Hard disk space not entirely restored after restoring partition

[new mac]

hi everyone. i recently successfully installed vista basic on my MacBook Pro (2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, Mac OS X v10.5.6 after latest updates) using Boot Camp.

Initially I allocated 60 GB to vista and saw that vista only took up ~20GB. Since I will mostly be using Mac OS X, I decided to change the windows partition to 40 GB.

Following the Boot Camp Installation & Setup Guide pdf on Apple's website, as I had been doing for vista installation, I used Boot Camp Assistant to partition the disk again to reinstall Windows. I restored the partition to the Mac OS X partition after Boot Camp Assistant warned me that it would permanently delete the contents of the Windows partition.

The 2 partitions have now apparently become 1 but my Macintosh HD partition (163.3 GB) is now 23 GB smaller than what I started out with (186 GB)! When i open Disk Utility and click on Macintosh HD, it lists "Capacity: 186.0 GB" but "Available: 163.3 GB". What happened to this 23 GB chunk of space?!?!

I read somewhere that this requires a full re-installation of Leopard before I install Vista again! Is this true?

Would someone please tell me:

1) what exactly happened to the 23 GB and what the current situation with my mac is, and

2) how to fix it. Is there a way to fix it without resorting to a full Leopard reinstallation? This would be a problem as my mac didn't come with an installation DVD since it was part of a bulk order.

Please note that I am not that proficient when it comes to technical details of computers. I would appreciate a dumbed-down step-by-step set of instructions.

Thanks in advance!

 

[chscag]

Too late for you now, but it's not necessary to remove and re-create a BC partition in order to re-size it. Two applications are available which can do it and both are free: WinClone and CampTune

Back to your problem.... Sounds like the removal of the BC partition and merging it back into OS X did not go as it should have. Using the BC assistant and selecting create partition, then selecting delete should have gotten you back to square one.

There's not much you can do without an install DVD set or recovery set. You're going to need a Leopard DVD set. I suggest buying a set if you don't have one. You say your machine was part of a bulk order, where are the disks?

Regards.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

^ yea, there should of been disks. I would not buy a multi-thousand dollar computer without disks. Maybe an old toy like a PB or something, but not something I intend to use daily as a main computer.

 

[new mac]

im a major idiot w/ a capital "I"

i am so sorry guys i've been reading this ALL wrong.

apparently, i misread the numbers. before i ever used boot camp, i could've sworn the status bar (i dont know what you call it) at the bottom of the Finder window said "163 GB available out of 186 GB". Now it just says "163 GB available." like an idiot, the 1st thought that came across my mind was that the number 163 GB was the total GB on my hard disk since it was the last number on the status bar (in fact it was the only number!) So anyway, i do end up with the same amount of available space as i had before after all, i just read the numbers wrong. Sorry about the whole false alarm.

by the way, do any of u guys know how to make the status bar display "X GB available out of Y GB" so i dont make this idiotic mistake in the future?