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I'm installing Windows via Bootcamp but during the partitioning, my MacBook Pro crashed and now after the reboot I'm seeing that I only have 15GB of free space left. I had 33GB before partitioning.

Since I need at least 30GB to reinstall Bootcamp I'm stuck here and need to find out where the 18GB went during partitioning. Any ideas where to look/what to delete?

Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you!

MacBook Pro 13" Retina 2014, 128GB, Mac OS X 10.10.5

Edit: It's probably worth mentioning that the new Volume does not seem to be created as I only have one, which still has the same total size of 120GB

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You most probably still have the disk partitioned in the GPT, but there are no partitions on the disk any more. This has happened to me twice when trying to remove the Boot Camp partition.

You have to compare the output of diskutil list disk0 and sudo gpt show disk0 to see which partitions are still in the GPT, but are marked as unused. Then you'll have to create a temporary partition which you can then delete from Disk Utility.

For example,

[onik@Oniks-MacBook-Air ~]$ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            204.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s4
onik@Oniks-MacBook-Air ~]$ sudo gpt show disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6         
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  398437504      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  398847144        856         
  398848000      32768      3  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  398880768     228520         
  399109288    1269760      4  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  400379048   89855676         
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header

shows that there is unused but reserved space at the end of the disk (the line after index 4). You can solve this by creating a partition in the space manually.

Boot into recovery and open a terminal. Unmount the disk with diskutil unmountDisk disk0 (use your own disk number) and calculate the available space for the partition. OSX needs 262144 sectors of empty space after each partition, so subtract that from the size of the space available. After this, create the partition with sudo gpt add -b 400379048 -s 89829462 -t hfs disk0.

After this, if you run diskutil list disk0 again, you'll see the partition, but you'll need to format it. sudo newfs_hfs -v "Temporary volume" -J /dev/rdisk0s5 will do the trick (but use your own disk and partition number). Now you can close the terminal, open up Disk Utility and delete the temporary partition, and Disk Utility will take care of the rest.

Now just reboot and run Boot Camp Assistant again!

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  • When you ask to boot to recovery, do you mean internet recovery or the recovery partition on disk0s4?
    – David Anderson
    Commented Aug 16, 2015 at 20:57
  • The local recovery partition, cmd+R on boot. It allows disk0 to be unmounted so it's enough.
    – aleksikallio
    Commented Aug 16, 2015 at 20:59
  • That is my point, you can not unmount disk0 if you boot to the recovery partition on disk0. Since this is true, you can not use the gpt command to create a new partition. It will work, if you boot to internet recovery or to a recovery partition stored on a USB drive. Another common mistake is to assume that if gpt shows free space, that it is actually free. It may not be if fdisk shows the same space to be allocated. In other words, you have to check both the GPT and the MBR partition table to see what space is or is not allocated.
    – David Anderson
    Commented Aug 16, 2015 at 21:15
  • @DavidAnderson on my system the recovery partition loads an image into RAM as disk1s1, and mounts this as root. This allows disk0 to be unmounted. You're right about needing to check MBR as well if you use hybrid disks.
    – aleksikallio
    Commented Aug 16, 2015 at 21:23
  • Well, I can not say why your Mac differs from mine. My recover partition mounts on /Volumes/Image Volume and will not unmount. I am using OS X 10.10.5 and do not have Core Storage. My iMac is an older model: 20-inch mid 2007. My root is in RAM as disk1s2.
    – David Anderson
    Commented Aug 17, 2015 at 1:07

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