Emanuel Mairoll

Q: Back to "Vanilla" after messing around with Triple Boot

Firstly, you have to know, I like to call myself a "Software-Tinkerer" - I absolutely LOVE messing around with the Boot Files of my MacBook, and sometimes I even go a bit overkill with that. At the moment, I'm running on a custom Boot Loader (rEFInd) installed on am modified EFI, which manages my Trial boot between macOS 10.12 GM, Windows 10, and Kali Linux. All in all my drive is divided into around 6 different Partitions (HFS+ Journaled, NTFS, Linux Swap and some more) which are written on a GUID MBR Hybrid Partition Table made by BootCamp and modified by me. (Phew)

Don't misunderstand me, I'm pretty good at this stuff, everything is (still) working fine. My problem is, I kinda lost the overview of this "universe" and - funnily enough - I'm also at the point where I lost the motivation for administrating it. And that leads to my question:

What is the best and cleanest way to get from a modified EFI, a custom Partition Table, 6 different Partitions (and probably some more) back to a working, simple System, like that from a new, just bought Mac.

As said, I am on a MacBook Pro Mid 2014, Sierra GM (Build 16A313a)

 

I appreciate every form of help.

Thank You

A "Software-Tinkerer"

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on Sep 18, 2016 2:35 AM

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Q: Back to "Vanilla" after messing around with Triple Boot

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  • by oxcart,

    oxcart oxcart Sep 18, 2016 2:59 AM in response to Emanuel Mairoll
    Level 1 (84 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 18, 2016 2:59 AM in response to Emanuel Mairoll

    I love the preamble to your question, the bit up to the "Phew".  I suspect I don't understand the question because it leaves me wondering why you would need to ask it, given your level of expertise.  If it were me I would buy a new hard drive and an external caddy, make a fresh installation of the system on it and drag and drop your user data files across.  Then you open your mac and stick in the drive, which takes about 10 minutes.  Or you could clone the current drive onto the external drive, wipe the laptop drive, fresh install and then copy data files back.

  • by Emanuel Mairoll,

    Emanuel Mairoll Emanuel Mairoll Sep 18, 2016 3:13 AM in response to oxcart
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac App Store
    Sep 18, 2016 3:13 AM in response to oxcart

    Actually, I'm already one step before finishing latter suggestion. My only problem - or more fitting, my "fear" - is the point "wipe the laptop drive". In the end, I want a GUID drive with one HFS+ Partition - And that is the point: AFAIK not only the main Partition, but also the Recovery and EFI Partitions are on the same drive. If I wiped the whole disk, I'd not only lose my (backed up) files, but also probably the essential bits responsible for booting into a state where I can install an OS. And I don't want to turn my MacBook into a paperweight...

  • by oxcart,Helpful

    oxcart oxcart Sep 18, 2016 9:22 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll
    Level 1 (84 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 18, 2016 9:22 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll

    If you have cloned your current disk on an external drive, for example a usb3 caddy, you can hold down the alt/option key during a restart and select the external drive as the boot drive.  One your computer is booted off the external clone you simply use disk utility to wipe the laptop interna drive, sign into the iTunes/app store thing and install an OS on the laptop drive.  Then you will be good to go.

     

    Before you do this log into iTunes/app store and make sure you have an OS available to you.  You should have as mac don't charge for the latest version of the OS. I don't think you will run into any problems so long as you can boot from the external clone.

  • by oxcart,Helpful

    oxcart oxcart Sep 18, 2016 9:22 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll
    Level 1 (84 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 18, 2016 9:22 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll

    Your question reminded me about the hidden recovery partition on Mac drives.  It is possible you still have one of these on your internal drive.  In which case it is easy to follow dialabrain's instruction.  In terminal type:

     

    diskutil list


    If you see Apple_Boot Recovery HD listed you can restore directly without downloading an installer from the iTunes/app store thing.

  • by Barney-15E,Solvedanswer

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Sep 18, 2016 3:53 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll
    Level 9 (50,401 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 18, 2016 3:53 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll

    …but also probably the essential bits responsible for booting into a state where I can install an OS. And I don't want to turn my MacBook into a paperweight...

    Your Mac should be able to boot into Internet Recovery and your situation is a good example of when it is needed.

    Internet Recovery boots from Apple's servers, not your hard drive, so even if you install a blank hard drive you can reinstall the OS that shipped on your Mac. You can then upgrade from there.

    About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

     

    If you already have downloaded an installer, then it might be faster to create a bootable installer and use that.

    I don't know if you can boot from that and partition your drive or if you would need to boot into Internet Recovery to partition the drive. If the latter, you'd just have to restart and boot from the USB installer you created to install the OS.

  • by Emanuel Mairoll,

    Emanuel Mairoll Emanuel Mairoll Sep 18, 2016 9:27 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac App Store
    Sep 18, 2016 9:27 PM in response to Emanuel Mairoll

    Thank you for all of your responses, I think I'll go for the bootable Installer Method - tomorrow, when Sierra comes out

    (At least I'll try it, you know how Apples servers are ;P).