Loner T, your help with Fusion Drive partitions is needed

Question

Level 1

5 points

Loner T, your help with Fusion Drive partitions is needed

I have the original question here

Re: Gaing free space after deleting partiton

Long story short: I tried to use BCA on brand new iMac. As not experienced user I divided my Fusion Drive into two same partitions.

When I realised my mistake, I deleted not used one (for BootCamp) and changed the size of Macintosh HD to full. The result is Macintosh HD with half capacity and me not able to gain another half of capacity back.

User Kappy, who was trying to help me suggested to ask you for help.

Here is a result of diskutil cs list

+-- Logical Volume Group 9637C49A-5E29-47B7-9792-A2CB1C141FE0

=========================================================

Name: Macintosh HD

Status: Online

Size: 1565854842880 B (1.6TB)

Free Space: 40960 B (41.0 KB)

|

+-< Physical Volume 79263FE2-025F-4E4C-9E8F-27178A685F59

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 0

| Disk: disk0s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 120883990528 B (120.9 GB)

|

+-< Physical Volume 7211747B-2BBD-4895-9136-DF051A944DCA

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 1

| Disk: disk1s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 1444970852352 B (1.4 TB)

|

+-> Logical Volume Family EDBCADD6-B865-4853-8CCC-BE6DA1642AE3

----------------------------------------------------------

Encryption Type: None

|

+-> Logical Volume 8AB3213F-A673-4233-837C-564618697C22

---------------------------------------------------

Disk: disk2

Status: Online

Size (Total): 1560000069632 B (1.6 TB)

Revertible: No

LV Name: Macintosh HD

Volume Name: Macintosh HD

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

LVG Type: Fusion, Sparse

and here a result of diskutil list

#: 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 *3.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB
disk1s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD 1.4 TB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 1.6 TB disk1s3

/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD +1.6 TB disk2

Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2

84FE01B2-8C0C-4AE9-BB22-9088984F5ECC

Unencrypted Fusion Drive

/dev/disk3 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme +123.9 MB
disk3

1: Apple_HFS DVBLink Player insta... 123.8 MB
disk3s

I tried to access the Terminal in Internet Recovery Mode, but it is not there. The Disk Utility in this mode is not helping - giving same results as in standard mode. I also reinstalled my macOS.

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Mar 11, 2018 11:57 AM

Reply

Answer 1

littlekubo Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 11, 2018 12:19 PM in response to dialabrain

The guide doesn't apply to my case:

1) it shows single drive with full capacity written under icon and half capacity in bar

2) as mentioned, I don't have Terminal in macOS recovery, so I'm not able to use suggested commands

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Answer 2

Mar 12, 2018 9:45 AM in response to littlekubo

Hi littlekubo,

The point is that you reinstalled the system but you have not corrected the problem on your fusion drive. You would have to attempt this reinstall again, but before, erase you fusion drive and both of your SSD and HDD first, then make new fusion drive and install fresh system again.

To do this, boot into recovery mode, preferably from your USB macOS Installer, and identify your Fusion Drive, (it was at disk2 in diskutil output you have posted before).

From Terminal in Recovery mode type

diskutil umountDisk disk2

Then unmount both of your physical drives SSD and HDD which I have seen at disk0 (for SSD) and disk1 (for HDD).

diskutil unmountDisk disk0

diskutil unmountDisk disk1

Now you can easily partition tables on both of your physical drives with

gpt destroy /dev/disk0

gpt destroy /dev/disk1

With diskutil list and diskutil cs list you can now confirm, there is no Fusion Drive any more and there is totally nothing on both of your physical drives so all the corrupted information is gone.

Now you can create new fusion drive with following command

diskutil cs create “Macintosh HD” disk0 disk1

Just make sure to provide mount points in correct order, SSD first and HDD the second.

Now you just need to create logical volume on your new fusion drive with

diskutil cs createVolume “Macintosh HD” jhfs+ “Macintosh HD” 100%

And thats it, you can confirm with diskutil list and diskutil cs list you have fresh new Fusion Drive named “Macintosh HD” of correct size.

Now go ahead and reinstall macOS on it. Good luck, I think this should work. ;-)

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Answer 3

Mar 12, 2018 9:42 AM in response to littlekubo

littlekubo wrote:

well, I created Bootable USB of High Sierra, loaded it during booting and still no Terminal.

Running Disk Utility in there brings same negative result as Internet Recovery.

Still hoping, that Loner will find this question and find answer to it.

About macOS Recovery - Apple Support

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Answer 4

dialabrain

Level 10

122,519 points

Mar 11, 2018 12:41 PM in response to littlekubo

If you have a good backup for your data you could create a HIGH Sierra USB bootable installer, boot from it and erase your internal drive from there.

How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

I don't understand why you can't reinstall from Internet Recovery however. Maybe Loner knows.

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Answer 5

littlekubo Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 11, 2018 12:46 PM in response to dialabrain

well, I managed to reinstall the system, but Disk Utility on Internet Recovery was giving same results as the one on standard mode of High Sierra.

I hope, that Loner will help me, but I can prepare bootable USB.

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Answer 6

littlekubo Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 12, 2018 8:28 AM in response to dialabrain

well, I created Bootable USB of High Sierra, loaded it during booting and still no Terminal.

Running Disk Utility in there brings same negative result as Internet Recovery.

Still hoping, that Loner will find this question and find answer to it.

Reply

Answer 7

littlekubo Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 12, 2018 9:14 AM in response to Lanny

It was not original Boot Camp partition, it was just empty half of drive, which I planned to use as Boot Camp partition, because of my lack of experience doing that.

It was created and removed in Disk Utility.

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Answer 8

littlekubo Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 12, 2018 9:53 AM in response to Manolis_from_Prague

Many thanks Manolis_from_Prague, the problem was all the time between keyboard and chair 🙂

I just googled where to find Terminal in High Sierra, made followed instructions given by you and running reinstall again!

yes,leroydouglas, I found that in the meantime posting my reply

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Answer 9

Mar 12, 2018 10:01 AM in response to littlekubo

No problem. 😉

I’m happy it worked for you, I’ve run into the same troubles before. The problem is probably in Boot Camp Assistant which is not dealing properly with fusion drives when it comes to discarding Boot Camp partition and restoration of pure macOS drive configuration.

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