MBP: I cloned my old HD to a new (larger) one, and OS X only sees the older (smaller) space.

January 15, 2008 4:29 PM

The disk in my MBP was upgraded from 100GB to 250GB. They used a hardware disk to disk copier that just cloned the drive, bit for bit. Now, I want to grow my 100GB partition to fill up the new space, however Disk Utility only sees the drive as 100GB. I know there are some $100 utilities out there, but I am a geek and want to do it for free.

We have tried to boot into Linux, use tools like gParted (which see the full drive, but only let us create a 128MB partition), rEFIt (to sync the partition maps), etc. but to no avail.

How do I reset the partition map so that it sees the full drive?

posted by dhammala to technology (17 comments total)

have you tried disk utility from your os x install cd?

also, this article from macgeekery.com could prove useful.
posted by JRGould at 4:56 PM on January 15

Do you have Leopard? Disk Utility should let you do this.
posted by designbot at 5:40 PM on January 15

If all else fails, backing your stuff up somewhere and reformatting the drive should definitely fix this.
posted by designbot at 5:44 PM on January 15

I think qparted with what you want, not gparted.
posted by about_time at 6:12 PM on January 15

Yes, we have Leopard, and no, Disk Utility does not do it (unless we just don't see the option). Disk Utility sees the drive as the old 100GB drive, not the new one.

QTparted uses GNU libparted (like gparted) and it doesn't seem to have the option to do it either. *unless we are just missing something*
posted by dhammala at 6:30 PM on January 15

open terminal, do "diskutil list" and scroll back up until you see the name of your hard disk. on the right it should list its identifier next to its size (which will be 100gb according to you) the identifier will most likely be disk0s2 or disk0s3.

then do "diskutil resizeVolume disk0s3 limits" replace disk0s3 with the actual identifier

you'll probably want to restart after you do this. caution: do this at your own risk, backup everything first, etc etc. honestly i would reboot into single user mode to do this (it might not even let you do this on a live boot volume anymore) but that's your own googling.
posted by tumult at 7:03 PM on January 15

Yes, we have Leopard, and no, Disk Utility does not do it (unless we just don't see the option).

I don't have Leopard, but I am pretty sure Disk Utility can do partition resizing. Do a search in this page for "live partition resizing", and it claims to be a feature of Disk Utility as of Leopard. ("You may be able to gain disk space without losing data. If a volume is running out of space, simply delete the volume that comes after it on the disk and move the volume’s end point into the freed space.")
posted by advil at 7:14 PM on January 15

Wait, wait, wait. In Disk Utility, it shows the capacity and model number of the disk and then, underneath, the names of the partitions.

Are you saying that the capacity and model number of the disk match a 100GB disk, not just that there's a 100GB partition? If so, you can be reasonably confident there's just a 100GB disk in your machine. It's not particularly easy to swap a disk in a MBP -- it involves lifting the keyboard completely off after removing three billion screws -- so if they didn't spend much time on it, you may just have the old drive in there.

Let us know what Disk Utility actually says. Post a screenshot including the model number Disk Utility actually thinks is in there. FYI, Tiger doesn't have live partition resizing capabilities, whereas Leopard does. Are you running Panther, Tiger or Leopard?
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 8:35 PM on January 15

If you're on Tiger, the original Boot Camp installer (no longer downloadable from Apple, but is around) can do live partition resizing.
posted by bonaldi at 8:55 PM on January 15

We will try 'resizeVolume', but I would be shocked to see it work... as Disk Utility only lets you resize within the limits of the partition map, and that currently reads as 100GB. My guess is that 'resizeVolume' will have the same limitation.

@I EAT TAPAS, we are running Leopard. The drive itself is being recognized for its full size, but the map matches the previous geometry.

Drive Genus software seems to do what we want: (from the user guide)
"Resetting the Partition Map
After performing device-to-device disk copy using hardware such as Disk Jockey™ from Diskology™, the partition map on your new hard drive will not allow full access to all the space. For example, if you use Disk Jockey to copy a 20 GB drive to a brand new 60 GB drive, the 60 GB drive will show up on the Macintosh as a 20 GB drive. Using Drive Genius to reset the partition map allows you to reclaim the 40 GB of extra space. "

But what does it do? There must be an easy way to fix this.. I can't justify spending $100 for 2 seconds of work..
posted by dhammala at 8:58 PM on January 15

oh, didn't even think of that. yeah, might not work. i would ditto the files over to another drive and then remap, but i imagine that isn't an option in your case (or you're really determined to see if this is possible without some proprietary tool)
posted by tumult at 11:04 PM on January 15

Carbon Copy Cloner is donation-ware. Use it to clone your drive to an external drive. Then set the external as your startup disk. Restart. Erase/initialize the problem drive using Disk Utility, which will make all of the space available again. Reinstall Leopard in the internal drive and use migration assistant to copy the data back from the external. Use Disk Utility to repair the permissions.
posted by conrad53 at 11:07 PM on January 15

You need to reformat the new drive first (using DiscUtility). Doing so will allow DiscUtility to recognize the entire volume. I'm pretty sure it's only seeing the original 100GB because this step was skipped before cloning-over the old data.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:32 AM on January 16

When you say "they" in reference to the person / company that did the upgrade for you, I am assuming that they are qualified to do the fix and that you paid them? In which case you really ought to make them fix this for you. If you pay someone to perform a service, and they don't do what they said they would do or they do a crappy job, you make them correct the issue. Plus, they may actually have the $100 software to do this quickly and safely. Ask them.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:20 AM on January 16

OS X, as of version 10.4.6, allows you to non-destructively resize partitions. You need to boot from an OS install disk (either the one that came with your mac or Leopard if you have it), and then choose Terminal from the Utilities menu after the installer loads. Once in the terminal, issue the following command:

diskutil resizeVolume "/Volumes/[your hard drive's name]" limits

This will tell you the current, minimum, and maximum size that you can make the partition, in bytes. Naturally you'll want the maximum. Copy the numbers only of the maximum value, then issue this command:

diskutil resizeVolume "/Volumes/[your hard drive's name]" [pasted value]

This will non-destructively resize your hard drive to the new size. Even though this is non-destructive, it's a good idea to have a backup before doing it, just in case.
posted by pmbuko at 10:03 PM on January 17

Sorry, skimmed too quickly. Please ignore...
posted by pmbuko at 10:04 PM on January 17

Thanks everyone who gave their best shot. I flagged the Carbon Copy Cloner suggestion because that is really the only way to fix it. We ended up finding someone who knows all about drives, partition tables, etc. They reminded us that no matter what we do, we are playing with fire. We used an external drive, made the back, restored, life is grand.
posted by dhammala at 9:27 PM on January 25