Disk utility can't expand?

[markrodgers11]

I was messing with Disk Utility and shrunk my Hard Drive partition. So now I dragged Hard Drive down to the bottom to expand it back to its full size then I click apply and it appears as if its doing it then it just goes back to its current state. No error or anything. How can I expand my Hard Drive back to normal?

SOLVED!

 

[gr8tfly]

I do think that regardless whether you modded Disk Utility to show the hidden volume, you should be able to, as you say, drag to expand Hard Disk up to Recovery HD. When you do this, check that the size of the new partition numerically changes. You can try adding 100GB at a time, and see how it behaves. It could be you just have a slight error in the number (size) so that it conflicts with where Recovery HD should [be hidden].

Really, there isn't a good reason to make the Recovery HD visible. It will automatically be created just following a 10.7 or newer partition; conversely, if that partition were to no longer be used for OS X, the Recovery HD partition should be removed automatically. If you need to restart to a Recovery HD, use the CMD-R option on startup; "opt" on startup to select any valid volume for startup.

 

[markrodgers11]

I'm not sure that Recovery HD is being used. When I boot with the option key down I see 3 options, OSX, Recovery 10.8, and Recovery 10.8.4. I don't believe I have Disk Utility showing hidden drives, so I'm thinking I can delete this Recovery HD from Disk Utility?

As for changing the size through the input box rather than dragging the box down, I increased it from 396gb to 400gb and pressed apply and it DID work. But if I type the max amount (462gb) and click apply. It just goes back down to 400gb...

So do you think I could delete this Recovery HD partition? And any other ideas why it is not applying? I'm going to attempt to keep expanding it 10gb at a time and see if it continue to work until it is at its max capacity.

EDIT:
As suggested before, I appear to have 2 Recovery HDs so may I delete this partition from Disk Utility?

EDIT 2:
I enabled showing of hidden partitions then saw the 2 Recovery HDs and realized one was a outragious 37gb and the other was only ~600mb so I went with my gut and deleted the Recovery HD that was 37gb, it then allowed me to drag my Hard Drive down to 499.76gb and apply it sucessfully. I still have a recovery partition and my Hard Drive is now partitioned to its max capacity. Thanks!

 

[gr8tfly]

Yep. That's why it was "stuck". Somehow (or, by mistake), that 37GB partition had the same name, which is what led me to believe you had enabled the "show hidden" option. But, it didn't make sense to me that it would not have been located right after "Hard Drive".

The "diskutil list" command showed what was going on. Your guess was correct, but you can also tell it wasn't the actual "Recovery HD" partition by its type, which is "Apple_boot", rather than the normal user partition type "Apple_HFS".

Looks like you're good to go now.