Where did 600GB on my HD go?

[mstokas]

Hello,

I have a 1 TB HD, recently I noticed that under the disk utility it is saying that I have only 404 GB of storage? What happened to the other 600 GB? I had previously partitioned the hard drive before an upgrade to el capitan. Could that portion have been lost? Any suggestions on how to recover this space?

Thanks,

Here is a screen grab of the disk utility showing the 404GB of space on my macintosh HD, but note I have a 1 TB HD.

 

[mstokas]

Have a Time Machine backup only. Will that matter?

 

[Slydude]

Before we start worrying about restoring from a backup I think we need to find out a bit more about what ate / is eating the space. It's great that there's a backup to work from if necessary but it may not be necessary.

@mstokas What Mac are we dealing with here (iMac, Mac Pro, etc)? If you go into About This Mac from the Apple menu you should be able to see how the space is being used. That will show what the space is being used for.

 

[mstokas]

Before we start worrying about restoring from a backup I think we need to find out a bit more about what ate / is eating the space. It's great that there's a backup to work from if necessary but it may not be necessary.

@mstokas What Mac are we dealing with here (iMac, Mac Pro, etc)? If you go into About This Mac from the Apple menu you should be able to see how the space is being used. That will show what the space is being used for.

Running iMac (27-inch, late 2009). Processor 2.8 GHz intel core i7. 8gb of 1067 MHz DDR3.

 

[chscag]

I have a 1 TB HD, recently I noticed that under the disk utility it is saying that I have only 404 GB of storage? What happened to the other 600 GB? I had previously partitioned the hard drive before an upgrade to el capitan. Could that portion have been lost? Any suggestions on how to recover this space?

It's obvious that whatever partitioning you did has eaten up the 600 GB. We need to see a screenshot of the entire drive in order to try to determine where the other 600 GB is. Why did you partition the drive? And how did you format the partition you made?

 

[mstokas]

It's obvious that whatever partitioning you did has eaten up the 600 GB. We need to see a screenshot of the entire drive in order to try to determine where the other 600 GB is. Why did you partition the drive? And how did you format the partition you made?

What do you mean you need to see the whole drive? How do I take a screenshot of that? I am not sure why I partition the drive, I think it was so that I could erase free space more easily, because I never used close to a terabyte, so the erase free space option took a long time. I partition the drive disk utility. Prior to the update with El Capitan.

 

[chscag]

You don't need to partition a drive to erase free space. Without knowing exactly what your drive looks like it's difficult to try to help you get the missing 600 GB back. Do you have a backup of your Macintosh HD? If you don't, make a backup as soon as you can because it looks like you'll probably wind up having to erase the entire drive and reinstalling OS X.

 

[pm-r]

It would be interesting to see a screenshot to show what Disk Utility says about that APPLE HDD HUA722010CLA330 Media drive and what partitions it thinks it might have, including any or all normally invisible partitions.

Sure a bit strange…

 

[gsahli]

One way to see all those partitions is to use the Terminal Utility and type:
diskutil list

 

[pigoo3]

I am not sure why I partition the drive, I think it was so that I could erase free space more easily...

Erasing the free space on a hard drive should not take very long. A reason why it would is if you were doing a secure erase (which rarely needs to be done).

Very likely you partitioned this hard drive…and right now (being discussed in this thread)…is just one of the partitions with is 400gig in size.

- Nick

 

[IWT]

@mstokas

To get a screenshot of your entire HDD:

Go into Disk Utility (DU) (found in Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility).

When you open DU, it will show you on the left side all your Disks (Internal and External attached).

Top of the list will be your Mac's HDD.

It will show as something like Apple xxx or maybe just Macintosh HD.
......Underneath this, as an indent, will be Macintosh HD.

First. Please click on the top-most to highlight it. And take a screenshot of the result. This will show any partitions and their size.

Second. Click on the indent. Another screenshot of that. This will almost certainly be a reproduction of what you posted above (when you went into the Apple icon and About This Mac); but it's as well to double check.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

Hmmm…???? I wonder if the OP has been so affected as shown in this article???
"The case of the missing El Capitan hard disk space"

http://www.macworld.com/article/299...f-the-missing-el-capitan-hard-disk-space.html

Or if the suggested fix would work…???




- Patrick
======

 

[mstokas]

It would be interesting to see a screenshot to show what Disk Utility says about that APPLE HDD HUA722010CLA330 Media drive and what partitions it thinks it might have, including any or all normally invisible partitions.

Sure a bit strange…

Here are the screen shots

 

[mstokas]

You don't need to partition a drive to erase free space. Without knowing exactly what your drive looks like it's difficult to try to help you get the missing 600 GB back. Do you have a backup of your Macintosh HD? If you don't, make a backup as soon as you can because it looks like you'll probably wind up having to erase the entire drive and reinstalling OS X.

I portioned it originally so the one partition would have only about 100gb of free space so the erase free space did not take so long (600gb of free space took a long time.

 

[mstokas]

One way to see all those partitions is to use the Terminal Utility and type:
diskutil list

 

[Slydude]

I portioned it originally so the one partition would have only about 100gb of free space so the erase free space did not take so long (600gb of free space took a long time.

Just out of curiosity why did you want to create a partition that is only 100 GB. I have one of similar size but it is a Windows partition for a couple of specific programs.

 

[gsahli]

The remaining 600 GB hasn't been selected, then formatted, as far as I can tell.

 

[chscag]

I agree, which is why it doesn't show up when he did a "diskutil list". I still don't understand what he was trying to accomplish?

 

[pm-r]

Hmmm…??? My small understanding is that diskutil should show all partitions and sizes when run and has done so for ages. Unless El Capitan changed some sort of "feature"???

http://commandlinemac.blogspot.ca/2008/12/using-diskutil.html

"Note that all partitions are shown through this command, including hidden partitions like the Recovery HD, the EFI partition, and partition map and scheme information. "
http://osxdaily.com/2009/12/01/list-all-mounted-drives-and-their-partitions-from-the-terminal/

BTW: was the listed apple HDD HUA722010CLA330 media drive an original or replacement as if it should matter. Just curious and if it's still under any warranty.





- Patrick
======

 

[mstokas]

Can you take a screen shot, like the top image, but select "Partition" tab?

Or, start up from the recovery partition? Or external drive?