How to merge primary APFS partition with other empty APFS partition

apfsbootcampdisk-utilityhard drivepartition

Using the latest Macbook Pro with currently High Sierra 10.13.1, I was using bootcamp for a year, and I decided to get rid of the Bootcamp partition this morning. The Bootcamp utility would not let me erase this partition, so I decided to do it through Disk Utility.

I did everything I could to "erase" it, but I can't find any way to merge this 58GB partition with my primary Macintosh HD one.

In Disk Utility, if I want to erase the container Disk2, it tells me that an internal error occured… The BOOTCAMP partition is actually formatted as APFS…

$ diskutil list

How can I merge those two partitions ?

EDIT : The BOOTCAMP partition is now gone but I can't extend the primary one …

Best Answer

These are two answers I got directly from Apple after emailing Tim Cook yesterday

We are clearly lacking some documentation (and probably a feature in Disk Utility). However, you can achieve the removal using Boot Camp assistant.

Launch Boot Camp Assistant Click the Continue button You should now see a “Restore Disk to a Single Partition” screen. Click Restore, enter password

Your system will now remove the windows partition.

Sorry our experience didn’t meet your expectations. I’ll work with my engineering teams and AppleCare to get this addressed.

You tube link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy7McSE_NfI https://www.macworld.com/article/1156195/mac-apps/delete-boot-camp.html

Alternatively

Getting rid of Boot Camp is super simple, you use boot camp assistant to remove what it may have created. There’s a handy YouTube video which explains this process here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy7McSE_NfI

I’m interested in why the install failed, so before you do this if you can help us by collecting some information, great. If you don’t have time for, that’s cool too.

Using the Boot Camp Assistant to to remove the BootCamp partition:

Start the Boot Camp Assistant from the Utilities folder.
At the Boot Camp Assistant Welcome Screen click Next.
If the Boot Camp Assistant cannot remove the partition it will error here. If it can then you will get another dialog asking you to restore the drive (i.e. remove the Boot Camp partition).

How to create Sysdiagnose logs:

Launch Terminal from the Utilities folder in Applications.
Type: “sudo sysdiagnose” and hit the “return” button
Type in your password (for sudo)
It will prompt you to press ‘Enter’ to continue. Press the return button to continue.

Once the logs have been gathered they will be compressed into a .gz file and created in the /tmp location. A finder window will pop up also once the file is created with the correct location. We need that file as well.

Sometimes the Boot Camp Assistant fails on the first install, we are looking into this issue, if you see a failure we’ve seen reports that attempting a second install will be successful.

I have removed the Apple employee names, in line with GDPR. I hope this helps people

Spencer

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MacOS – How to merge System partition with another HFS+ partition without data loss

There is absolutely no way that you should even think about doing any of this without a complete backup on a separate disk. Verify the backup before beginning.

1) If you have a complete backup, the easiest way to do this would be to wipe everything, make the partitions you want, and then copy the information back from your backup. If your Recovery HD is deleted, there is no way to re-create it without reinstalling the OS. (At least none that I could find when I was searching recently.)

2) Assuming you have a backup OTHER than that Backup partition, if you want to attempt to merge these, I would try it in this order:

a. Delete the 'Backup' partition.

b. Merge 'Data' partition and former 'Backup' partition.

c. Merge System partition and other partition.

d. Re-create the 'Backup' partition and restore it from whatever backup you have.

I have done several live-system partition resizings with no problems. However, the one time that there was a problem, I had to reformat the entire drive and start over.

I erased the partition where Windows 10 was previously installed. How to merge it with the OS X partition

You can't simply merge a Bootcamp partition or empty space and a FileVault volume with Disk Utility (Boot Camp Assistant should handle this though). You first have to remove the Bootcamp partition and then expand the FileVault volume.

To remove the Bootcamp partition and resize the CoreStorage Volume Group (containing the FileVault volume) the Mac has to be booted to Internet Recovery Mode. Recovery Mode is not sufficient because the Recovery HD has to be moved. The actual boot volume or partition can't be moved.

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 Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan).

Remove bootcamp partition and expand CoreStorage Volume Group

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode open Utilities → Terminal in the menubar and enter: diskutil list to get the disk identifiers and diskutil cs list to get a CoreStorage listing. Below I assume that your main disk has the disk identifier disk0 and the CoreStorage Logical Volume disk2.

First you have to remove the Bootcamp partition:

gpt -r show /dev/disk0 #to get an overview

To remove a partition with gpt the disk (and all related disks like the inherent CoreStorage volume) has to be unmounted

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2 #if your FileVault volume is unlocked and mounted (check this in the output of `diskutil cs list`)
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk0 #remove the Bootcamp partition

Then you have to resize the Logical Volume Group:

diskutil mount /dev/disk0s2 #mount the physical volume of the CoreStorage Logical Volume Group
diskutil mount /dev/disk2 #mount the Logical Volume of the CoreStorage Logical Volume Group
diskutil cs unlockVolume LVUUID #if your FileVault volume is locked

in your case:

diskutil cs unlockVolume 27640FE7-1349-4C98-B101-CE17EF75673E

and enter your passphrase if asked.

Then resize the stack:

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

in your case:

diskutil cs resizeStack 27640FE7-1349-4C98-B101-CE17EF75673E 500g

Enter exit and quit Terminal
Open Disk Utility and check the main volume for errors
Reboot to your main volume

Best Answer

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