HDD partitions messed up iMac late-2009 - 4TB HDD

[brenco]

Hi people,

I've looked all over the web for an answer, and I came close but I'm not certain how to proceed. This is what happened:

On Yosemite - I wanted to install Windows 7 on my late-2009 iMac 27" with a 4TB HDD. In Bootcamp I wanted to make a partition - failed, it refused to do so. I went to disc utilities. Made a new partition (1,5TB) and formatted it Windows NT. After doing so my HDD was stuck with 2 partitions - 2,5 journaled HFS+ and 1,5TB unused partition!

I couldn't adjust it, remove it or reformat it, just dead space. I read somewhere it could be due to Yosemite having a bug in it. I upgraded to El Capitan (don't like the OS personally, but always better than a bricked hdd). In El Capitan it says:

"Change failed..."
details says
"Execute change 1 of 2...
Name invalid.
Change failed..."
(I translated from Dutch)

-Of course I gave it a proper name like "abcd", so that can't be the problem.


Here my diskutil list.

MacBook-van-Rick:~ Rick$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS RickHD 2.5 TB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_CoreStorage RBWindows 1.5 TB disk0s4
5: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s5


FirstAid on the HDD doesn't report any anomaly and says the disk is fine.
Removing the partition doens't work "... Cocoa error -1)."
fsck_hfs -> volume appears to be OK



If this helps: testdisk output:

Disk /dev/disk0 - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - 7814037168 sectors (RO)

Current partition structure:

Partition Start End Size in sectors

1 P EFI System 40 409639 409600 [EFI System Partition]
2 P Mac HFS 409640 4882817943 4882408304 [Naamloos 1]
3 P Mac Boot 4882817944 4884087479 1269536 [Recovery HD]
4 P Unknown 4884349624 7813774983 2929425360 [RBWindows]
5 P Mac Boot 7813774984 7814037127 262144 [Booter]



And on analysis:
Disk /dev/disk0 - 4000 GB / 3726 GiB - 7814037168 sectors (RO)
Analyse sector 4893802496/3519069871: 01%

check_FAT: Unusual media descriptor (0xf0!=0xf8)
Warning: number of heads/cylinder mismatches 16 (FAT) != 1 (HD)
Warning: number of sectors per track mismatches 32 (FAT) != 1 (HD)

EFI System 40 409639 409600 [EFI]
Mac HFS 409640 4882817943 4882408304
Mac HFS 4882817944 4884087479 1269536
Mac HFS 4884349620 4885619155 1269536


What should I do?

Thanks for your help!

Rick

 

[Weaselboy]

Confirm RBWindows is the partition you want to ditch? If so... do this.

Reboot and hold command-r to boot to recovery. In the Utilities menu launch Terminal then enter the command below to wipe the RBWindows partition. Somehow you managed to make that partition a core storage volume and that is why you are having trouble getting rid of it.

diskutil cs delete "RBWindows"

Now quit Terminal and launch Disk Utility and run a First Aid. Then try to resize the RickHD volume to take over the now unused 1.5TB of space.

Once that is done reboot and you should be all set.

 

[brenco]

Dude, you're gold. That totallly worked! First it only worked half (erasing the partition, but couldn't join). Then after a reboot, tried it again and totally worked. Thanks so much!