I've been running the Windows 10 public beta through BootCamp almost since it was announced, and now that we have proper support, I was going to upgrade to the full version. I removed the partition with Boot Camp Assistant, and on attempting to make a new one, was told that there was not enough space. I had just cleared up 72 GB, or so I thought, so this came as a surprise. Come to find out, that drive space no longer exists. "About This Mac" doesn't see it, nor does my Disk Utility. I was on the phone today with Apple Support, but all they could tell me was to come here, so I have. There is no "Repair Drive" button or similar function in Disk Utility that I can find, nor can Boot Camp proceed without solving the issue. Any ideas from those of you that know what you're doing?
El Capitan PB 4 lost my Windows partition
Try selecting the 72GB partition in the left column then "Erase" tab, then format as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" > Erase...
Then try the partition resizing business again.
I know that might seem similar to selecting the "Enable Journaling" command under the "File" menu but it may also be different.
It's also worth trying to remove the 72GB partition seperately from expanding your main partition to fill the space.
Same result as above (not enough space). What I was able to do was to reduce the size of the unwanted partition to 5.401 GB, creating more free space that turned into a separate partition. That partition could then be deleted, reincorporating the space into the unwanted partition, but I can't put it into the original partition.
I have also just noticed that there is 29.5 MB of "Other" space used on the unwanted partition, if that means anything to you.
Oh. That 29.5 is now 211.9 MB. Something I've been fiddling with has affected that. I'm gonna stop here for the night, but I'm open to suggestions.
Good luck, and thank you, profusely.
No problem 🙂
If tomorrow's experimentation doesn't yield a way to remove it then the following steps to use the partition for Windows may help - it involves putting the Windows 10 installer on a USB drive (8GB or more):
- Erase the 72GB partition and specify format as exFAT with Disk Utility
- Have the Windows ISO file downloaded.
- Connect the USB flash drive to the Mac
- Open the Boot Camp Assistant
- Check the box for “Create a Windows 8 or later install disk” and uncheck “Install Windows 8 or later version”
- Click the “Continue” button
- Alongside ‘ISO image:’ click on the “Choose” button, if the Windows 10 ISO is in your Downloads folder it will likely be selected automatically, but confirm it is the proper ISO anyway
- Select the destination USB disk for the Windows 10 ISO to turn into the bootable installer drive, then click on “Continue”
- Confirm that you wish to format the USB flash drive
- Restart the Mac and hold down the option key until you see the startup options
- Select the USB drive that contains the new Windows installer.
- When you select the 72GB partition to install to, it will complain that the partition format needs to be NTFS
- Click on the Format button and the partition will be formatted as NTFS
- Continue with the install
Okay. Last post before I get on the plane tomorrow morning. When I open the Partition tab and select the 2nd partition, if I just hit the Minus sign, it automatically expands the main partition to fill that space. If I erase it and reduce the volume of my main partition to the "original" 178.79 GB, then hit Apply, it doesn't change anything. The 2nd partition is still named as it was, etc. I thought at first that it was because I was so particular about the number. Trying to leave ~5 GB free space revealed the same thing: it really does not want me to delete this partition.
That did it. Thank you so much, Max. I don't know why it wasn't cooperating, but I'll take what I can get.
Glad it sorted for you 🙂
Have a safe flight.
Thank you so much!
For everyone who just wants to delete the (broken) partition: Just follow the very first step and you'll be fine.
Again, thank you - you just saved my day!