Macbook Pro partition not recognized, only Windows bootcamp

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Level 1

14 points

Macbook Pro partition not recognized, only Windows bootcamp

Hello,

yesterday I reduced the macOS partition (from Disk Utility) creating a new small partition and used a partition manager software (inside Windows) to be able to expand the actual Windows bootcamp without deleting any data.

After this last operation and a system reboot I noticed that was unable to boot in macOS, just in Windows.

I tried to figured out what was going on and following there's the actual situation:

from the Windows administrator tools I can see my Mac partition (of course Win cannot recognize the file system extension);
using "Paragon APFS for Windows" software I'm able to access to the previous mentioned partition (and just in case I also did a backup of the most important data);
from Disk Utility in the Recovery mode (Command + R) it seems like there is no macOS partition at all, it is named Windows Recovery instead;
if I try to reinstall macOS for a strange reason it is Sierra even though I had the latest update of Catalina;
when selecting the partition to reinstall macOS it recognize only the bootcamp partition leaving the rest of 113 GB (the actual mac partition) unseen;
after the resize operation in Windows under "This PC" appeared for the first time a very small partition called EFI formatted in FAT32 and I'm totally unable to access to it.

For all the previous point I attached a picture.

Now what I would like to do is to restore the macOS partition somehow avoiding to erase anything (included the bootcamp partition) because it will be a huge work to reinstall everything included the appropriate applications and softwares.

Does anyone have any suggestion on how to solve my problem?

Thank you in advance for the answer.

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15

Posted on May 31, 2020 5:17 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Jun 1, 2020 10:03 AM in response to OTD1786

We need to unmount the disk first. My assumption is you are in Internet Recovery.

diskutil unmountDisk disk0

gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0

gpt add -i 2 -b 76806 -s 29656873 -t apfs /dev/disk0

gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

diskutil repairDisk disk0

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Answer 2

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 31, 2020 12:20 PM in response to OTD1786

Can you boot into Internet Recovery - About macOS Recovery - Apple Support?

We should avoid re-installing macOS, unless it is the last for consideration.

There are three separate scenarios when re-installing macOS, which offer different macOS versions as documented in How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support. Sierra is the original macOS version that was installed on your 2016 MBP, hence it is being offered. Command+R should boot local recovery from the APFS Recovery volume. If the Recovery volume is damaged/inaccessible, the Mac should fall back to Internet Recovery, and the original macOS version shipped with your Mac.

If you can boot into Recovery, click on Utilities -> Terminal, and post a screen shot of

diskutil list

You can ignore the small image disks. We are interested in the internal disk. It may be easy to correct, if the partition type GUID is corrupted.

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Answer 3

OTD1786 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 31, 2020 2:36 PM in response to Loner T

Ok so when I did my first post I pressed the Command-R keys and a spinning globe appeared, so according to your explanation the Mac automatically fell back to Internet Recovery mode.

But now you asked me to manually enter into Internet Recovery and take screen shot of diskutil (if I didn't misurdestand) and what I did is pressing Option-Command-R according to the link you posted; here following the screen shots:

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Answer 4

OTD1786 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jun 1, 2020 12:06 PM in response to Loner T

Perfect, now everything has been restored like nothing happened before!

I'm able to choose on which OS want to log in and the macOS partition is perfectly working with all my files at the right places.

Thank you very much for your help Loner, by the way as you asked I'm attaching the output of the command lines:

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

May 31, 2020 7:36 AM in response to OTD1786

What is the year/model of your Mac (do not post the serial number)?

Manipulating partitions, after Windows is installed, is not supported. None of the third-party tools really understand GPT and Hybrid MBRs properly. Paragon tools are notorious for causing NTFS corruption.

Ensure you have good backups, because the worst-case scenario is erasing/reformatting the internal disk.

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Answer 6

OTD1786 Author

Level 1

14 points

May 31, 2020 11:39 AM in response to Loner T

It's a Macbook Pro 15" with touchbar 2016.

I used Paragon APFS just after the problem occurred so to backup the important files, because I have no recent backups; for resizing the partition I used EaseUS Partition Master free.

I know that the worst case scenario is reformatting everything, but as mentioned before is going to be a huge and long work for myself (at the moment I don't have too much time) and I would be more than happy to avoid it.

From my point of view is not a difficult task because nothing is erased, the original partition is there, the file system is the good one (AFPS, also confirmed by Paragon Software), it's just a matter to let the computer recognize the partition during boot; of course due to my lack of knowledge I have no idea how this could be done, maybe with some terminal commands in recovery mode, or maybe in some other ways. That's why I'm here: hoping my theory is correct and hoping somebody much more skilled than me will help to solve this problem and avoid erasing/reformatting and reinstall the world...

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