Hard Drive Space Missing

Hello,

I have a Macbook and I installed Ubuntu 8.04 as a guest OS in Mac using Parrallels. I gave the guest OS 10gb of hard drive space. I decided that I didn't need Ubuntu anymore so I removed it. After uninstalling Ubuntu and Parallels the 10gb of hard drive space is still missing.

I even reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled Mac OSX, but my hard drive only comes up with 150gb even though it is a 160gb hard drive. I have given up and I don't know what to do.

 

If you reformatted drive and rinstalled Mac OS, VM is not there, usually 160 gb drive means 150 GB real space,
it is before manufacturer calculates 160 g as 1000x1000x etc, but Mac shows real as 1024x1024
Also you can check where are your space using
http://www.derlien.com/

 

The space IS missing

I'm having the same problem. I installed a trial of Parallels 7 and windows7 (9.6gigs) and decided I'd buy it through my university institution. So I deleted it (didn't uninstall initially, which was dumb, but I didn't think this would happen) after removing the virtual machine in parallels. I then deleted the windows install file. However, the disk space is still coming up 9.6 gigs short. Essentially, deleting parallels and windows did not return the Mac disk drive space to normal. Even though the Disk Utility of the Mac showed 9.6 gigs missing, it showed total capacity of the hard drive as normal (~121 gigs, MBA). HOWEVER, Disk Inventory X and OmniDiskSweeper show the total capacity as 112 gigs! That space used by parallels and windows IS GONE. What is going on here?

 

You either still have a bootcamp partition or you have the ~/Documents/Parallels with all your VMs (.pvm).

 

I tried using Bootcamp Assistant to remove partitions but it doesn't show any as present (i.e., only gives me the option to create partitions, not remove them). And there is no Parallels folder. Everything was deleted. 9.6 gigs is still gone and not recognized by 3rd party Disk utility apps. Help?

 

Empty trash.

 

Unfortunately, that was the first thing I did. Please note the bit of info in my initial post regarding the total capacity of the computer being diminished (although this decrease is only recognized by 3rd party software). I liked your suggestion that I needed to get rid of the partition, but there is none. When setting up parallels and windows7, I set it to use the mac hard drive without making a partition, or whatever those options were that I'm now forgetting. Please help.

 

Can't help.

 

Does anyone have any insight here? There seems to be some space delegated for windows, presumably by parallels, that is still being used after both are deleted. I tried running the uninstall software after the fact, and even reinstalled parallels and uninstalled again, for some reason. And that didn't help. Judging from the first comment, reinstalling MacOS might not even work..

This is obviously not the first time Parallels has had this problem... does anyone have any ideas? For instance, how Mac OS does not seem to be recognizing some type of partition here?

 

I will add that the Parallels folder keeps reappearing in the shared folder in /Users/ even after I've deleted it a couple times. Could this be related?

 

For what it's worth, please see the attachment. Why does Parallels show up as a drive in Disk Inventory X (and OmniDiskSweeper, not shown) after uninstall? The spotlight search on the right shows only the dmg file downloaded from the website.

 

Because you have the parallels installer disk image (.dmg) mounted on your desktop, eject it.

As for the "judging from the first comment", if you read the following comment you see the user in question was mistaken, the issue was with how the harddrive space is calculated by HD makers and by the OS.
Note that this thread started in 2008, since then Apple has changed their policy on how to calculate HD space, they now use the HD makers policy, meaning, 1 MB is 1000 KB instead of 1 MB being 1024 KB, do the math.

My theory is that you have a non standard Bootcamp partition not recognized by Lion (I know you are running Lion), this has probably to do with the upgrade to Lion. I suggest you backup all your data, use carbon copy cloner (google it), or time machine, and reformat, and put your data back in.

 

Using time machine, I looked at the backups on the external drive and found the previous one shows about 10gigs less on the HD, which makes sense, so I used command-R and chose that backup to reformat. When it asked what hard drive to restore to, or when it gave me the option of the local Mac HD, it again showed the max capacity at 112 gigs. I think you are entirely correct that this is a non-standard partition. But rebooting from a backup won't seem to fix it. It still sees the max MBA hard drive capacity at 112 gigs instead of 121 (i think like the first comment was indicating).

 

What I said wasn't anything like that. I said to backup what you have now in OSX, format the drive, and restore your backup.
Reformat or format is not the same as restoring a backup.
You accomplish this by booting into Lion installation media, running Disk Utility from there to format the drive. The problem you have is that you likely don't have Lion installation media (dvd or usb) neither you probably have a recovery partition because if Lion installation detected a non standard partition map it didn't install it.

Look, you are not a very technical user (your understanding of what reformatting is leads me to conclude this), I can't give you technical instructions/steps for you to follow.
So, backup, go to an Apple Store or contact a Apple expert that can resolve your Lion installation. Because I don't want to be held responsible if you lose all your data by trying to tell you what steps to follow and you don't give me all the information I would need or you will misunderstand like you did with reformat.

That's all I can do for you.

 

Well, I'm sorry. I didn't realize only technical users were allowed to ask questions in online forums. My mistake. Would you kindly direct me to someone at Parallels who could help then? Because a "non-standard Bootcamp partition" is fine and dandy but I just want my 10 gigs back..ya know, those ones that were there before I installed and uninstalled Parallels?

If I misunderstood you, that is good because I didn't install from a backup anyway. So, are you saying I can "re-for-mat" with Control-R when rebooting and then picking the Disk utility? I can handle technical instructions just fine; in fact, they are exactly what I've been trying to find here.

 

I don't speak for other users.
I don't speak for Parallels, nor I work for Parallels.
I don't allow or disallow anything around here.
I give advice, and that's what I did, I consider your data is safer if you contact technician directly, in person, that can gather the necessary info directly from your computer.
My intention is not to insult anyone, but the problem here is semantics, if we do not speak the same technical language I don't have the time or the patience to walk you thru what everything means. So, what I'm saying is that I give up on trying to help you, maybe someone else might feel up to the task.

 

A link would be fine. I am using Lion and back up through Time Machine often to a Time Capsule, so consider your instructions more idiot proof. If you think you have a solution, please share, because I see that you've commented on similar issues years ago ("Lost 30GB after uninstalling Parallels. Help!"). I can boot to the recovery "partition" fine, which I assume you get to with Cmd R or holding option when restarting - does this answer your previous concern "The problem you have is that you likely don't have Lion installation media (dvd or usb) neither you probably have a recovery partition because if Lion installation detected a non standard partition map it didn't install it."?