The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
Hi there, I have a 2013 macbook pro and need to reinstall (drive filled with ‘system stuff??)
but each time I go to disk utility I get - the erase button is light grey (so I can't select it) and it says "This operation can not be performed because you can not unmount the volume you are booted from." Does anyone have any ideas of what I should do? Thanks, John
Hi,
You need to boot from Recovery Mode to unmount root drive.
Use macOS Recovery on an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support
Hi,
You need to boot from Recovery Mode to unmount root drive.
Use macOS Recovery on an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support
Thank you for your reply, have given it a go but now everything seems to have disappeared, all that shows is a wirless request which I can’t seem to click on for it to register - I keep clicking on it but norhing happens, try again …
Cannot unmount volume?
