Mavericks, increase partition size after installing larger disk

[mraikes]

I'm working on an iMac (24", early 2008). Had a full 320 gb drive installed. I removed it, cloned to a 1tb drive (using ddrescue) and put the 1tb drive back into the iMac. I thought (perhaps foolishly) that I would be able to increase the partition size from 320 to the 1tb to take advantage of the larger drive.

Using disk utility, I see the partition layout with "Macintosh HD" occupying the expected 320gb. I stretch/resize it to the full 999 and click "apply". A warning window pops up "Are you sure ..?" and I click "Partition". Very briefly, a couple of seconds, a progress bar appears and goes away. The partition layout doesn't change. No further messages.

So I reboot, use command-R, choose disk utility and try again as above. It fails again, but at least shows an error message "Partition Failed . . Couldn't unmount disk"

Googling around I see suggestions to use diskutil to force an unmount, but that also fails with a similar message "failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted"

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

 

[Markverhyden]

Has FileVault been enabled? Personally I prefer to do images using Time Machine restore points since those ignore disk sizes as long as the new ones are larger. ddrescue will not automatically adjust partition sizes from what I remember. Another option is to make a 10.9 bootable media, boot to that, run Repair Disk and then see if you can resize. Or if you have another Mac boot the target machine into target disk mode (hold down the T key when powering it up)

 

[kwisher]

Another option would be to boot a live Linux distro and try using Gparted to resize the partition.

 

[300DDR]

Try iPartition. I've had great luck with it in these situations where DU fails.

 

[phaZed]

I second the idea of Filevault encryption being enabled. You must disable and wait the 4-6 hours to decrypt the drive. Then, resizing the partition will likely work.

 

[kwest]

Boot to usb os disk and launch disk utility the. Copy partition to new drive. Boom done. No need for other utilities.

 

[Markverhyden]

Another option I forgot was Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

[mraikes]

Some good options, thanks for the suggestions!

Filevault is turned off.
Linux distro with gparted would let me move the partition around in the empty space, but wouldn't let me enlarge the partition to fill the empty space.
Now attempting target mode from my own imac. Will report back.

 

[lcoughey]

Assuming the source drive is healthy, I would use disk utility to copy to larger drive.

 

[mraikes]

BAM. Mark's first suggestion was spot on. Target mode did the trick. And quickly.

Partition successfully extended to the full size of the drive. In the end it was easy peasy.

Thanks for pointing me to a solution! Now I can sit back and enjoy my Sunday evening.

 

[Markverhyden]

Some good options, thanks for the suggestions!

Filevault is turned off.
Linux distro with gparted would let me move the partition around in the empty space, but wouldn't let me enlarge the partition to fill the empty space.
Now attempting target mode from my own imac. Will report back.

Not all disk utilities can properly handle HFS+. Per this link gparted cannot grow an HFS+ partition. That's why I stick with known OS X compliant disk utilities. That includes diskutil the native OS X cli tool. Here is a link on one way to do that.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/76008/how-to-resize-macintosh-hd