Partition Space Lost - can't get it back

[Wizzykin]

Hey - I'm having some issues here with my 2011 iMac.

Long story short - I installed Ubuntu, then decided to uninstall it; now the 300GB partition I used for installing it on is missing, and using iPartition I can see it as "Free Space" (I downloaded the demo just to see what was going on) - but I can't find anyway to get it back to my Macintosh HD partition.

Disk utilities doesn't see it at all, bootcamp is useless, and reinstalling the entire OS did nothing, because it just installed it back onto the partition that was already there and missing all the space.

Do I need to somehow erase my entire HD and format/install from scratch, or what?

edit: I'm running Maverick, by the way.

 

[Fishrrman]

[[ Do I need to somehow erase my entire HD and format/install from scratch, or what? ]]

The following procedure WILL work:
1. Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a bootable clone of your Mac partition on an external drive.
2. BOOT from the external drive (restart, at startup sound hold down option key and keep holding it down, choose external drive in startup manager)
3. RE-initialize the INTERNAL drive using Disk Utility (choose 1 partition, GUID, HFS+, journaling enabled)
4. RE-clone the contents of the external backup drive BACK TO the internal drive.

As I said, it will take a little time (mostly as the contents of the drive are copied back and forth), but this procedure WILL work if nothing else does.

 

[Wizzykin]

I've actually just figured it out.

The RecoveryHD partition I was seeing, shouldn't have been there and was messing it up. The real partition is invisible, so the one I was seeing was something else. I removed it and now everything is fine.