MacOS – Create El Capitan install partition

disk-utilitymacospartition

I went through a lot of articles on how to create bootable os x install partition but eventually I ended up with a need of making resize of my system partition – unfortunately DiskUtility shows this option greyed out. Any ideas why? I don't want to loose my existing system installation.

Properties say that it is a physical volume and it's not using CoreStorage.
This is the output of diskutil list command:

And it seems like I managed to resize this disk0s2 partition with:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 480GB

command. Still don't get why this option is absent in DiskUtility. It used to be there. And unfortunately this is not what I was looking for. After I resized this volume DiskUtility didn't allow me to create a new partition. Therefore I think the problem is in that I didn't partition drive properly from the very beginning. diskutil splitPartition doesn't work at all – it says that it cannot unmount disk. Any ideas other than to wipe HDD contents out and install from scratch? I don't want to install Snow Leopard first and update it to El Capitan.

Best Answer

Try to return everything back:

diskutil resizevolume disk0s2 R

and then:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 480G jhfsx InstallOSX 10G

Resizing a volume that is currently set as the computer’s startup disk will invalidate that setting; use the Startup Disk System Preferences panel or bless (8) to reset the resized volume as the startup disk.

Related Solutions

Resize FusionDrive to fill empty space

Basically the same applies as in this question and the accepted answer. The only difference is that you have a fusion drive and therefore some DiskIdentifiers differ.

Additionally you have a blocking partition on your HDD with certainty which has to be removed.

There is one undocumented command to resize or expand a CoreStorage volume group and an inherent logical volume:

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

The command expands or shrinks the whole CoreStorage Volume Group including the physical volume(s), the logical volume family and the logical volume in one step to the desired size.

Beware: The command is vastly undocumented and as such potentially destructive.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
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 to 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 (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite). The disk identifiers may differ then. So check the human readable names and sizes and change the commands below accordingly.

Get an overview:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:

Enter diskutil list
Example listing (but I took the list provided by you in your question and included the netboot device):

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         626.1 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk1s3
   4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.3 GB    disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        *1.3 GB    disk2s2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *739.9 GB   disk3

/dev/disk4-disk14 ...belong to the OS X Base System (your recovery system you booted to previously)

Disk0 is your first main internal disk device (SSD) containing an EFI-partition (dis0s1), one CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and Boot OS X (disk0s3).

Disk1 is your second main internal disk device (HDD) containing an EFI-partition (dis1s1), one CoreStorage partition (disk1s2) and the Recovery HD (disk1s3). Additionally the disk contains a second EFI partition (disk1s4), which is a remains of your failed Boot Camp install.

Disk2 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk2s2) similar to the Recovery HD.

Disk3 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and disk1s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.

Enter gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1 to get the index number of the blocking partition
Example listing (your sizes differ):

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      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  104974016      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  105383656    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  106653192     204800      4  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  106857992   27359703         
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

The partition with the index number 1 is a regular EFI-partition, the partition with index number 2 is your second CoreStorage physical volume and the partition with index number 3 is your Recovery HD.
The partition with index number 4 (= No Name EFI) usually only exists if you had a failed Boot Camp install or removed a subsequent Windows partition manually. All the rest is unallocated free space (in the example 27359703 blocks à 512 B).

Enter diskutil cs list
Example listing (but I took the list provided by you in your question):

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 57932797-4AC8-4475-9836-82394CEBF536
    =========================================================
    Name:         LogicalVolumeGroup
    Status:       Online
    Size:         745750200320 B (745.8 GB)
    Free Space:   353689600 B (353.7 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 68F90B2B-4004-4044-AFFB-9D3854006D2A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     119690149888 B (119.7 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 9CB6C261-6817-42F0-B2EB-09F057462EBD
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     626060050432 B (626.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 9B947A52-7496-46CA-BFA5-A87DD47249FE
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk3
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          739901915136 B (739.9 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Remove blocking partition:

to resize the CoreStorage volume you have to delete any blocking partition first (the Recovery HD doesn't count because it usually will be moved with the resizeStack command).
First you have to unmount all mounted volumes on disk0 and disk1 (first the CoreStorage volume, which has its own disk identifier disk3 but resides on disk0 and disk1, then all other mounted volumes on disk0 and disk1 - check this with df):
```
diskutil unmount /dev/disk3
```
then additional volumes (if you have any at all). Example:
```
diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s5
```
Now delete the NoName EFI partition by entering:
```
gpt remove -i 4 disk1
```
Remount any previously unmounted volume in the reverse order with
```
diskutil mount /dev/disk1s5
diskutil mount /dev/disk3 
```

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Since any blocking partition (in your case the NO NAME EFI partition) is deleted you may now resize the CoreStorage volume with
```
diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size 
```
with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your CoreStorage volume.

Examples:
```
diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 900g  
```
to expand it to 900 GB
```
diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 500g  
```
to shrink it to 500 GB
```
diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 0g 
```
to expand it to the full available size (0g is a magic number here).

Your Recovery HD should be moved automatically - regardless of whether shrinking or expanding the CS volume - to the very end of it (right after the CoreStorage volume).
In case of shrinking or not expanding the CoreStorage volume to the full available size you may now create a 2nd partition with gpt.
Enter the following to get the new partition scheme:
```
gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1
```
and
```
gpt add -b StartBlock -i IndexNumber -s SizeOfPartition -t PartitionType disk1
```
to create a new partition. StartBlock is the number of the first block in the unallocated space and NumberOfBlocks is the number of free blocks or smaller. NumberOfBlocks has to be dividable through 8!
Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Open Disk Utility (and format your newly created partition if you have created a new partition in the second last step).
Then check your expanded CoreStorage volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility.
Reboot to your main volume.

MacOS – Can’t create a partition

I realize you have posted your own answer, but others may want to know what was wrong.

Basically, you had journaling turned off. To turn journaling on, you need to highlight the partition and click on the "Enable Journaling" button. To see the change, you may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility application.

To turn journaling off, do the following using the Disk Utility application.

Highlight the partition.
Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
Release the "alt/option" key.
Quit and reopen the Disk Utility

You should alway have journaling enabled for "Mac OS Extended" formatted partitions, but there can be cases where you may want to turn it off. Especially if you are going to be using Linux. Many linux distributions (like Ubuntu) can read "Mac OS Extended" formatted partitions, but they can only write to them if journaling is turn off. So enabling and disabling journaling may be useful if you need to transfer data from Linux to OS X.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Resize FusionDrive to fill empty space

MacOS – Can’t create a partition

Related Question