SSD drive not being recognised during fresh install process Mojave

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SSD drive not being recognised during fresh install process Mojave

I am encountering an issue trying to do a fresh install of Mojave on a 250Gb SSD in a macbook pro.

There were loads of errors showing in Disk Utility when I was running the repair disk. These were very long error messages which I had researched and realised that it could be any number of things and that generally the solution seemed to be to do a fresh install. There were other operational issues becoming apparent with the Macbook.

So I have backed it up and also made a complete copy on another hard drive of the system and its contents.

I have made a bootable install USB which I am using to access disk utility and also to do the fresh install.

In Disk Utility I am seeing the APPLE SSD and under that a container disk1.

If I try to erase the container to the APFS, which is already formatted as such, then I get an error message 'An internal state error occurred. Operation failed.'

In First aid there are a number of errors which I have shown in the attached image.

If I run First aid on the SSD then its all ok.

If I try to erase the SSD or reformat it then the macbook crashes.

If I try to add another APFS volume within the Container then the macbook crashes and reboots back to the same stage again.

Using the other available macos utilities:

Restore from Time machine back up -the SSD drive is not detected

Install Macos -SSD not detected

I suspect that there may be an issue with the container but using the disk utility does not allow me to correct it.

Just wondering if anyone can shed any light on this one.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Apr 21, 2020 8:08 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

Level 10

185,448 points

Apr 21, 2020 9:25 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

Anthony ÓDoibhailein wrote:

hello, thanks for your message.

Its a MacBook Pro 13-Inch "Core i5" 2.7 Early 2015

It was running Mojave.

I mentioned that it was just a reinstall of the operating system and not a drive replacement.

Unplug all peripheral USB.

From Internet Recovery>>Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices> erase/reformat/initialize the parent Drive and try again your install. Not the Container level or the child Volume level.

GUID/APFS

Internet Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

149,525 points

Apr 21, 2020 8:54 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

With APFS, containers = partitions. Each container can have multiple volumes. By default, with macOS Mojave, you would have a single Container with a single Volume for the OS. (There are actually three additionsl Volumes: Preboot, Recovery, & VM.) It appears that either the Container and/or OS Volume is corrupted.

What is the results of using the diskutil list command in Terminal?

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Answer 3

Apr 21, 2020 9:11 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

Anthony ÓDoibhailein wrote:

SSD drive not being recognised during fresh install process Mojave

I am encountering an issue trying to do a fresh install of Mojave on a 250Gb SSD in a macbook pro.

You do not paint the big picture...

You do not say what exact Mac /model /year /size /retina /TouchBar is this

or

what exact macOS you were currently running before?

Did you replace the HD/SSD? Is this a solder-inn SSD on a later Mac model?

please advise...

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Answer 4

Apr 21, 2020 9:11 AM in response to Tesserax

Hello, Thanks for taking the time.

The results are as follows:

"-bash-3.2# diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *251.0 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 250.8 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +250.8 GB disk1

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume Recovery 510.5 MB disk1s3

2: APFS Volume VM 1.1 GB disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *30.8 GB disk2

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_HFS Install macOS Mojave 30.4 GB disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme +2.1 GB disk3

1: Apple_HFS macOS Base System 2.0 GB disk3s1

/dev/disk5 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +5.2 MB disk5

/dev/disk6 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk6

/dev/disk7 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk7

/dev/disk8 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk8

/dev/disk9 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +2.1 MB disk9

/dev/disk10 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk10

/dev/disk11 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk11

/dev/disk12 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +12.6 MB disk12

/dev/disk13 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +4.2 MB disk13

/dev/disk14 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +1.0 MB disk14

/dev/disk15 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +2.1 MB disk15

/dev/disk16 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk16

/dev/disk17 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk17

/dev/disk18 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +1.0 MB disk18

/dev/disk19 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk19

/dev/disk20 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +6.3 MB disk20

/dev/disk21 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +6.3 MB disk21

/dev/disk22 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +524.3 KB disk22

/dev/disk23 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: untitled +2.1 MB disk23

-bash-3.2#

"

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Answer 5

Apr 21, 2020 9:17 AM in response to leroydouglas

hello, thanks for your message.

Its a MacBook Pro 13-Inch "Core i5" 2.7 Early 2015

It was running Mojave.

I mentioned that it was just a reinstall of the operating system and not a drive replacement. I am unsure if its a solder in or not but possibly the model way highlight if this is the case or not?

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Answer 6

Tesserax

Level 10

149,525 points

Apr 21, 2020 9:22 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

Ok, one thing if you look at disk1, it's missing the Macintosh HD volume. That would be the core macOS Mojave operating system volume.

I'm assuming that disk2 is your external bootable OS installer ... correct?

What I'm not sure of is what are all of those disk images (disk5-23) are.

I'll also wait until you respond to leroydouglas with the details about your notebook.

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Answer 7

Apr 21, 2020 10:41 AM in response to leroydouglas

This has worked. never really thought I'd need to use this method as I had a bootable drive.

Why does this method work? Always interested to learn more on this.

I am currently migrating the last back up from time machine so once this is complete I'll be able to say if this irons out a lot of the other issues that were beginning to plague the machine.

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Answer 8

Apr 21, 2020 10:44 AM in response to Tesserax

yes indeed that was what disk2 was.

I can only imagine that the others are an accumulation or residual fragments of other attempts at installing from another hard drive I had been using. I was curious myself why they survived and hadn't just been cleared out.

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Answer 9

Apr 21, 2020 11:58 AM in response to Anthony ÓDoibhailein

Just out of ineterest are there any insights available to interpret what such error messages are as had appeared in the earlier image I'd uploaded?

I know its very technical but I'd like to get a bit of an insight into whether the error messages themselves help diagnose a problem or just illustrate that there is an issue without helping to guide one to a solution.

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SSD drive not being recognised during fresh install process Mojave

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