Locked my own hard drive?

[chduryea]

hi folks, out of my depth and need help restoring my 2011 MBP from TM.

First some background: a few days ago I open up the MacBook to discover the battery had run down. So I plugged it in and restarted which has always worked before, but this time it brings me to the Recovery screen. I tried all the options it offered—restore from TM, reinstall OS (High Sierra btw) first aid, etc. nothing worked. I kept getting sent back to the Recovery menu.

At one point I noticed that when I was in disc utilities I was trying to do first aid on the OS X disc image and not the internal drive (Macintosh HD). So I selected the hd and ran first aid again. Nothing wrong according to first aid. I then tried the restore from TM again and it ran taking a very long time. And when it was done I was still stuck in Recovery. But one thing was different—when I went into Disk Utilities, The Macintosh HD seemed to have been overwritten by my back up volume which has a different name (laptop backup). And the disk is locked. I can’t erase it, I can’t restore or reinstall to it. When I try to restore or reinstall I shows me no source drive. When I do option-restart I can see the drive, but it’s grayed out and says it’s locked.

So now what? Not sure what additional info about the machine you need but happy to provide any details you think will help. Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

If you are ABSOLUTELY SURE that your TM backup is "good", you could:

- Boot to internet recovery (command-option-R at startup)
- Open Disk Utility and ERASE the ENTIRE internal drive
- RESTORE from Time Machine. (alternative: install a completely clean copy of the OS, and then use setup assistant to restore from the TM backup)

But do this ONLY if you know your backup is a good one.

I always always ALWAYS recommend CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead of TM because one can:
1. Connect the bootable backup
2. Boot TO THE FINDER
3. Go from there... either work on the internal drive, or RE-CLONE the cloned backup BACK TO the internal drive.
Much easier than fooling with either the recovery partition or internet recovery.

 

[chduryea]

If you are ABSOLUTELY SURE that your TM backup is "good", you could:

- Boot to internet recovery (command-option-R at startup)
- Open Disk Utility and ERASE the ENTIRE internal drive
- RESTORE from Time Machine. (alternative: install a completely clean copy of the OS, and then use setup assistant to restore from the TM backup)

But do this ONLY if you know your backup is a good one.

I always always ALWAYS recommend CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead of TM because one can:
1. Connect the bootable backup
2. Boot TO THE FINDER
3. Go from there... either work on the internal drive, or RE-CLONE the cloned backup BACK TO the internal drive.
Much easier than fooling with either the recovery partition or internet recovery.

Thanks!

The TM backup is from a month back so I'm reasonably sure it's good. The loop that I seem to be stuck in keeps bringing back to the recovery screen anyway, so command-option-r does not seem necessary.

Here's the latest: this morning I created a bootable USB drive and started it up from that. It still brought me to macOS Utilities, but this time it let me get at the internal drive. I did a restore, which did nothing--same result. Now I'm running a top-level erase on the thing and will attempt a clean OS install. I'll let you know what happens.

Another question: how likely is this to be a HD failure? Would I be saving myself a boatload of hassle if I just proactively replaced it?

 

[chduryea]

Thanks!

The TM backup is from a month back so I'm reasonably sure it's good. The loop that I seem to be stuck in keeps bringing back to the recovery screen anyway, so command-option-r does not seem necessary.

Here's the latest: this morning I created a bootable USB drive and started it up from that. It still brought me to macOS Utilities, but this time it let me get at the internal drive. I did a restore, which did nothing--same result. Now I'm running a top-level erase on the thing and will attempt a clean OS install. I'll let you know what happens.

Another question: how likely is this to be a HD failure? Would I be saving myself a boatload of hassle if I just proactively replaced it?

Okay the military grade erase and clean install seems to be working. Currently running migration assistant and letting it figure out if I have any incompatible software. Thanks for your help!!