How to fix the partition table after messing it up trying to install Linux Mint

disk-utilitypartitionunix

I tried to install Linux Mint alongside my working OS X Yosemite. I have a Macbook Air released mid 2013 with a 128gb SSD and 4gb of memory.

Well to achieve my aim I first added a partition using Disk Utility. To do so I simply took 30gb away from my "Macintosh HD" partition and left it as "Free Space".

Somehow the installation of Linux Mint from an USB drive failed and I wanted to get back my old partition table. Trying to do so something went wrong and I had to use Internet System Recovering to get a fresh copy of OS X 10.8.5, which I´m running now.

The problem is: when I call from the terminal : diskutil list
I get:

The Disk Utility App shows:

So maybe you already guess my question: where are my missing 30gb of ssd space gone?
When I run Disk Utility, I only can make the Macintosh HD partition smaller. There is no possibility to erase disk0s5 partition, since: "MediaKit reports no such partition".

I have all my data stored in an external drive, so there is no measure I have to be afraid of in terms of loosing stuff… In fact I already "lost" the data I had on my computer.

I would really appreciate your help!

Update 1:

After executing the command

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

I get the following:

      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  173751112      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  174160752    1269544      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  175430296    1269536      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  176699832   56370760         
  233070592    3905536      5  GPT part - 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F
  236976128       2015         
  236978143         32         Sec GPT table
  236978175          1         Sec GPT header

I have to add: my goal is to assign the whole space to my Macintosh HD partition again…
Thanks

Best Answer

You first have to remove the swap partition and the visible Recovery HD with gpt and then you will be able to resize your Macintosh HD with Disk Utility.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode by pushing altcmdR while booting.

Then open Terminal.app and enter (assuming disk0 is your main disk):

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

Unmount your main disk with:

diskutil umountDisk disk0

First remove the Linux swap partition with:

gpt remove -i 5 disk0

(which means: remove the partition with the index number 5 on disk0).

and then the Recovery HD with the GUID 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC:

gpt remove -i 4 disk0

The Recovery HD with the GUID 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC is the proper one. Don't delete this one.

Finally remount disk0, quit Terminal, open Disk Utility, verify/repair your main volume "Macintosh HD" and finally expand it to the full size of your disk with the slider.

Related Solutions

I think I messed up the Fusion Drive on the 1TB iMac (with BootCamp)

Theoretically everything is fine with your Fusion Drive. Fusion Drives look like this. Disk0 is your SSD with 121 GB and disk1 is your HDD with ~1 TB (~1.121 TB summed up).

The larger parts of your SSD (disk0s2) and your HDD (disk1s2) are pooled to a CoreStorage LVG (Fusion Drive: disk3) with a size of 967.8 GB. The rest is reserved for EFIs, a Recovery HD (alltogether ~1.3 GB) and your old Windows partition - now probably free space (~152 GB).

The logical volume 'Macintosh HD' (967.8 GB) spans disk0s2 and disk1s2. This is the first 'Macintosh HD' in picture 1. The volume 'Macintosh HD' - it's the one visible on the desktop - should ideally also have about 967.8 GB. This is the second 'Macintosh HD' in picture 1.
In fact it has only 852.67 GB (see picture 3).

In the second picture the logical volume 'Macintosh HD' is the first listed in black, the volume 'Macintosh HD' is the second listed in black, the other two 'Macintosh HD's listed in grey are the parts of your SSD and HDD dedicated to the logical volume 'Macintosh HD'.

In my opinion something went wrong after deleting various partitions with the Bootcamp Assistant/Disk Utility or in Windows.

Preparation:

Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive)
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite).

Now you may either repair CoreStorage or rebuild your Fusion Drive:

'Repair CoreStorage' (not recommended):

First i would try to check the volume 'Macintosh HD' with Disk Utility. If the volume is corrupted consider a reinstall of Mac OS X.
If the volume is ok quit Disk Utility
Open Terminal and enter diskutil unmountDisk /dev/LVIdentifier and both diskutil unmountDisk /dev/DiskContainingApple_CoreStorageIdentifier
In your case: first diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3 then diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0 and diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
remove the EFI NO NAME partition with gpt remove -i IndexNumberOfEFINoName DiskIdentifier:
gpt remove -i 4 disk1
Remount the CoreStorage disks and then the Logical Volume:
In your case: first diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk0 and diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1 and then diskutil mount /dev/disk3.

enter gpt -r -vvv show /dev/diskIdentfierOfApple_CoreStorage to get infos of your HDD CoreStorage disk.
In your case: gpt -r -vvv show /dev/disk1
It should look like this:

-bash-3.2# gpt -r -vvv show /dev/disk1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512;         blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=409600
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=409640, size=1671210848
gpt show: /dev/disk1: GPT partition: type=426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=1671620488, size=1269760
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167                               
     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    1671210848      2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1671620488       1269760      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1672890248     280634887
1953525135            32        Sec GPT table
1953525167             1        Sec GPT header

The free space on your HDD has 280634887 blocks. Please calculate the biggest block number dividable through 8. That's 280634880 blocks (á 512 bytes) which equals 143685058560 B or ~143.7 GB. Add the size of your HDD CoreStorage Physical Volume (852666400768 B) The result is 143685058560 B + 852666400768 B = 996351459328 B
Resize your HDD CoreStorage physical volume with diskutil cs resizeDisk HDDPVUUID newsize
In your case: diskutil cs resizeDisk 93892BE8-2B7F-4ABD-A4C3-984495DCD98D 996351459328b
Calculate the maximal size of your CoreStorage Logical Volume in diskutil cs list: (size disk0s2) + (size disk1s2) In your case that's 120988852224 B + 996351459328 B = 1117340311552 B. That should be the size of your refreshed Logical Volume Group.
Resize your Logical Volume with diskutil cs resizeVolume LVUUID LVGSize-128 MB In your case that's diskutil cs resizeVolume D237FFDC-7DA4-41D7-AC13-4CC7E5E8C0A0 1117212311552b. If you get an error (There is not enough free space...) choose a smaller size like 1117148311552b.
Quit Terminal and open Disk Utility.
Check your expanded CoreStorage Volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility, choose your CS volume as startup disk and restart your Mac

'Rebuild Fusion Drive' (recommended if you have a Time Machine backup)

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode open Utilities → Terminal in the menubar and enter:
diskutil cs list to get the CoreStorage listing.
Copy the Logical Volume UUID, it's the fifth listed.
Now delete the Logical Volume with diskutil cs deleteVolume LVUUID.
In your case: diskutil cs deleteVolume D237FFDC-7DA4-41D7-AC13-4CC7E5E8C0A0.
Copy the Logical Volume Group UUID, it's the first listed in the listing of diskutil cs list.
Then delete the Logical Volume Group with diskutil cs delete LVGUUID.
In your case: diskutil cs delete 1EFE58BC-3613-44C4-86EE-D816F3B66E3E
Enter exit and quit 'Terminal'
Open 'Disk Utility'. Enter 'Ignore' if you are asked to fix the drives.
Choose your SSD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
Please check that the size is ~121 GB

Example:
Choose your HDD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
Please check that the size is ~1 TB

Example:
Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal
Enter diskutil list

Example (your disk identifiers and sizes are different of course: Your volume SSD probably has the Identifier disk0s2 and the size 121 GB and your volume HDD probably has the Identifier disk1s2 and the size 1.0 TB):
Enter diskutil cs create "Name" IdentifierSSD IdentifierHDD
In your case probably diskutil cs create "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk1s2.

Copy the resulting LVGUUID

Example:
Enter diskutil cs CreateVolume LVGUUID jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%.

Example:
Enter diskutil cs list
Check the size of your Logical Volume. It should have the size ~1.121 TB

Example:
Quit Terminal
Open 'Disk Utility' and check your newly created volume for errors
Quit 'Disk Utility'
Attach your external Time Machine backup drive or check this answer if you use NAS or another network share.
Open 'Restore from Time Machine Backup'
Choose the appropriate Time Machine backup and restore your system
Reboot to your restored system.
Unmount and detach your Time Machine backup drive
Open 'Terminal' and enter 'diskutil list'
Check if your 'Recovery HD' is listed.
If your 'Recovery HD' is missing, usually reinstalling your current system with the latest available system installer (e.g. 'Install OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)' if Mavericks is currently installed) will recreate it without loosing any data. AFAIK Recovery Partition Creator 3.8 will NOT create a Recovery HD on CoreStorage volumes.
After reinstalling the system with the latest available system installer open App Store and install the latest security fixes.

MacOS – Linux Mint partition suddenly no longer recogized after having been with same settings

I was somewhat successful recreating your situation. There were some noticeable differences from what you posted in your question and comments.

You can not name a MS-DOS (FAT) partition System2. You must use capital letters. You can name an ExFat partition System2.
There is no indication you created a Swap partition when installing Mint. The Mint installer will allow this omission. Unfortunately, when I tried this, the installer crashed before finishing. The result drive configuration was exactly what you have posted in your question.

It is possible you succeeded in installing Mint, even though I failed. This could be due to differences in hardware. Or, I might have chosen a different Mint installation ISO file.

I believe your Mint installation should have included a swap file. Therefore, I recommend you should reinstall Mint. You can use the instructions given below as a guide.

Determine the amount of Memory installed in your Mac. From the menu bar, select ->About this Mac. The pop up will display the amount of Memory. The image shown below is a example of this pop up.

Note: For a better view of an image, either click on the image or open the image in a new window.
Install Mint. In the images shown with this step, the sizes will differ from what you will see. Also, you will probably need to substitute /dev/sdb for /dev/sda.

When the image below appears, select "Something else", then select "Continue".

Next, select partition /dev/sta5, the select "-" to delete the partition.

Select the free space created by the previous step, then select "+".

In the "Create partition" popup window, select the options as shown below. Substitute a "Size" value equal to or sightly larger than the memory installed. In step 1, I determined a memory size of 16 GB, therefore I entered a value of 17 GB. Finally, select "OK".

Select the remaining free space after partition /dev/sda5, then select "+".

In the "Create partition" popup window, select the options as shown below, except do not change the "Size" value. The default value is the maximum available space, which is what you want. Finally, select "OK".

Select partition /dev/sda1 for the "Device for boot loader installation:", then select "Install Now".

Select "Continue".

Continue with the installation.
When the installation has finished, you will see the image shown below. Select "Continue Testing".

When the image below appears, hit the keyboard shortcut control+option+T to open a Terminal window.

The result should appear as shown below.
Next, you will need to enter some commands. These commands will make Mint appear in the Startup Manager as "EFI Boot". In the Terminal window, enter the commands given below.
```
mkdir  efi
sudo  bash
mount  /dev/sda1  efi
cd  efi/EFI
rm  -rf  boot
mkdir  boot
cp  ubuntu/grubx64.efi  boot/bootx64.efi
ch  ~
umount  efi
exit
rmdir  efi
```
An example is shown below.

Next, enter the command exit to close the window. At this point, you can shutdown the computer.

Note: To switch between OS X and Mint, you will need to hold down the option key at startup and restart. Holding down the control key before selecting the arrow below an icon, will make the associated operating system the default.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

I think I messed up the Fusion Drive on the 1TB iMac (with BootCamp)

MacOS – Linux Mint partition suddenly no longer recogized after having been with same settings

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