I bought a new SSD with 750 GB and made two partitions: 600 GB and 150 GB. The smaller one was thought to be a Bootcamp partition one day, but to date it was just another unused partition. When I needed more space, I decided to merge these two partitions. The partition was created with Mavericks, the merge was done with Yosemite.
I opened Disk Utility and the "minus" button. Disk Utility told me both partitions would be merged then. However it miserably failed. My main hard disc suddenly had errors which couldn't be repaired and even two of my other external hard discs could not be mounted any longer.
I eventually restored the hard disc from Time Machine, which worked well.
My second partition is now listed as free:
Unfortunately I can't resize the 600 GB partition nor can I create a new partition using the free space.
Diskutil reveils the following:
~ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *750.2 GB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_CoreStorage 599.6 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD *599.3 GB disk1
Logical Volume on disk0s2
XXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
Unencrypted
Also diskutil brought up this:
~ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 9D2BA4BA-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
=========================================================
Name: Macintosh HD
Status: Online
Size: 599640592384 B (599.6 GB)
Free Space: 6111232 B (6.1 MB)
|
+-< Physical Volume 29A9A02B-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
| ----------------------------------------------------
| Index: 0
| Disk: disk0s2
| Status: Online
| Size: 599640592384 B (599.6 GB)
|
+-> Logical Volume Family 2FA7892F-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
----------------------------------------------------------
Encryption Status: Unlocked
Encryption Type: None
Conversion Status: NoConversion
Conversion Direction: -none-
Has Encrypted Extents: No
Fully Secure: No
Passphrase Required: No
|
+-> Logical Volume 7BF42B7B-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
---------------------------------------------------
Disk: disk1
Status: Online
Size (Total): 599282155520 B (599.3 GB)
Conversion Progress: -none-
Revertible: No
LV Name: Macintosh HD
Volume Name: Macintosh HD
Content Hint: Apple_HFS
I have tried this:
- Reclaim Delete freespace Partition after Yosemite removal
- fsck -fy (The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.)
but it wouldn't help. It said I couldn't recover because it wasn't created in a way it would support (sorry for missing the exact message).
I then have learned that Apple_CoreStorage might indicate my disk is encrypted, which might explain why I can't resize it. It doesn't explain why I can't create a new partition to me.
What are my options to make my hard disk available in a single partition with size 750 GB?
Best Answer
After gaining some experience with CoreStorage volumes, I reworked my first answer to generalize and facilitate it by adding some scenarios and deleting some dispensable steps.
Basically there is one undocumented command to resize or expand a CoreStorage volume group and an inherent logical volume:
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.
While shrinking it down to the size of the occupied space in the logical volume shouldn't be problem at all (but not recommended because at least 10% free space should be left), any blocking partition except the recovery partition has to be deleted or diminished before expanding the CoreStorage stack.
The command comes in handy in several scenarios:
Beware: The command is vastly undocumented and as such potentially destructive.
Preparation:
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).
Modify CoreStorage stack:
First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:
Enter
diskutil list
Example listing:
Disk0 is your main internal disk device containing the EFI-partition (dis0s1), the CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and the Recovery HD (disk0s3). The No Name EFI (disk0s4) only exists if you had a Boot Camp partition previously and deleted it manually.
Disk1 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk1s2) similar to the Recovery HD.
Disk2 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.
Enter
gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0
Example listing:
The partition with the index number 1 is the regular EFI-partition, the partition with index number 2 is your CoreStorage partition and the partition with index number 3 is your Recovery HD.
The partition with index number 4 (=No Name EFI) only exists if you had a Boot Camp partition previously and deleted it manually. All the rest is unallocated free space (in the example 27359703 blocks à 512 B).
Enter
diskutil cs list
Example listing:
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 (first the CoreStorage volume, which has its own disk identifier disk2 but resides on disk0, then all other mounted volumes on disk0 - check this with
df
):then additional volumes (if you have any at all). Example:
If you have a NoName EFI partition delete it by entering:
Remount any previously unmounted volume in the reverse order with
Since any blocking partition is deleted you may now resize the CoreStorage volume with
with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your CoreStorage volume.
Examples:
to expand it to 60 GB
to shrink it to 40 GB
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.
Enter the following to get the new partition scheme:
and
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!
exit
and quit Terminal.