Problem with 500gb Upgrade?

Chris Corona · Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 4:07 am Post subject: Problem with 500gb Upgrade?

Today I upgraded the Ram and HDD on my Late '09 Mac Mini. For the HDD, I purchased a Bytecc BT-340 USB to SATA Standalone HDD/SSD Duplicator. After cloning the HDD contents over and installing. At first everything seems perfect, and still does. The only issue I have and am concerned about is; when checking the hardware overview, in the Serial-ATA screen, under the hard drive specs, it's showing 500Gb's as expected, but under the Macintosh HD subfile, it's showing the previous 159.7 total, and 129 available. Is this normal? Has anyone had experience with the Bytecc BT-340 or similar products? Any input is appreciated.

Cypher · Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 6:33 am Post subject:

Check in Disk Utility

Applications\Utilities\Disk Utility.app

Select your disk in the list on the right and then click on the Partitions tab.

It could be that on cloning its created a partition on the disk the same size as the original. So you may have the missing space still left unallocated.

Looking at your info, you seem to have a 500GB drive with a 210 MB partition (the lion restore) and a 160GB main partition "Macintosh HD"
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

Chris Corona · Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 2:22 pm Post subject:

Looking at the disk utility, it shows the main HD and a sub drive under that, I'm assuming that's what you were talking about. It looks as if I'm unable to delete it because it's the boot drive. Is there any way to just copy the contents to the main drive or possibly extend the memory on the boot drive to the full capacity? I see that I am able to create a second partition drive for the remainder of the memory, are there advantages to this?

Cypher · Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 4:04 pm Post subject:

In Disk Utility you should see something like this

Here on mine the drive is shown listed as 320.07GB Hitachi etc, indented below it is the partition which on mine is Macintosh HD. i.e Macintosh HD is my primary partition on the 320Gb Hitachi drive. Select your drive and then click on the Partition Tab you should then be able to see how yours is allocated.

On mine I have the 320GB as one big partition, I'm guessing yours will show your 159.7GB partition and then it will also have some unused space after that. You should be able to grab the lower corner of your allocate space and drag it to the full size available.

Make sure you have a backup before messing with the partition.
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

Chris Corona · Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:31 am Post subject:

So I tried dragging out the memory, but when I tried to apply, it gave me the error; Partition Failed - Partition failed with the error: MediaKit reports partition (map) too small

Cypher · Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 7:55 am Post subject:

I've never done partitions on my main drive, only on backups so I'm might be sending you in the wrong direction.

It could be that with it being the live partition its not allowing you to edit it although I would expect if this were the case it wouldn't give you the option to change it. The error would probably also be saying something like "Can't perform this operation on the boot drive"

Have a look at the top where it says Partition Layout does yours show two partitions.

If so it may the error is relating to Partition 2 having a too small a size, have a try just dragging your main drive out to say 400GB and see if it allows it.

I have cloned drives before on to separate drives but I normally clone the partition rather than the drive.

How did you clone the original drive ?
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

ez061111 · Veteran Member Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 887

Have you tried resizing the partition after booting with a system DVD or other external and then running disk utility?
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2.6 GHz i7 Mini 16 GB RAM, Samsung 830 & Hitachi
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Chris Corona · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 1:54 am Post subject:

No. I think I'm just going to boot the OS X and reinstall it as factory. I actually purchased it recently and the only things I have loaded on are programs so its not like i have much too lose besides time reinstalling them all. Probably a lot easier than troubleshooting the issue itself, as it is rather complicated to resolve, or so I've read
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Late '09 Mini - C2D 2.26GHz - 8Gb ram - 500Gb HDD

Cypher · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:18 pm Post subject:

As EZ mentioned, boot from the system DVD and go into Disk Utility from there. You should then be able to resize the partition. If that doesn't help then you can use that method to remove the partition and set it up again to be the full size, then reload the OS.
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

Chris Corona · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:07 pm Post subject:

So, just reloading the OS itself wont format the HDD to full size?
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Late '09 Mini - C2D 2.26GHz - 8Gb ram - 500Gb HDD

ez061111 · Veteran Member Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 887

Chris Corona · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:46 am Post subject:

Well, the device I spoke if in my OP completely clones the drive you insert in it to he drive on the receiving end. I assumed it would simply clone the contents, not clone the entire partition with the drive size limit as well.
_________________
Late '09 Mini - C2D 2.26GHz - 8Gb ram - 500Gb HDD

Cypher · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 2:45 pm Post subject:

I think as the original drive had a hidden Lion install partition when you cloned the drive it forced it to also clone the partitions and this is how it ended up with a unformatted third partition.

Partition 1 - Hidden Lion Partition
Partition 2 - Your Lion Install - Macintosh HD
Partition 3 - the remaining space above the size of your original disk

If you start from a bootable disk (Lion USB, burnt DVD etc) then go into Disk utility you should be able to delete the main partition and then set it up to the full size and then reinstall from there using the full size of the disk
_________________
Phil

Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S

Chris Corona · Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:28 am Post subject:

Booting from the OS worked. Thanks guys. If I could give kudo's or rep I would
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Late '09 Mini - C2D 2.26GHz - 8Gb ram - 500Gb HDD


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