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MrGimper

macrumors G3
Original poster
Sep 22, 2012
9,171
13,344
Andover, UK
Hi All

I converted an external 8TB USB disk to APFS, but I seem to have lost 2TB of space somewhere.

In the image below, you can see I have an 8TB disk, with 6TB used.

hHd1GB5.png


Here you can see the 6TB used is an APFS Container, and it says 1.8TB "Not Mounted"

kSfqPnL.png


Looking at the disk partitions in Disk Utility, I only see the 6TB container, I can't see any free space

J03Q6lB.png


And looking in terminal, I can see it's an 8TB drive, with a 6TB container, but it doesn't show any free space. So I appear to have "lost" 2TB of disk somewhere

GYmRkYA.png


Any ideas?

G
 
Just to close this off. I copied everything off this drive and then attached it to a windows 10 machine. Disk Manager showed a ~2TB chunk of unallocated space between the EFI partition at the beginning, and the 6TB partition which was what I guess was the APFS container partition. I deleted all partitions from the disk via Windows, and then plugged the drive back into the mac and then created an 8TB APFS container and recreated my volumes.

Why I couldn't see the ~2TB of unallocated space via diskutil, I have no idea.

I even booted to recovery to see if that showed it and it didn't.
 
I have a similar problem: External USB of 8TB, split into 1TB work and 7TB Time Machine. Later i decided to use the full disk of 8TB for TimeMachine. The system does not allow to delete (borrar en español) the work partition. Captura de pantalla 2017-11-10 08.10.13.png

Captura de pantalla 2017-11-10 08.16.23.png
 
Just to close this off. I copied everything off this drive and then attached it to a windows 10 machine. Disk Manager showed a ~2TB chunk of unallocated space between the EFI partition at the beginning, and the 6TB partition which was what I guess was the APFS container partition. I deleted all partitions from the disk via Windows, and then plugged the drive back into the mac and then created an 8TB APFS container and recreated my volumes.

Why I couldn't see the ~2TB of unallocated space via diskutil, I have no idea.

I even booted to recovery to see if that showed it and it didn't.
Interesting workaround.
I happen to have tried APFS in my internal HDD and lost 100 GB.
The problem is that I can't remove my internal HDD and plug into a windows machine.:(
 
Interesting workaround.
I happen to have tried APFS in my internal HDD and lost 100 GB.
The problem is that I can't remove my internal HDD and plug into a windows machine.:(

First, make sure you have a backup
Second, are you able to boot into Windows 10 via a USB stick, or BootCamp? USB may be the better approach.
[doublepost=1510310703][/doublepost]
I have a similar problem: External USB of 8TB, split into 1TB work and 7TB Time Machine. Later i decided to use the full disk of 8TB for TimeMachine. The system does not allow to delete (borrar en español) the work partition. View attachment 734230

View attachment 734232

I don't believe you can delete the first partition on the disk.
You may have to look at shrinking the Time Machine partition down and increasing the first partition tie so you can copy the data between the partitions. Then delete the Time Machine partition and expand the first partition to use all the space.

Or backup your Time Machine partition (yeah, backup the backup lol), repartition and then restore.
 
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First, make sure you have a backup
Second, are you able to boot into Windows 10 via a USB stick, or BootCamp? USB may be the better approach.
Yes, I always make regular backups, but how exactly do I boot in Windows and what do I do once booted?
By the way, could I also boot from DVD drive?

Thanks
 
Yes, I always make regular backups, but how exactly do I boot in Windows and what do I do once booted?
By the way, could I also boot from DVD drive?

Thanks

You could boot from DVD or a USB. You’d need to go into the recovery environment and load up disk manager and take a look at the disk partitioning to see if you have chunks of unallocated space on the disk, parhaps between existing partitions.

Again, make sure you have backups, I take no responsibility if you lose data!
 
1 - backup, and spare backup. Be really sure.
2 - boot to a USB stick, such as an install USB (if you don't know how to do this, stop here and go no further)
3 - open terminal
4 - dd if=/dev/urandom of={whatever your disk is, again if you can't find that out, STOP}
5 - you now have a raw, unformatted, unpartitioned disk.
6 - with Disk Utility on the installer, partition and format your drive as you'd like.
 
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1 - backup, and spare backup. Be really sure.
2 - boot to a USB stick, such as an install USB (if you don't know how to do this, stop here and go no further)
3 - open terminal
4 - dd if=/dev/urandom of={whatever your disk is, again if you can't find that out, STOP}
5 - you now have a raw, unformatted, unpartitioned disk.
6 - with Disk Utility on the installer, partition and format your drive as you'd like.
Couldn't I do this by booting to the USB and then use Disk Utility?
 
The latest version of Disk Utility would not erase the disk I had to the point that it was willing to think it was truly erased. The more low-level "dd" is quite heavy-handed but it is undeniably powerful and effective.
 
Interesting workaround.
I happen to have tried APFS in my internal HDD and lost 100 GB.
The problem is that I can't remove my internal HDD and plug into a windows machine.:(
Perhaps I’m missing something... But, couldn’t you start your mac in “target disk mode”? Doing so is like making your internal HD an external one; plug it to a Windows machine like any other external.
 
Perhaps I’m missing something... But, couldn’t you start your mac in “target disk mode”? Doing so is like making your internal HD an external one; plug it to a Windows machine like any other external.
I'd have to install filesystem drivers and as far as I know there isn't one that recognises APFS.
Therefore, I'm not sure how Windows would handle it.
 
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