Disk Utility only sees 157 gb on my 250 gig external

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I basically wanted to reformat my external HD which used to be my Ubuntu HD. It's a 250 gig drive, and at first, I think it saw all of the partitions and I chose to simply "erase" the root, swap and Home directory, thinking that the space it was taking up would be freed and consolidated with the remaining 157 gigs. Instead, it is only listing the remaining 157 gigs and I'm in the process of erasing that too.

Problem was, I didn't realize that the default erase was set to FAT. Now, I'm erasing the last bit with 0 pass and using Mac O Extended Journaled. Furthermore, I accidentally dragged the external drive icon from the left pane to the window on the main window, and the device disappeared from the list of devices.

So first off, how do I get disk utility to see the whole 250 gigs (or the remainder of which hasn't been formatted) and how to get the device back in the list ? Also, it kept asking if I wanted to use the disk for Time machine back up, and when I selected no, it would stop the erase process (that is, until I selected erase with "0" pass security).

Doug
 

chscag

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Disk Utility does not consolidate partitions the same way as a utility like Partition Magic. If the three Linux partitions were formatted as Ext3\Linux Swap with the remainder of the drive as free space or FAT, then only the 157 Gb which was occupied space was formatted. Erase the entire drive, format it as HFS+ Journaled and it should then "see" 250 Gb.

If you intend to use the drive for backup with Time Machine, SuperDuper, or Carbon Copy Cloner, only HFS+ Journaled will work. Format it as FAT-32 only if you intend to use the drive for storing files. But remember, FAT-32 has a ~4 Gb limit file size.

After formatting the drive, eject it and reboot your Mac. Plug the drive back in and it should appear on the desktop.

Regards.
 
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Doug b
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Thanks. But my mistake was formatting two of those Linux partitions to FAT (by accident) and now I can only see (and am formatting to Mac OS Journaled) the remaining 157 gb's. How would I go about doing the entire drive, if it doesn't even see the other space ?

Off to work, thanks.

Doug
 
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Doug b
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I'm in my Ubuntu (Kubuntu to be precise) box right now, and it's the same story. Here's a screen shot:


1024.jpg


97.3 gigs Used.. but used how and where, and how to recover. I just want to format the whole thing, which I thought I already did with disk utility. But it just won't recover the rest.

Doug
 

chscag

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The remainder of the drive which can not be seen is probably in RAW format. In other words, no partition, no file system.

Have you tried using the Linux partitioning utility to recover the drive? Run the Linux fdisk command from Kubuntu and let me know. It should see the entire drive including the maybe RAW part.

If you have a Windows box handy, you may be able to recover the entire drive by using the Windows Disk Manager. The problem though with Disk Manager is that it won't format FAT-32 anything larger than 32 Gb. But it might be able to give you back the entire 250 Gb as unformatted - one partition.

I'm sure I could recover your drive with my copy of Partition Magic by hooking it to my Win machine. Know anyone who has Partition Magic and could possibly lend you a hand?

Here's another solution but it will cost $$$:

http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

Regards.
 

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