Can I recover my bootcamp and hard drive partitions?

So I tried to erase the physical drive and through my OS X Sierra bootable USB diskutility, and it failed to unmount after waiting a long time. Now I am trying to run a partition that removes everything other than the disk0s2.

If that doesn’t work, should I try this? It’s a response of yours on another post. If not what can I do?

“If this happens when selecting and erasing the physical drive "Apple SSD SM0128G", then you may have a problem with the laptop's SSD. About the only thing left is to try a hardware based Secure Erase if the SSD supports it, but not all Apple SSD's support this feature.

Probably the easiest way to do this is by creating a bootable Parted Magic USB drive using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux). Option Boot the Parted Magic USB drive and select the orange icon labeled "EFI". There should be an icon on the Parted Magic desktop for erasing drives. Within the app there are several options to erase the drive. You need to select the "ATA Secure Erase" option and not the "long" option. Only the "ATA Secure Erase" will reset the SSD to factory defaults and maybe fix any odd issues with it. The "long" option will not reset the SSD and will just cause undue wear to the SSD and might make things worse. The ATA Secure Erase option should only take a few minutes to complete. Make sure to remember the exact password you use just in case the erase operation is not completed as you will need this password to disable the security lock on the SSD before the SSD can be used again. If an error is encountered, take a picture of the error message.

If the secure erase operation fails or is interrupted, then open a terminal app from one of the icons on the desktop or one of the menus and issue the following command (press the Return key at the end of the line):

sudo  hdparm  --usermaster u  --security-prompt-for-password  --security-disable  /dev/sda

When prompted, type the exact password you used when performing the ATA Secure Erase (press the Return key after entering the password).

The last free version of Parted Magic can be downloaded from a mirror link from the MajorGeek's website here. “

Hey, thanks for the response. I don’t have any back ups or an external hard drive with mcOS X. I can get a bootable drive.

would it be possible to install mcOS X to the other partition and at least try to recover the bootcamp data? It’ll be a life saver, if there is a way. I don’t mind it being difficult, just need a bit of guidance.

Alright so none of my attempts at erasing or unmounting disk0s2 worked. I have been attempting to reinstall macOS X on it and it was getting stuck at a certain point.

I created a bootdrive with high sierra as I got recommended to do so on another forum since OS X Mavericks is really old even though that was what was last installed on it. I tried booting through it and force unmounting and erasing disk0s2 (diskutil eraseVolume and diskutil unmountDiskforce JHFS+) before install but in both cases it failed at the unmounting part. When I run verify/repair it goes through without issues the last time I ran. I am just unable to unmount. I tried the lsof |grep disk0 command to see if there are any process running, but it doesn’t give me a response, nothing happens; no errors or a response, but it does run the command because if I try to quit terminal it tells me so. Maybe I am doing something wrong.

So after that didn’t work, I said screw it and just tried to install sierra using the bootdrive and launched it. It starts installing and gets stuck at 2 minutes remaining, around 85% of the way through. I had to force restart due to that a few times; even if I let it continue it seems to get stuck at 18minutes remaining, around 5% of the way through. Some files are getting written because I see the capacity of the drive being reduced when I relaunch into Utility menu. However it doesn’t necessarily increase each time that I have noticed, only when attempting both this and the below method did the Used amount increase from what I noticed.

When I go through internet recovery, it downloads mavericks 10.9 for me and attempts to install. It downloads and goes through the installation. Then it finishes, goes into a grey screen(pic below)with a loading circle for quite some time, and restarts but ends up hanging when it does where it’s stuck on a semi white screen with a loading circle showing it’s loading. I am sleep deprived so fell asleep while waiting the last time and even after 4 hours or so it was still stuck there. The fileis getting downloaded as there is a change in drive capacity. As of now it’s used around 11 GB where as it was pretty much empty before any of these operations.

(Grey screen before restart)

So since even that didn’t work, I thought maybe I could reformat the drive I was using for booting then try installing macOS X on that to see if I can get into it and recover my files(at least some of the important ones). So I got into internet recovery and did that. Just like above it goes into the grey screen with loading icon, then restarts and hangs on a white screen with a loading circle.

At the moment I restarted and ran the OS C installer for Mavericks by booting into the Options menu. The install completed in about 20 minutes and now it’s stuck on the grey screen before restarting. I am going to let it be longer and see if it restarts; if not I’ll have to force it again.

If that happens, I’ll post a diskutil list because there are multiple disks for some reason and some and really tiny. My biggest issue here is trying to recover bootcamp files. Could the unmounting failure be because my Recovery HD is in the same disk as the disk0s2? Or is this some kind of a permission issue?

Please help me.

Alright so I had to force restart, and gladly it showed the external as MacOS X. I launched it and it boot into MacOS X Maverick. I am currently recovering files in boot camp using disk drill. However I am still unable to erase my disk0s2. It still gives the unable to dismount error. How can I circumvent this?

Hey thanks for reaponding. I was thinking of FileVault as well before but I have no clue how to check. I don’t remember if it was on back then. I actually hadn’t used the MacOS X in years and was only using windows.

I was going to install High Sierra, I’ll see if it’ll allow me to erase the drive.

Makes sense, difficult to say in this situation I suppose.

Yeah I tried it. It boots up then hangs at “Searching for PMAGIC_xxxx_xx_xx.SQFS” and was about to search for an alternative to it. According to what you say it’s weird that the last OS I had was Mavericks and I can run the apple diagnostics but am not able to run this. Makes me wonder if I did something wrong or should I have been more patient with the hang up. I flashed a FAT32 USB according to what I found on the parted magic site itseld; is that correct or should I have used a different format? Also it didn’t show as EFI on the option boot but as Windows In orange.

I’ll search for the knoppix instructions, and see just hope I can find something that applies to this scenario.

I tried the dd command and it gave a /dev/disk0: Resource busy error. Do you think the High Sierra Installer that I ran in the beginning, that boots into getting stuck is what’s keeping it busy? If it is, is there a way to stop it?

-bash-3.2# sw_vers

ProductName: Mac OS X

ProductVersion: 10.9.5

BuildVersion: 13F34

-bash-3.2# diskutil list

/dev/disk0

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *500.3 GB disk0

  1:            EFI EFI          209.7 MB disk0s1

  2:         Apple_HFS disk0s2        273.9 GB disk0s2

  3:         Apple_HFS Recovery HD      650.0 MB disk0s3

  4:   Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP        225.4 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:   GUID_partition_scheme            *250.1 GB disk1

  1:            EFI EFI          209.7 MB disk1s1

  2:         Apple_HFS Mavericks OS X     249.2 GB disk1s2

  3:        Apple_Boot Recovery HD      650.0 MB disk1s3

/dev/disk2

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:  Apple_partition_scheme            *1.3 GB  disk2

  1:    Apple_partition_map            30.7 KB  disk2s1

  2:         Apple_HFS OS X Base System    1.3 GB  disk2s2

/dev/disk3

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk3

/dev/disk4

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk4

/dev/disk5

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk5

/dev/disk6

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk6

/dev/disk7

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk7

/dev/disk8

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *6.3 MB  disk8

/dev/disk9

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *2.1 MB  disk9

/dev/disk10

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *1.0 MB  disk10

/dev/disk11

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk11

/dev/disk12

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *524.3 KB disk12

/dev/disk13

  #:           TYPE NAME          SIZE   IDENTIFIER

  0:              untitled       *1.0 MB  disk13

-bash-3.2# mount | grep disk0s

/dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/disk0s2 (hfs, local, journaled)

/dev/disk0s3 on /Volumes/Recovery HD (hfs, local, journaled)

-bash-3.2# gpt -r show disk0

   start   size index contents

     0     1    PMBR

     1     1    Pri GPT header

     2    32    Pri GPT table

     34     6     

     40  409600   1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B

   409640 534894104   2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

 535303744  262144     

 535565888  1269536   3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

 536835424    672     

 536836096 440266752   4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

 977102848   2179     

 977105027    32    Sec GPT table

 977105059     1    Sec GPT header

-bash-3.2# fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 60821/255/63 [977105060 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

     Starting   Ending

 #: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [  start -   size]

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [    1 - 977105059] <Unknown ID>

 2: 00  0 0 0 -  0 0 0 [    0 -     0] unused   

 3: 00  0 0 0 -  0 0 0 [    0 -     0] unused   

 4: 00  0 0 0 -  0 0 0 [    0 -     0] unused   

-bash-3.2# 

I hope that doesn’t appear as bad as it does on my phone on the browser. If it is let me know, I’ll upload photos. I don’t want to type my apple details on the other laptop because it’s not secure. Is there a way to paste the text in a neater way through the phone like a code block?

I finally got the disk to mount by using the terminal from the MacOS X and doing a zerodisk erase on the bootcamp, then also on the disk0s2 which failed but not due to dismount failure. I also ran verify and repair command on the physical drive through terminal. Then I rebooted, went into command + R recovery, And found out disk02 had dismounted. Then I dismounted Recovery HD, and initiated disk erase from Disk Utility. Booted up from the bootable USB to High Sierra I had made and ran the installation. Everything installed perfectly. Now all is well :)

Anyone? I am still unable to wipe my disk0s2 for a fresh install of MacOS X on my internal SSD

Any idea what I could do?

Also I did try the unmount commands in internet recovery mode, recovery drive, and through the external Mavericks boot. It didn’t unmount through all 3 ways. Erase doesn’t work as it doesn’t unmount

Thanks for all your help and taking your time to respond. I truly appreciate it. I would have had a difficult time without your details.