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I face very similar description as in this post here 50GB of disk space missing

I did post an additional question in that thread and was recommended to open a separate question .

After migrating to Catalina, I ended up with multiple containers and disks. I removed 1 container but fail to recover the space that was used by this extra container.

When trying to fix the issue here was my situation. enter image description here

Next I removed the EFI disk

sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0s1

When running the command :

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

error reply remains : Started APFS operation Error: -69743: The new size must be different than the existing size

So I'm stuck in this situation with half of my disk storage capacity missing.

enter image description here

enter image description here enter image description here

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  • Add to your question the output from the commands Container=$(diskutil list | grep Apple_APFS) and diskutil info "${Container##* }" | grep -e Size -e Offset. These commands will provide information on where the APFS container resides on the drive.
    – David Anderson
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 14:04
  • Hi David thanks for looking into this post. I'm unclear with your first instruction Container=$(diskutil list | grep Apple_APFS) . With regards to end one diskutil info "${Container##* }" | grep -e Size -e Offset; the output I got was :
    – Tanguy
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 14:13
  • Partition Offset: 250225897472 Bytes (488722456 512-Byte-Device-Blocks) Disk Size: 249.9 GB (249881944064 Bytes) (exactly 488050672 512-Byte-Units) Device Block Size: 512 Bytes
    – Tanguy
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 14:16
  • Are these the information output you expected? (Sorry poor input format, I'm new to this plateforme, still learning how to use appropriate messaging format in. the comment section).
    – Tanguy
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 14:28
  • If you add the partition size to the disk size, you get 500,107,841,536 bytes. Therefore, there is no free space below the Container to recover. The error message is correct. In other words, all the free space is above the container. Free space above the container can not be added to the container.
    – David Anderson
    Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 14:30

1 Answer 1

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The current partition map of your internal HDD looks like this:

    start       size  index  contents
        0          1         PMBR
        1          1         Pri GPT header
        2         32         Pri GPT table
       34  488722422         
488722456  488050672      3  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
976773128          7         
976773135         32         Sec GPT table
976773167          1         Sec GPT header

The partition with the index 3 is your APFS container container disk1 housing HDD, HDD - Données, and other APFS volumes.

Before removing the EFI partition (index 1/disk0s1) it looked like this (with a giant gap between the EFI and the APFS container):

    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  488312816
488722456  488050672      3  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
976773128          7         
976773135         32         Sec GPT table
976773167          1         Sec GPT header

You can't expand a partition to lower block numbers (i.e. moving the first block of the container (index 3) from block 488722456 to block 409640).

The partition with the index number 2 resided in the empty space and was removed earlier.

I removed 1 container but fail to recover the space that was used by this extra container

I recommend to get an external drive, set it up as Time Machine backup drive and backup your internal drive.

Then format the internal drive (booted to Internet macOS Recovery) to GPT/APFS, install macOS Catalina and migrate your user data from the Time Machine backup to the internal drive.

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  • "Then format the internal drive (booted to Internet macOS Recovery) to GPT/APFS". Ok When in Internet Recovery, I opened the Disk Utility, I could edit existing internal container and drive, but I failed to create a container larger than 249Gb. I did not get your point about "GPT/APFS". What does GPT stand for? Did I miss something?
    – Tanguy
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 14:11
  • @Tanguy 1st: Did you backup your drive already? Because formatting the internal drive means deleting all partitions (and data). 2nd: GPT means GUID Partition Table (which is the default setting) alternatives: MBR or Apple Partition Map.
    – klanomath
    Commented Apr 15, 2020 at 14:14
  • Bingo! it worked. Got my 250Gb missing back into my Drive! Thanks a lot. I had to use the Menu Display / Show All Device to reveal the container first. Thanks a LOT!
    – Tanguy
    Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 16:21

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