Secure erase failed; anyone up for a happy Sunday challenge?

[AJZ]

Hi there,

#posted before on iOS forum, sorry for that#

I'm a long time Mac friend and user, not that deep in the technics/codes/programming.
But, lucky/idiot me, by trying to secure erase freespace on my startup volume I may have messed up big time...

MacBook Pro retina late 2013, OS Sierra was installed and up to date.
Yesterday I ran clear freespace via Terminal in recovery mode, but an hour later an error report appeared, which I do not remember, was just clicking to go on.

After many attempts and searching the web, I assume the temporary file diskutil is writing was not deleted, because the drive "Macintosh HD" is greyed out and has no free space.
Normal startup results in a black screen with the white stop/invalid sign.
Starting in single user mode (in order to execute fsck) results in unreadable code.
Starting in recovery mode is basically working and tried to install Sierra on a external drive, but the error 'AMD-action:authenticate:SP' appears.
Reset VRAM, starting in safe mode and such was attempted already.

Guess, if I could just somehow access the startup volume "Macintosh HD" via Terminal and delete the temp file from diskutil, I could release some free space, so the machine could boot normal...if only!?

Anyone to help?

In advance kindest regards
Alex

 

[Weaselboy]

Do you perhaps have a local Time Machine backup? You can option key boot to that and use recovery from there to erase the disk and restore.

 

[AJZ]

If somehow possible, I'd really like to keep the data.
Although my business pc is backuped weekly, I kind of neglected that for the private one, way...

 

[Weaselboy]

If somehow possible, I'd really like to keep the data.
Although my business pc is backuped weekly, I kind of neglected that for the private one, way...

Can you use Terminal from recovery and see what is in this folder?

/var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/

I believe that is where the temp image is stored for the secure erase.

 

[AJZ]

Yah, I'd love to, but: since I'm not (yet) that far into Terminal: How can I do that?

 

[Weaselboy]

Yah, I'd love to, but: since I'm not (yet) that far into Terminal: How can I do that?

If you can boot to recover, Terminal is in the Utilities menu. This explains how to navigate around once there.

 

[AJZ]

I know it's 'disk2', not mounted, owner disabled...
Going to Terminal, how can I access the folder you specified?
Bc 'ls -1' is not showing the volume.

#####
Just a sec, reading your link
#####

 

[Weaselboy]

This is complicated because your drive is setup as a core storage volume. I don't know how to unwind this on a core storage volume like that.

 

[AJZ]

Oh man, still thanks for the effort!

Terminal just now is only listing the recovery volume contents, don't know how to move on...

 

[Weaselboy]

Oh man, still thanks for the effort!

Terminal just now is only listing the recovery volume contents, don't know how to move on...

It wont get your data back, but you should be able to get running again from Internet recovery. Hold command-option-r at boot then once you get to recovery you should be able to use Disk Util to erase the entire drive then install the OS.

 

[AJZ]

Let's just hope for another solution...
Don't need the beauty up running now, just want all the data not to get lost.
Basically nothing really important, but still pictures, vids and documents worth waiting for because a lot of work was put into those over time.

 

[Weaselboy]

Let's just hope for another solution...
Don't need the beauty up running now, just want all the data not to get lost.
Basically nothing really important, but still pictures, vids and documents worth waiting for because a lot of work was put into those over time.

Just an idea you could try. Once you get to recovery, try going to the Disk Utility restore tab and restore the internal drive volume to an external drive. That won't fix it, but it might at least get your data off to an external drive where you may be able to access it once you get back up and running.

That restore basically clones one volume to another.

 

[Tech198]

If diskutil free space fails at Terminal window, which is not impossible, it has happened to me,,, SSD remains full... but all u need to do is write a file to desktop, then delete it.. then reboot. Your space should be back.