Macintosh HD showing incorrect capacity

A question for the techies.

For some reason my Hard Drive is showing up on the desktop as 72gb when really its 100gb...

I've tried everything- bootcamp, disk utility and even a quick bunk in terminal trying to get back my precious gigabytes.

Heres the story;

1- I used bootcamp and had a 10gb partition approx for windows xp.

2- I then decided to get rid of my windows partition using the bootcamp utility to "restore" my disk to a single volume.

3- Disk size was fine at this stage! (Macintosh hd had 92gb capacity).

4- Three months later I decided to put windows back on, and upon dividing the hard drive I got the message "some files could not be moved".

5- No worries, I deleted the large unmovable files (over 4gb in size) and then tried again and got the message "Disk needs to be verified and repaired"

6- So I restarted my Macbook Pro booting off the install disk (because thats what you need to do in order to "repair" the root disk).

7- Upon repairing the root disk, the Macintosh HD partition was changed to 72gb...

8- Now whenever I try to divide my HD for bootcamp I get the error "some files could not be moved", i've even tried making the windows partition small (5gb) but with no luck... so im left with 20gb stolen from me, and no way to install windows.

its odd tho, in disk utility, it acknowledges that the disk capacity is 92 gb (the remaing 8gb is used by the system etc, I get that), yet for some reason the actual partition is only 72gb.

I cant seem to be able to change the partition... In fact nowhere can I actually see that extra 20gb being used... it just doesnt show up anywhere.

Configuration

- Tiger 10.4.11

- 100gb sata drive.

- Macbook Pro.

#495750

Can you back up and reformat? That's what I'd do.

#495806

Yeah, I'd do the same. Backup the whole contents of the hard drive onto an external, (or use a disk image, whatever you prefer) and reformat the whole drive. Partition the drive, and restore data...

Tip:

*different folders for different partitions on your drive onto the external (if doing the individual file method)

*different disk images for different partitions on your drive onto the external (if doing the disk image method)

I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner. I love it. One of the best features I've come to use with it is that you can choose folders/files you want to exclude in the backup to a disk image (and/or just the files)

Saves space that doesn't really need to be used. For example, your system folder. No reason to have that backed up, considering you'd be reformatting anyway.

#495808

Never go with what it says on the box. If it says "100 GB SATA HD" on the box, it won't be that exact size. I have a 500 GB SATA HD in my iMac and it only reads 465 GB (that does not include the OS.) Same goes for my 500 GB External SATA drive, it also reads 465 GB. My 320 GB External drive reads as 298 GB. I believe that's normal for all hard drives.

#495812

Yes, I also have a 320GB drive that only reads 298GB. I believe that has something to do with the Filesystem, no? Something with the pagefile maybe? I don't remember which...

#495813

Yes, I also have a 320GB drive that only reads 298GB. I believe that has something to do with the Filesystem, no? Something with the pagefile maybe? I don't remember which...

HDD manufacturers advertise the size as a calculation of 1 billion bytes is a GB. Your computer calculates it (correctly) as 1024 MB to a GB.

@Paralex: Your signature looks familiar there

#495860

@Paralex: Your signature looks familiar there

:confused: WOW. Dude, that's an honest coincidence man. I had this signature on other forums for 2 weeks. Are you also using Helvetica Neue? It looks bit different from my font. I'm getting rid of the text anyway and just putting the logo in there.

#495867

Never go with what it says on the box. If it says "100 GB SATA HD" on the box, it won't be that exact size. I have a 500 GB SATA HD in my iMac and it only reads 465 GB (that does not include the OS.) Same goes for my 500 GB External SATA drive, it also reads 465 GB. My 320 GB External drive reads as 298 GB. I believe that's normal for all hard drives.

Yeah I know its never quite that much... but I used to get 92gb worth, and I expect at least that from a 100gb drive, not a measley 72gb.

Thanx guys for your help.

I SOLVED MY PROBLEM

I knew a clean format would fix my problem, but didnt want to go to those extents of backing up etc... and theres always so much fiddling round with settings etc.

Instead I used a dirty, dirty, dirty (dangerous) terminal method.

I typed:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 92G

^ I tried this before, but couldnt get it to work coz I wrote "92GB" the wrong syntax. And bam, it resized, asked me to restart. I made a prayer to God that my Macbook Pro would still boot and not get the "I'm a folder that just got *****slapped and now im not happy" icon....

But it chimed up, and I was back staring at my desktop with a macintosh hd displaying 92gb.

All is working honky dorey now. installed bootcamp etc, just trying to get parallels to run smoothly...

#495886

I'm a folder that just got *****slapped and now im not happy"

lmao now that's one for the books.

#495901

B instead of G = 4 letters away from DOOM?

what exactly is the difference, just curious.

#495993

:confused: WOW. Dude, that's an honest coincidence man. I had this signature on other forums for 2 weeks. Are you also using Helvetica Neue? It looks bit different from my font. I'm getting rid of the text anyway and just putting the logo in there.

Yeah, Helvetica Neue all around. I just adjusted the spacing a bit. It's alright - just thought it was a bit funny =D

Levi - Glad that worked and you didn't kill your Mac. I've never seen that command before - do you mind walking us through it?

#496013

Yeah, Helvetica Neue all around. I just adjusted the spacing a bit. It's alright - just thought it was a bit funny =D

Levi - Glad that worked and you didn't kill your Mac. I've never seen that command before - do you mind walking us through it?

I know very little about terminal... but here's where I found it with instructions:

http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/cli/nondest...esizing_volumes

-in short-

in terminal;

diskutil resizeVolume disk1s2 75G

key- what it all means

diskutil= disk utility

resize volume= command used to resize a volume (a hidden function used by disk utility)

disk1s2= substitute this with your disk's identifier name.

75G= amount you want your disk to be resized to (eg- 75G = 75gigabytes)

to find the identifier name of your disk, type into terminal:

diskutil list

& substitute into the top code... along with the amount you want to resize it to. Be careful. If you screw up, its your fault.

#496418