Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Lost partitions and issues accessing recovery mode

Hi,


This is an old problem that I had on a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro a few years ago, since then, I haven't really used it at all, but I would like to try and rectify the problem.


A few years ago I had a big issue when trying to log in to my macbook, something corrupted. At the time I had a dual partition with windows 10 (about 150GB) and Mac El Capitan (balance GB) on a 500GB SSD. I couldn't access anything, so I did a recovery.


The disk was split in to occupied space and free space, which was about 170GB available, so I effectively made a partition of new Mac, and the partition of the old mac and bootcamp. Hoping that by doing this, I could some how get to the point of fixing the partitions of the original bootcamp/macbook drives.


On boot, it takes about 60 seconds, the circle with a cross appears and every 10 seconds, the apple logo flashes for a brief second before the circle cross again. After the minute, it boots as normal to the new partition.


I cannot access cmd+r for recovery, I just get a white window and have to crash out

I cannot therefore use a tool like Recover.IT as I cannot disable "csrutil disable" in cmd+r

I cannot update the OS, probably to do with the cross that appears on the boot and the time it takes to finally start OS.


That was as far as I have got, I cannot use any recovery utilities.


Can anyone help reinstate the partitions? if not, how can I format the complete drive and reunify to use the 500GB drive total? can I use a USB stick and run a MAC OS reboot within the OS? I have a windows PC, I could plug the SSD in to that and format it using windows.


Thanks


The about/storage shows only the new partition



The terminal shows the total disk space, with no partition assigned.


MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.13

Posted on May 22, 2020 5:17 AM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on May 22, 2020 12:30 PM

Are you able to boot macOS on that new partition? If so, then download the macOS installer and create a bootable macOS USB installer.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


Then while booted from the macOS USB installer erase the physical drive before reinstalling macOS. This Apple article shows how to locate & erase the physical drive:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

Similar questions

1 reply
Question marked as Best reply

May 22, 2020 12:30 PM in response to TA3865

Are you able to boot macOS on that new partition? If so, then download the macOS installer and create a bootable macOS USB installer.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


Then while booted from the macOS USB installer erase the physical drive before reinstalling macOS. This Apple article shows how to locate & erase the physical drive:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

Lost partitions and issues accessing recovery mode

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.