Problems restarting mac

Question

Level 3

913 points

Problems restarting mac

I was on trip this weekend. I was having wifi issues in the hotel. I decided to do a "Restart..." to clear up any issues. The initial progress bar stopped midway. After a bit, the progress bar started over and the screen came up in what looked like a "Reinstall High Sierra" screen, then immediately opened up an "installer log" file. Not sure what's going on. I shut it down and when I got back home, I tried it again. Same problem. I have the log file, if it is safe to post.

Luckily, I had made a CCC bootable clone before going on vacation. In fact, I'm running on the clone now.

My question is, is there a recovery I can do that will leave my data, but just install macOS over it? I'm thinking I can just clone back my clone to the internal HD. I need some advise. Since I'm using APFS, I'm a little confused/concerned about how to erase "Macintosh HD" to prepare it for cloning back. I am running fine off the SSD clone, but I have to have this external drive connected. I want to get my internal HD back.

One last thing. I can open Finder and see all the data files on Macintosh HD, so I believe the drive is ok.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 20, 2019 5:39 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

John Galt

Level 10

146,246 points

May 21, 2019 7:45 AM in response to Alfredo Jahn

My question is, is there a recovery I can do that will leave my data, but just install macOS over it?

Yes. Reinstalling macOS is nondestructive to any User Account data, however, whatever caused its apparent corruption might have affected the entire startup volume.

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery

Try that recovery option first—don't erase it yet.

To learn how to use Time Machine please read Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac.

Reply

Answer 2

May 25, 2019 7:42 AM in response to macjack

I tried cloning back from my external SSD clone back to Macintosh HD. That did not work. After I rebooted, I got the macOS screen (like it was trying to re-instal macOS). After a short time I got the following screen.

I tried re-booting while holding the Option key. This is what I see:

I thought I would see the recovery partition in the list.

A little history. Several months ago I took my Macbook (still running Mavericks) to my Apple certified place and they replaced my internal 256G SSD with a new 512G SSD. They just cloned the old internal to the new one (still Mavericks). After a few weeks I decided to upgrade to Sierra first, then immediately to High Sierra. I purchased an external 512G SSD and used CCC to create a bootable clone. Since then I've been keeping the clone up to date, as well as doing Time Machine backups to another 2TB external HD.

I guess that I will need to erase Macintosh HD then clone back? How will I get the recovery partition back? Is it really there but I can't see it? This is what I see in Disk Utilities:

Should my recovery partition show up here?

What do you all suggest I do? Do I select Macintosh HD and erase it? Or do I need to click on "TS480GJDM820 Media" and erase that?

Thanks in advance.

Alfredo

Reply