 -t windows /dev/disk0

gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

diskutil repairDisk disk0

If you do not see any repair issues, then boot normally, re-run BCA and try to remove/restore the partition.

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Answer 4

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Mar 9, 2018 3:45 PM in response to arya-md

Can you boot from the external boot disk and post the output of

diskutil list

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Answer 5

arya-md Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 9, 2018 2:08 PM in response to Loner T

Loner, thanks for your reply.

I tried to boot in Internet Recovery more but it booted from Recovery HD as I guess my laptop is old (middle 2009).

I tried to run the unmount command but it failed ('unmount of disk0 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted.

Is it because I am not in Internet Recovery mode I guess? What is the alternative? I have a bootable USB with the OS if that helps.

thanks a lot!

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Answer 6

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Mar 9, 2018 5:35 PM in response to arya-md

Run

diskutil unmountDisk disk0

gpt add -i 4 -b 465979392 -s 159163023 -t windows /dev/disk0

gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

diskutil repairDisk disk0

If you do not see any repair issues, then boot normally from the internal disk, re-run BCA and try to remove/restore the partition.

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Answer 7

arya-md Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 10, 2018 4:58 AM in response to Loner T

Hi Loner, something has changed and I can see the lost space now, but I wasn't able to remove the partition with BCA, it started but then it stopped saying that the process could not be restored into one partition.

I am attaching some screenshots:

this is what I see in Disk Utility now, so it shows that missing 80 GB space

this is from BCA before starting removing the partition

What could I try to get the space back into the main partition?

Thanks a lot, Loner 🙂

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Answer 8

arya-md Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 10, 2018 5:27 AM in response to Loner T

Hi Loner, thanks for the quick reply!

I have El Capitan OS now, had Mavericks when I remove the partition, I don't know if that matters.

I do have a Time Machine backup, as after removing the Windows partition I erased the internal disk, formatted and did a clean install of El Capitan using the bootable USB. I thought that would fix any issue about the Windows partition removal, but it didn't. Shall I try again to reset and install, now that I have my space back, at least virtually?

I'll check the info about the type of volume. And I'll try first the conversion and re-add option.

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