lost 259 gb after partition

Hello everybody,

I connected a 500gb external hard disk to my macbook

I partitioned the disk and created two 250 gb partitions.

I changed my mind and the partitioned the disk again to just one.

Now i only have 250 gb in my disk. I have tried everything. I erased the disk and the partition but i dont seem to be able to return the disk in its original size...

can anyone help me out with this?

Thank you

You are using disk utility? Are you using the Partition tab? Under Partition Layout are you changing it from current to 1 Partition? Are you using GUID from Advanced?

Dennis thank you,

Yes, I am using disk utility and the partition tab. also i am changing from current to 1 partition. guid....i am afraid i dont know what that is...

y.

And you are still only getting 250 gb out of 500? That is strange. Did the 500 show up before you split it into 2? Thought you said that but wanted to be sure.


Also what brand of external and model? Just curious.

oh yes...i found guid i tried that and master boot to no avail.

yes the hard disk was 500gb. yesterday i loaded it with around 350gb. after i tried the whole partition thing and since then i have this problem.

The hard disk is an Oxford Semiconductor...at least thats what it says.

Apologies for the vague intel...i am fairly new to this...

That is a VERY starange issue. Let me think on it a bit. Will get back to you. Maybe someone else has had this issue and can help also.

Thank you...appreciate the trouble...

One more quick question for you? Is this an older external or a new one? Just trying to figure out if it's possibly a fault of the drive somehow.

i havent got a clue. looks newish. it has a firewire cable only. Its not mine, it was given to me to load it up with some data and return it...

When you decided to go back from 2 partitions to 1, did you merge the two partitions or delete the unwanted one? If you deleted it, what did you do with the resulting free space?

I'm not familiar with how the Mac routine works, but I've often done this on Windows initially using Partition Magic and later EaseUS, and the above were the two key issues. I see that EaseUS also runs on Mac, though I haven't tried it.

If you have a Windows machine with Firewire, download EaseUS (it's free) and process the external HD through it. Then transfer it back to the Mac.

Um, I have done what he is doing in OSX for 10 years now 1000's of times and never had to use EaseUS or anything else. Disk Utility. If you change it from Current to 1 is zaps everything and makes it ONE partition. Done it with 4 partitions. Never had one issue.

I simply deleted the unwanted one and I did nothing with the resulting space....I will try easeUS and give it a shot. Again thank you for your time. I will let you know how it went

If That EaseUS works there is really something wrong on your system. I have never had to use any 3rd party partition tool on OSX since 10.2 Jaguar!

yan_pap said:

I simply deleted the unwanted one and I did nothing with the resulting space....I will try easeUS and give it a shot. Again thank you for your time. I will let you know how it went

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how the Apple utility works, but it certainly looks as if you now have 250gb of "unused space". I'm sure you can find a way of expanding the sole remaining partition into that space.

I just said how Disk Utility works. Something is strange somewhere.

Is it possible to have hidden the partition that you thought was deleted?

yan_pap said:

I simply deleted the unwanted one and I did nothing with the resulting space....I will try easeUS and give it a shot. Again thank you for your time. I will let you know how it went

Click to expand...

I think you have to reclaim the unused space to the existing partition you left behind. What you did was to delete one partition but not give the space to the remaining one, so it's sitting there unused. Expand the box of the partition, or choose 1 partition from the menu and get it to use all of that space.