50 gb lost due to bodged partition removal

Hey guys,

today i tried to remove what seemed to be a corrupt bootcamp partition now the partition did work but i tried to open it recently only to see that something had occurred and windows was no longer on there i then struggled to remove the partition using every method imaginable until i did it to be honest i dont really know how i did it but i did anyway once i deleted it i noticed that i lost the 50gb that the partition was now i have tried to open bootcamp to fix it from their but nothing i have also tried to resize it using disk utility but that didnt work and i also attempted to use single user mode and fsck but that didnt work. i am on a 13 inch macbook pro with retina mid 2014 running 10.10.1 os x yosemite anyhelp would be appreciated greatly
regards Ben.

I think you are going to have to make a complete backup, then repartition and reformat the entire drive and finally restore from the backup. You can do that reinstall from the Recovery Partition, or if you have a quick internet connection, via the Internet recovery process. But you'll need to make that backup or you lose everything.

Thank you for your quick reply

i do have an okay internet question but i have no idea how to do either of those things if you could give me a link to a video or write me a step by step plan that would be great i have already backed all my files up to my hard drive i do this regularly in case of things like this so i am ready to go.
regards Ben

Ok, I'll assume when you said "i have already backed all my files up to my hard drive" that you actually have it on an external drive.

To do an Internet reinstall, follow the steps on this link. Read the entire article first, as it talks about two ways to reinstall.

Thanks

yes it is on an external hard drive and thank you i will use that link
Ben

To remove Boot Camp partition one must go back to Boot Camp Assistant and use that. Once started it will find the older partition and offer to remove it.

upon reading all of that on the link you gave me i have realised on of two thing one is that it says about clean installing is that what you think i should do or do i continue with the internet way?
Ben

Clean install is always better. One caution: Some software (photoshop and MS Office) need to Uninstalled or deactivated or unregistered or whatever term they use before you wipe the drive. You'll need to reinstall (not recover) them because of the way they install and activate from the mothership.

the thing is with the clean install it shows erasing macintosh hd and i tried to do that earlier and it wouldnt let me i dont know if it was the recovery or macintosh that didnt allow it but something did?
Ben

also i already have yosemite installed so when i went to the download page it came up with download the yosemite installer is that the right thing or not?

You can't format the partition from which you are booted. In this case, you are booted from the recover partition, so you can format the rest of the drive. I don't know if you can, from there, repair the missing area, but if you can, you are good to go. If you can't, then you definitely can from the Internet install because you end up booted over the internet and can do whatever you want to the entire drive. You can internet boot a totally empty drive, if you need to.

so what do you suggest i do, from a usb use the installer or do it from the internet?

Either one. Both will require you to do the download. In the direct install, you just run it and you are done. IN the USB approach, you have to do some fiddling to create the USB stick, test it and then do the install. The downside of going direct is that if it fails, you have to repeat the download, but in the USB approach you can just reboot from the USB and start again, avoiding the download. It's nice to have the USB stick, too, to boot from just in case something goes wonky down the road. But either way will work.

oh great so is the os x yosemite installer the right thing to be downloading its 5.17 gb? and thank you so much for all your help
Ben

Yes, it's large. Good luck with it!?

i will do thank you so much Jake i will tell you if i manage to do it

When you download Yosemite, have an 8GB thumb drive on hand. Use LionDiskaer to burn Yosemite to the thumb drive BEFORE hitting the install button. When this is done, with the thumb drive in place, reboot and hold down 'C' to start from the thumb drive.

Go to Utilities in the Menu Bar, Disk Utility, and erase the hard drive and format using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Back to the Installer and run. Then use Migration Assistant to backup from your exernal hard drive.