Lost space on HDD due to failed Boot Camp partition.

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While boot camp was partitioning my drive (200GB allocated to Windows), it quit with no explanation (no "report problem" alert), it just exited. I thought maybe it had finished partitioning and just didn't restart, so I figured I would reboot and just choose the windows startup disk and install it to the partition. To my surprise the partition did not exist. When I went to disk utility (in OSX Lion), it said that 336 gigs were used (previously it was 136). I am trying to get that space back. I installed windows again (this time it worked), thinking that it might do something to make my computer realize it had more free space. I have looked for over 3 hours for a solution and tried many different solutions.

1. Reset PRAM/NVRAM
2. Tried to repair the hard drive from the startup disk
3. Ran fsck in single user mode (/sbin/fsck/ -f)

Any help would be appreciated.

Screenshot of disk utility: http://i.imgur.com/5S3DO.jpg
 

chscag

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Go back to Disk Utility and give us a screen shot from the partition tab. (Highlight the drive on the left and then click on the Partition Tab) I'd like to see what it looks like before I ask you to try something. I suspect you have 200 GB of unpartitioned space. We need to try consolidate that back to OS X.
 
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Go into BootCamp and start the program and hit the remove button. Have you printed and studied the BootCamp Assistant Guidelines/ It is a pretty painless operation if you follow that.

Also take it you are trying to use Windows 7? if the computer is a late model will not install Vista or XP.
 
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Go into BootCamp and start the program and hit the remove button. Have you printed and studied the BootCamp Assistant Guidelines/ It is a pretty painless operation if you follow that.

Also take it you are trying to use Windows 7? if the computer is a late model will not install Vista or XP.

Yes, it's windows 7, I have followed the guidelines (I downloaded the pdf, and followed the guidelines) when you say go into bootcamp, do you mean the BootCamp assistant? and uninstall the os?
 
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Yes. Go into Utilities > BootCamp Assistant > Continue and you should then an option to remove Windows 7. Do that and the hard drive will be restored.

It can be a little confusing formatting the partition. If you go Boot Camp again make sure you select the partition BootCamp and then hit the 'Format' button NTFS and proceed.
 

chscag

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I believe you can regain the space by using Disk Utility:

Go back to Disk Utility, click and highlight the hard drive as you did before. Now click on the partition tab.

Drag the partition line down until it fills the empty space from the top until it reaches the Win 7 partition. Do not cross the Win 7 partition line! Click Apply.

Your 200 GB should be restored back to OS X without having to remove Windows 7.
 

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