You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

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

Error : -69888: Couldn't unmount disk on my SSD Partition

Hello,


I just bought a refurbished iMac who was running on Sierra, and when upgrading on Catalina, it looks like the SSD part can't unmount.

I need to do it to delete everything and install a clean Catalina (this partition in 23Gb and 7Gb is occupied by Sierra). So i need to delete everything to get enough space for Catalina.


From that i tried many ways to do it, following Apple recommandations :


I tried :

  • diskutil unmountDisk disk1
  • diskutil unmountDisk force disk1
  • diskutil cs create Macintosh\ HD disk0 disk1
  • diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ Mac /dev/disk1


All failed with error code -69888: Couldn't unmount disk on my SSD Partition


Finally i installed Catalina on the HDD partition, in order to boot on it and delete the SSD part from disk utility, and got the same issue.


Any idea ?


Thanks for help

iMac 27″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 11, 2020 12:38 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 11, 2020 1:15 PM

This iMac originally had a Fusion Drive consisting of a 1TB HDD and a PCIe flash drive? If I'm correct, then all you can install on the flash drive is macOS. If you want, you can leave the SSD as-is, and only use the HDD since the SSD is too small for anything useful. However, you could reconstitute the Fusion Drive.


How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support

What to do if your Mac’s Fusion Drive fails (or shows signs of failure)


Here is a Solution for Repartitioning a Fusion Drive


Answered by AskDifferent's FROGGARD and edited slightly by Kappy.


Run the following commands in Terminal. Press RETURN after each. The results from the first command are needed for the second command. See explanation below.


   diskutil cs list

   diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID PVUUID 3.128t


The first UUID is your LV UUID, the second is the PV UUID that you want to grow (incase I mistyped one of them). They will be shown in the output from the first command line.


This will grow your disk back to fill up your 3TB disk. You may have to reduce that number to 3.1279t or something though. 3.128t should work. Change that value if you have a 1TB Fusion Drive to 1.024t. Unfortunately, you can't specify 100% like you can with many commands.


https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/119675/froggard


Froggard

1,191114


Similar questions

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 11, 2020 1:15 PM in response to acagnoli

This iMac originally had a Fusion Drive consisting of a 1TB HDD and a PCIe flash drive? If I'm correct, then all you can install on the flash drive is macOS. If you want, you can leave the SSD as-is, and only use the HDD since the SSD is too small for anything useful. However, you could reconstitute the Fusion Drive.


How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support

What to do if your Mac’s Fusion Drive fails (or shows signs of failure)


Here is a Solution for Repartitioning a Fusion Drive


Answered by AskDifferent's FROGGARD and edited slightly by Kappy.


Run the following commands in Terminal. Press RETURN after each. The results from the first command are needed for the second command. See explanation below.


   diskutil cs list

   diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID PVUUID 3.128t


The first UUID is your LV UUID, the second is the PV UUID that you want to grow (incase I mistyped one of them). They will be shown in the output from the first command line.


This will grow your disk back to fill up your 3TB disk. You may have to reduce that number to 3.1279t or something though. 3.128t should work. Change that value if you have a 1TB Fusion Drive to 1.024t. Unfortunately, you can't specify 100% like you can with many commands.


https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/119675/froggard


Froggard

1,191114


Jun 12, 2020 3:52 PM in response to acagnoli

acagnoli wrote:

Thanks for your answer,

I tried the solution of reconstituting the FusionDrive, that leads me to the error code i mentioned (i tried it on initial Sierra install). Gonna try the process from Catalina on the HDD now, i hope it will work this time.

Are you booting into Recovery Mode, Internet Recovery Mode, or from a bootable USB installer? You cannot erase or create a Fusion Drive while booted from the drives which will be part of the Fusion Drive.

Error : -69888: Couldn't unmount disk on my SSD Partition

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