HELP! HD locked on reinstall!

[rain012]

I can tell you how to format the drive and reinstall likely, but that won't get your data back. You have no backup or anything and really need to recover what is on the internal drive?

With a stroke of bad luck, my only external backup drive I had fell and died. So yeah, I don’t have a backup, sad to say. Is there no way I can retrieve my files? Nevertheless, worse comes to worst, please share to me how to format the drive and reinstall anyway. Thank you so much Weaselboy!
[doublepost=1512564267][/doublepost]This is gonna be a hard lesson learned for me.

 

[Weaselboy]

With a stroke of bad luck, my only external backup drive I had fell and died. So yeah, I don’t have a backup, sad to say. Is there no way I can retrieve my files? Nevertheless, worse comes to worst, please share to me how to format the drive and reinstall anyway. Thank you so much Weaselboy!
[doublepost=1512564267][/doublepost]This is gonna be a hard lesson learned for me.

What you can try to save data is get an external drive in a USB enclosure then use Disk Utility from recovery to copy the internal drive to the external. You might be able to then reinstall the OS to the internal then see data from there on the external. You could even send the drive off to a data recovery company if it is important enough to you.

Otherwise, to dump it and start over, boot back to your Sierra installer then start Disk Util and go to the erase tab and select the drive itself at the very top of the left column. Then format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then quit DU and try to reinstall.

 

[rain012]

What you can try to save data is get an external drive in a USB enclosure then use Disk Utility from recovery to copy the internal drive to the external. You might be able to then reinstall the OS to the internal then see data from there on the external. You could even send the drive off to a data recovery company if it is important enough to you.

Otherwise, to dump it and start over, boot back to your Sierra installer then start Disk Util and go to the erase tab and select the drive itself at the very top of the left column. Then format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Then quit DU and try to reinstall.

Thanks you so much Weaselboy! Will try it tomorrow when I get back at the office. I’m on the other side of the world. Keep on rocking Weaselboy and continue being awesome!
[doublepost=1512569500][/doublepost]Will post the outcome asap. Thanks again!

 

[rain012]

Thanks you so much Weaselboy! Will try it tomorrow when I get back at the office. I’m on the other side of the world. Keep on rocking Weaselboy and continue being awesome!
[doublepost=1512569500][/doublepost]Will post the outcome asap. Thanks again!

Good day Weaselboy! What are the steps so I can copy my internal drive files to the external? The disk0s2 is still unmounted and cannot be mounted.

 

[Weaselboy]

Good day Weaselboy! What are the steps so I can copy my internal drive files to the external? The disk0s2 is still unmounted and cannot be mounted.

Boot to Internet recovery and format your new external drive to Mac OS Extended in Disk Utility.

Then select the external like in my screenshot and click the Restore button. Then in the dropdown select then internal drive and click restore. That will essentially clone the internal to the external drive.

 

[rain012]

Thanks so much Weaselboy! Reformatting now! You rock!

 

[Lavelltware]

Up in post #21 you posted a picture that showed Macintosh HD as an install target. When you took that photo, were you booted to recovery (command-r boot)?

Mine is doing the same please help

 

[mark_machelp]

Boot to Internet recovery and format your new external drive to Mac OS Extended in Disk Utility.

Then select the external like in my screenshot and click the Restore button. Then in the dropdown select then internal drive and click restore. That will essentially clone the internal to the external drive.

View attachment 740750

Hi There,

Looks like you've been helping people for years with a problem similar to what I just ran into.

I am also trying to reinstall MacOS and ran into hard drive troubles. I followed some of what you prescribed in previous posts, and after entering diskutil cs list into terminal, I got "No CoreStorage logical volume groups found"

Doesn't sound good...what do you think?

Thanks in advance!

 

[mark_machelp]

I apparently did not read thoroughly enough through your old posts....I think I was able to fix it by piecing together advice you gave to others. Thank you so much for your valiant efforts in this thread (and probably elsewhere...). You are a king among men.

 

[vanessa picardi]

I'm not quite sure how you got in this mess, but here is how to fix it. (I am assuming here there is not some underlying hardware issue that got all this started).

Hold command-option-r at boot and select your wifi when asked. Then you will see a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads and installs. Once that is done you will see the recovery screen. From there launch Terminal from the Utilities menu and enter the line below exactly like I have it, including the quotes. That will blow off the Fusion drive.

diskutil cs delete "Fusion Drive"

Now quit Terminal and launch Disk Utility. You should see a screen like this offering to fix the Fusion drive. Go ahead and click Fix to rebuild the Fusion drive.

View attachment 610983

Now quit Disk Utility and click reinstall OS X at the top and wait for it to finish and restart. This will put you on the OS X version that came from the factory. You can update to El Capitan after if you like.

What you are seeing locked there in your second screenshot is the Recovery HD partition, and that is as it should be and not the problem. The problem is you borked the Fusion drive somehow and this will fix it.

Hi please help! How do I get to the terminal part where I enter the code? I was following your steps and got stuck on that part!

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi please help! How do I get to the terminal part where I enter the code? I was following your steps and got stuck on that part!

If you are in Recovery, click the Utilities menu up top and you will see Terminal in that menu.

 

[enrcas]

Hi I just inherited a Mac and it has this same issue.
I cannot install high Sierra.
Under disk utility I cannot erase the OSX Base System. I can erase a partition called OS X but it is only 104.9 MB.
If I click on show all devices it will show a
TOSHIBA THNSF128GBSJ but I cannot erase that either through disk utility

 

[Weaselboy]

TOSHIBA THNSF128GBSJ but I cannot erase that either through disk utility

You need to be in Internet recovery to erase the whole drive. You cannot do it from regular command-r recovery.

Hold command-option-r at boot and after selecting your wifi you will see a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads. Once the recovery screen comes up you will be able to erase the whole disk with Disk Utility.

 

[enrcas]

Thanks! I thought I could outsmart the system hahahaha I couldn’t do it off my phones hospot connection it gave me that 3430f error I’ll try later at Home. Thank you!
[doublepost=1515701778][/doublepost]Just tried at work and got that same error. It won’t load internet recovery. Gives error 3403f.
Any ideas?

 

[enrcas]

You need to be in Internet recovery to erase the whole drive. You cannot do it from regular command-r recovery.

Hold command-option-r at boot and after selecting your wifi you will see a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads. Once the recovery screen comes up you will be able to erase the whole disk with Disk Utility.

Is there a way to do this through bootable USB? I keep getting that 3403f error when it starts to download the recovery

 

[Weaselboy]

Is there a way to do this through bootable USB? I keep getting that 3403f error when it starts to download the recovery

Sure... if you have another Mac where you can download the OS and make a USB key installer.

Usually that error is because your network is using a wifi encryption method not supported by Internet recovery. Can you try it home or on an open wifi network somewhere?

 

[Jennlis]

I have a 2009 mac. I've tried everything and anything. Starting to give up. Please help. Im thinking my drive is messed up but i honestly have no clue what im doing

 

[Weaselboy]

I have a 2009 mac. I've tried everything and anything. Starting to give up. Please help. Im thinking my drive is messed up but i honestly have no clue what im doing

Your model does not have Internet recovery, so ignore anything you may have already read about that as a solution.

Can you explain what happened and what the problem is?

 

[Jennlis]

Your model does not have Internet recovery, so ignore anything you may have already read about that as a solution.

Can you explain what happened and what the problem is?

My mac would take really long to load after every click. So i tried ro factory reset it. After i try to redownload the os x sierra i only get the osx base system drive to click but its locked. I typed in the command diskutil cs lis and diskutil list. One says nothing is found and the other is the picture ive provided

 

[Weaselboy]

My mac would take really long to load after every click.

I am assuming you did not install any software or anything that brought this on? If you were just happily using your Mac, and all on its own you started getting these symptoms, you very likely have a failing drive that needs to be replaced.

 

[Jennlis]

I can tell you how to format the drive and reinstall likely, but that won't get your data back. You have no backup or anything and really need to recover what is on the internal drive?

Nope ive already backed all my stuff onto a usb drive. So anything on the mac can be removed
[doublepost=1515859640][/doublepost]

I am assuming you did not install any software or anything that brought this on? If you were just happily using your Mac, and all on its own you started getting these symptoms, you very likely have a failing drive that needs to be replaced.

Well it was only on my account that did this. All other accounts worked perfect. I couldnt make another accound or delete mine because mine was the primary account and it just took too long to get one window open. I would wait 10 minutes before being able to click on something new.

 

[Weaselboy]

Well it was only on my account that did this. All other accounts worked perfect.

Just so I am clear, you had more than one user account and the slowness happened in one account and not at all in the other? If that is the case, it sounds like you did install something that is launching in that account causes the issue.

The problem now is your Mac does not have Internet recovery, so you need something like a Time Machine backup or a USB key installer to install the OS from. Did you by any chance make a Time Machine backup before you did this?

What OS version were you on?

 

[enrcas]

So I just got done with mine using a usb installer

 

[Jennlis]

Just so I am clear, you had more than one user account and the slowness happened in one account and not at all in the other? If that is the case, it sounds like you did install something that is launching in that account causes the issue.

The problem now is your Mac does not have Internet recovery, so you need something like a Time Machine backup or a USB key installer to install the OS from. Did you by any chance make a Time Machine backup before you did this?

What OS version were you on?

I didnt do a time machine backup. How can i use a usb to install the os? I was on macos sierra

 

[Weaselboy]

I didnt do a time machine backup. How can i use a usb to install the os? I was on macos sierra

You are going to need access to another Mac so you can download the OS from that Mac and make the USB key following the instructions here.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372