Can't rename startup drive from ""

[Howlinmoon]

One of the joys have having kittens, is they tend walk all over the keyboard and rename things left and right.

I recently discovered time machine wasn't making backups - and when attempting to force a backup, it complained that there were no drives to backup. I suggested editing the exclusion list.

I checked the list, and the only thing in it is the time machine drive and /users/share/adi
(From what I have seen - the latter is normal for Sierra)

The problem appears to be - the start up drive (typically named "Macintosh HD") is nameless.
Attempting to name it anything at all, results in the same error message, suggesting I use another name, since that one is unavailable.

I have tried renaming it multiple ways - via finder, simply clicking on it, via Disk Utility (the rename option doesn't seem to give any prompts)

Looking at "Startup Disk" under shows absolutely nothing. Yet the computer starts up just fine.

I'm pretty sure the name of the drive is the time machine issue - and I'd appreciate any non-destructive advice on how to fix it - since the last successful backup was 3 weeks ago...

thanks

Jim

 

[SoggyCheese]

Boot into the recovery partition by rebooting the Mac and holding down Command-R immediately after the chime. Once booted start a terminal session (it's in the Utilities menu at the top) and run the following command.

diskutil

It should return something similar to this

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 880.0 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 119.3 GB disk0s4

Note that on my output above partitiion #2 is labelled Macintosh HD. Yours will say something different. Either way it will be the Apple_HFS formatted disk.

Once you have the current name you can use the rename option on diskutil to rename it.

diskutil rename <oldname> <newname>

Run diskutil on its own again to confirm that the rename has taken. Once happy, reboot back into OSX.

 

[Howlinmoon]

OK - I booted into recovery mode, and I'm guessing you meant
'diskutil list' - since 'diskutil' by itself only gives you the usage...
Attached is the output from 'list' since I couldn't figure out a way to copy it to a file with the filesystem being readonly.

I then attempted to rename the partition - and I may have the syntax wrong - since that didn't work...
Can't seem to get a second screen shot to post - here is the url for it:

https://www.bifftech.com/timemachine/rename_output.jpg

 

[MacUser2525]

Your drive(s) is/are listed and named properly you can see them, the /dev/disk0s2 and /dev/disk1s2 a fusion drive setup. The drive you attempt to rename in the second non-posted picture has nothing to do with what you want to accomplish it is the recovery image base system. And it is just that a drive you attempt to rename not the partition on the drive which would contain your install, you would want something like /dev/disk2s2 in the line if it was a correct option for that drive. Now seeing what appears to be correct output in the first picture I am unsure where to go from here you could try the rename again using correct partition(s) but having never dealt with a fusion drive setup not certain of that procedure. First thing I would do though if enough space exists on the TM backup drive to partition it in half and get a current full backup onto it then that would be done.