Disk Utility Availible Space doesn't match Finder's Free Space

[rcappo]

I am trying to upgrade 10.6.8 to 10.8.2, yet I am having problems doing it. I think part of the reason might be because I have very little free space on my hard drive. I have not found any specifications for what the minimum amount of free space is, but I thought it was going to be 8GB, and it turns out that having 8GB free didn't solve the problem.

I have gotten down to 0 before on my computer for free space in Finder, but for some reason, the partition's available doesn't seem to agree.

I also get the error message "This disk can not be used to start up your computer" when I try to upgrade from the app store download installer. Is this because I have rEFit installed and dual boot Linux? Is it because I don't have enough free hard drive space?

Everything is backed up, and I hope that the 10.6.8 backups aren't removed from the Time Capsule I use once I do get this working. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions?

 

[rcappo]

Here is where I get stuck at during the install. Yet there is nothing suggesting what else I can do.

 

[Weaselboy]

From what you have said so far here, is looks like between your Linux installed and rEFIt, you have jacked up the boot area of the Mac HDD. You are not even getting far enough to get the not enough disk space message.

Here is what I would do (assuming you don't mind losing Linux).

First make a Time Machine or clone backup on an external drive.

Use this free utility and an 8GB USB key with the Mountain Lion installer you downloaded to make yourself a full installer USB key.

Now option key boot to the USB key and then start Disk Utility and get rid of ALL the partitions on the drive. Then select 251GB Apple SSD and erase the entire drive formatted to Mac OS Extended. Thne go ahead with the ML install.

After the install use Migration Assistant to bring your data and apps back in from the backup.

 

[Bear]

As for the available space not matching. What Disk Utility is showing as "Available Space" is what space on the disk it thinks is not assigned to a partition. And of course Finder shows free space within a Volume(partition).

 

[rcappo]

Why would Finder think it was free space if it was the Linux partition? Plus I can save 20GB of pictures or TV shows on my drive now. I had to delete those to get to 20GB.

While I'm not 100% opposed to formating and reinstalling everything over again, it will take quite a while. I did get all of my data off of the SSD drive, and it has been backed up with the Time Capsule. (And I need to upgrade Linux at the same time).

If I move the installer to a USB drive, do I need to format just the Mac partition?

But, I had hoped that this would be easier... iPhoto and iTunes are the big ones that I would need to be able to get back the way I have them now.

 

[Weaselboy]

Why would Finder think it was free space if it was the Linux partition? Plus I can save 20GB of pictures or TV shows on my drive now. I had to delete those to get to 20GB.

While I'm not 100% opposed to formating and reinstalling everything over again, it will take quite a while. I did get all of my data off of the SSD drive, and it has been backed up with the Time Capsule. (And I need to upgrade Linux at the same time).

If I move the installer to a USB drive, do I need to format just the Mac partition?

But, I had hoped that this would be easier... iPhoto and iTunes are the big ones that I would need to be able to get back the way I have them now.

I believe you are going to need to reformat the entire disk to fix the partition and boot area issues you have created. Once you do that you could just restore from your Time Machine disk and not have to fuss around reinstalling anything.

 

[rcappo]

Now I am thinking that if I were to delete or remove the Linux partitions, OS X might be happy enough to upgrade. Then I could add the partitions again in OSX 10.8 and install Linux.

The other option is to format everything, have the OS X 10.8 installer on a new USB drive along with a time machine backup of iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie that I could restore. I think I might get about 100GB free by doing this, since that much HD space has 'disappeared' and is unaccounted for it seems like. But, it is also more time intensive.

 

[mac-hacks]

Now I am thinking that if I were to delete or remove the Linux partitions, OS X might be happy enough to upgrade. Then I could add the partitions again in OSX 10.8 and install Linux.

The other option is to format everything, have the OS X 10.8 installer on a new USB drive along with a time machine backup of iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie that I could restore. I think I might get about 100GB free by doing this, since that much HD space has 'disappeared' and is unaccounted for it seems like. But, it is also more time intensive.

Save your self headache and time and start from scratch and reformat drive and do clean OS install and transfer your data with TimeMachine. Your Disk is all out of wake and I have feeling Linux distro screwed up your MBR Boot Code. And I bet $ your EFI is not at front of drive. FYI - you do not need swap that big if your using SSD.

Im guessinng your using ubuntu? DOesn't matter. Format drive like this:

Make Bootable OSX USB installer, Im guessing thats what Weaselboy link is for few post up.

Partition drive this way with Diskutiltiy:

Select partition -> 2 Partition "using GUID partition scheme" -> 1st partiton HFS+ Journaled & make it size you want OS X -> 2nd Partiton Format as free space.

Install OSX and then boot linux and format free space manually with gpart or use GUI from boot menu so it looks like this.

Select /dev/sda0 to install bootloader

/dev/disk0s1 EFI "Fat32"
/dev/disk0s2 OSX "HFS+ Journaled"
/dev/disk0s3 RecoveryHD "HFS+ Journaled"
/dev/disk0s4 Linux "/Root" format ext4 "O.S. & apps goes here."
/dev/disk0s5 Linux "swap" size 1024mb
/dev/disk0s6 Linux "/Home" format ext4 "User files will be here"

FYI good Idea to leave 10-25% of free space on SSD for garbage collection.

 

[rcappo]

As an update, I did manage to backup everything to an external drive and upgraded my Macbook Pro yesterday. The first thing I tried was to remove the Linux Partition using Disk Utility and while that 10GB was not recoverable by the 10.6.8 OS, the upgrade was happy and would have worked I believe. At least I didn't get the above error, and it was starting to install before I canceled it.

I ended up formating and starting over. I had the external USB boot installer for 10.8.2 all ready, and I wanted to upgrade both Mac and Linux. So, I restarted and loaded the USB drive utility. I formatted the entire drive and then installed Mac OS X 10.8.2. Once that finished I modified the partition to include a 10GB linux partition and a 1GB Swap drive.

And then I booted with the Linux DVD in and installed it in the /sda4 and /sda5 locations.

Now, however, I can not boot into it, even though I thought that I told linux to install the bootloader on /sda4 and Mac's EFI is on /sda1 that I didn't want to touch. I had expected that by holding down the option key during boot, I would have been able to select /sda4 or /sda1...

But, it looks like I have to install some software to manage that. Any suggestions??

 

[rcappo]

Select /dev/sda0 to install bootloader

/dev/disk0s1 EFI "Fat32"
/dev/disk0s2 OSX "HFS+ Journaled"
/dev/disk0s3 RecoveryHD "HFS+ Journaled"
/dev/disk0s4 Linux "/Root" format ext4 "O.S. & apps goes here."
/dev/disk0s5 Linux "swap" size 1024mb
/dev/disk0s6 Linux "/Home" format ext4 "User files will be here"

I didn't have this in front of me when I installed Linux. I could always install it again since I haven't booted into it yet.

But I don't remember seeing /dev/sda0 as a choice for the boot loader, or if it was it was used by the Mac or EFI or something. Would I still be able to boot into the Mac? I haven't done too much on the Mac that I wouldn't be able to recover from by redownloading stuff.

I took a few pictures, and one choice was:

Device for boot loader installation:
/dev/sda ATA APPLE SSD TS256B (251.0 GB)
or
/dev/sda4

I did get this error, that I guess I should have heeded.

 

[rcappo]

I was able to get it to work by downloading rEFInd, and then dragging the install.sh script into a terminal window and running it.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.7/refind-bin-0.6.7.zip/download
(it is called the binary zip file on the rEFInd website. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ )


That was easy.

 

[mac-hacks]

I was able to get it to work by downloading rEFInd, and then dragging the install.sh script into a terminal window and running it.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/files/0.6.7/refind-bin-0.6.7.zip/download
(it is called the binary zip file on the rEFInd website. http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/ )


That was easy.

FYI: "/dev/disk0s1" is format OS X uses and Linux uses "/dev/sda". Sorry if I confused you.

In future choose this from Linux Install menu:

/dev/sda ATA APPLE SSD TS256B (251.0 GB)

 

[rcappo]

FYI: "/dev/disk0s1" is format OS X uses and Linux uses "/dev/sda". Sorry if I confused you.

In future choose this from Linux Install menu:

/dev/sda ATA APPLE SSD TS256B (251.0 GB)

I was afraid that doing that would have prevented OS X from booting, is that not the case?

 

[mac-hacks]

I was afraid that doing that would have prevented OS X from booting, is that not the case?

Your default boot-loader will be linux until you reboot back to OS X by holding Option Key and select OSX disk from menu. From there you set OS X back to default in System Preferences or you need to reset refind so boot menu loads it.

Any time you install 2nd or 3rd OS on Mac it will automatically be default until you reset it in OSX or refind.

Reason refind worked for you is cause you probably didn't install bootloader in sda01 or diskos1 which is EFI. You probably install grub to a hybrid MBR scheme, which will work. It's hard for me to know exactly what you did with out looking at grub.cfg and partition table.

I looks like your using Mint, I have never used it so I'm not sure exactly how it loads and installs bootloader on Mac.

Linux is not like OS X or Windows, boot loaders can install to different directories and names. Using hybrid MBR partition scheme doesn't normally use achi which will limit performance on SSD.