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oli228 Author

Level 1

4 points

Accidentally erased disks and can’t get into recovery mode

Hey so I was trying to format this max (2016 MacBook Pro 15.5 inch running OS X) and I ended up erasing all the drives not knowing it would affect anything

the mac shows a folder with a question mark when I try to start it up, when I try to get into recovery mode with command + R the globe spins for a bit and then a triangle with an exclamation mark appears over it, with -2002F underneath

ive heard of booting it up with an external mac (which I have) but all the forms I’ve read on it are complicated and requires the affected mac to work

Posted on Jan 18, 2021 8:37 PM

Top-ranking reply

Encryptor5000

Level 5

7,568 points

Posted on Jan 18, 2021 9:56 PM

Hi oli228,

If you have a second working Mac, you can use it to flash a 16 GB USB drive with the macOS installer. You can then boot the problematic Mac from the USB drive and reinstall macOS. (The USB drive will contain both the full installer and macOS Recovery.)

To create the bootable installer and use it, please see this article: How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

Make sure that the USB drive is named "MyVolume" before copying and pasting the relevant commands in the article.

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Accidentally erased disks and can’t get into recovery mode

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