Macbook Pro confusion

So recently, I got the message that my disk drive was filling up. I bought an external hard drive and moved some stuff over to it to free up some space. But what i realized when i began to do this was that my macbook said it had 125 GB of storage. It is supposed to have 250GB. So i went into disk utility and it showed that i have two Macintosh HD storages. The first one says it has 18.9 MB free out of 120.47 GB.

The second Macintosh HD below the first says it has 44.2 GB free out of 120.1 GB available.

I am not sure what is going on or how to fix it. It almost looks as if i am working off of only one of those.. Somebody please help!!

I have done it with Time Machine.

Macbook Pro
2.6GHz Intel Core i5
Mid 2014

It is running Yosemite version 10.10.2

Sounds like you have two partitions on your hard drive. Did you partition it for some reason?

If it is partition It can be fixed but it would help to know what or why it was partitioned.

Lisa

lclev said:

Sounds like you have two partitions on your hard drive. Did you partition it for some reason?

If it is partition It can be fixed but it would help to know what or why it was partitioned.

Lisa

Click to expand...

I didn't do it on purpose. I am not sure how it got partitioned if that is what is going on, but i would like to fix it.

ferrarr said:

Do you have two OS's installed? Restart and hold "Option", what choices do you have?

Click to expand...

Just one option

ferrarr said:

Looks like you might have to partition your hard drive to get it back to one partition. You will want to have a USB installer made before you do this.

Click to expand...

So how do i make a USB installer? And then what do i do after that?

lclev said:

Sounds like you have two partitions on your hard drive. Did you partition it for some reason?

If it is partition It can be fixed but it would help to know what or why it was partitioned.

Lisa

Click to expand...

It sure sounds like it, and both with the same name which will make things a bit harder to sort out.

In Disk Utility (DU) are both drives shown with the same name and indented under the actual hard drive name that may be something like samsung 250 … or toshiba 250…???

And is the new external connected and also showing in the left column of the DU window?

If so, what is its name and specs according to DU?

pm-r said:

It sure sounds like it, and both with the same name which will make things a bit harder to sort out.

In Disk Utility (DU) are both drives shown with the same name and indented under the actual hard drive name that may be something like samsung 250 … or toshiba 250…???

And is the new external connected and also showing in the left column of the DU window?

If so, what is its name and specs according to DU?

Click to expand...

Yes, both drives are shown with the same name.. Looks something like this

Macintosh HD
Macintosh HD

The second Macintosh HD shoulde be indented from the first.

I don't have the external hard drive connected at the moment, but it shows the proper name and specs for the external hard drive.

At this point you don't really know and can't tell which "Macintosh HD " volume you're booted from, so I'd suggest turning OFF Time Machine in System Prefs for now if it's On, then select one of the volumes and hit your return key and give it some different name.

When the OS gets established, using the About This Mac, it will show the name of the present boot volume name. You can also check or choose your System Prefs Startup Disk if there's an option.

Don't connect your external drive until you get your present drive situation sorted out.

This is what I have for a single one TB HDD with four partitions. You should end up with TWO separate volumes with appropriate names for their use, and indented the same:

JakeC5150 said:

Yes, both drives are shown with the same name.. Looks something like this

Macintosh HD
Macintosh HD

The second Macintosh HD shoulde be indented from the first.

I don't have the external hard drive connected at the moment, but it shows the proper name and specs for the external hard drive.

Click to expand...

The un-indented one is the name of the hardware, the indent is the name of the partition. From what you describe, it looks to me like you don't have a 250 GB drive, but just 125. Click on the Apple logo, upper left, then About This Mac, then System Report and check what you see in the SATA/SATA Express section. There you'll see a description of the actual hardware installed and any partition.

Lets just be sure we are all on the same page here. When I look at my MBP in Disk Utility this is what I see. I have stated before how confusing this is but it is the nature of Yosemite to name the HD volume and the partition the same ie Macintosh HD.
However under "Type" the HD is described as a "Logical Volume Group" and the partition is classified as a "Logical Partition"
This is easy to check and you will notice slight variations in total and available storage for each but they should be pretty similar as you describe. If what you have is as below then I agree with MacInWin. You do not have two partitions or a 250 Gb drive but a 120-128 Gb in the standard single partition configuration for Yosemite.

Here's what mine looks like from Disk Utility and I'm running Yosemite. I don't believe what your Disk Utility is showing is correct. The first partition shown on the HDD is always EFI and then the Macintosh HD. The last partition is Recovery.

No, manufacture's name of HDD disappeared after Yosemite update, prior to that it displayed make and model. Now both read the same except one (the partition) is indented.

Rod Sprague said:

No, manufacture's name of HDD disappeared after Yosemite update, prior to that it displayed make and model. Now both read the same except one (the partition) is indented.

Click to expand...

Not all the time - it depends on the Mac you have it seems. There is a big variance in what is shown.

I am surprised by Charlie's screen shot as none of my newer Macs have ever shown the EFI nor the Recovery partitions in Disk Utility. Even when booted to a USB stick, DVD or the Recovery partition itself.

The MBA I am currently using as my primary machine had Macintosh HD as the name for both the drive and the primary partition until I removed the "Logical Volume Group" (LVG) at which time it reverted back to what I presume to be the manufacturer's name of the drive.

My older MBA upon installing a clean copy of OS X (prior to any updates), auto named the drive the same as the name I gave to the partition.

The best I can tell based on the little reading I've done, all Apple notebooks are being shipped with LVG.

The wife's iMac just a few months old, shows the name of the drive as it should and not the same as the partition. It is also not using LVG.

(At the present time, I'll be converting any Macs that use the LVG back to normal. What I have seen thus far, a drive using LVG does not permit you to repartition the drive without first erasing the partition(s).)

Bob, I at this point only have one machine that will run Yosemite and it's an iMac and it shows the drive brand , then below that the partitions I have. Mine looks like PM-R's.

Well this is all quite bizarre if Yosemite has actually changed how volumes are labeled and named but what's new there and maybe I should just shut up as I don't bother using it.

But this is what my Mavericks Disk Utility shows of my four partitions, all bootable with various OS X versions and the Debug menu added to "Show Every Partition", and no external drives connected or turned On and mounted:

I don't believe Yosemite changed anything. When I was running Mavericks my Disk Utility looked exactly the same - showing the EFI partition and the Recovery partition.

And it seems yours (pm-r) shows them the same way even though you have multiple partitions.

I am running Yosemite 10.10.3 and I do NOT see Recovery Partition on my boot SSD, but I know it's there from About This Mac. My boot drive is named Macintosh SSD and the Partition is Macintosh SSD, so I have the same picture the OP is seeing, with Macintosh SSD twice, once indented. The top one, not indented, is shown as Type Logical Volume Group, and the lower, indented one is Logical Partition. That did, as I recall, change between Mavericks and Yosemite. I've attached a couple of screenshots.


EDIT: From how my system looks, and given what the OP has reported, I think he is seeing just about the same thing, but with different sizes. From that, I got to the logical conclusion that he has, in fact, a single internal drive of 125GB or so, not 250GB.

Me too.