Stuck in Recovery mode, Macintosh HD not mounted?!

Question

Level 1

0 points

Stuck in Recovery mode, Macintosh HD not mounted?!

I have a 2017 27” Intel IMac. Have had no trouble with it prior to this. Recently learning about ESP32 programming, and was having trouble getting my IMac to recognize the ESP32 via serial com port. Decided to try reinstalling Ventura 13.6.4 to recover the apple serial port driver that I’d erased. Got to the “This may take a while” screen, and left the machine for 4-5 hours. When I returned, I found the machine waiting for input, asking me (I believe) to set up my IMac as a target disk, serving as remote storage for another machine. Couldn’t find a way to say “no”, so aborted the session to restart.

Upon restart (back in recovery mode), Bluetooth didn’t work, so added a non-apple USB keyboard and mouse. My problem is, none of the options (restore Time Machine backup, reinstall OS (now my only choice is Catalina), etc. would work, since it never showed my Macintosh HD as the drive to be restored. Turns out that my internal hard drive is no longer mounted, and I get an error when I try to mount it. Very limited options in recovery utility. What do I do now?

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Mar 24, 2024 8:51 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

drbmac Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2024 3:55 PM in response to drbmac

UPDATE: In continued extended research online, I stumbled across a reference to having an inadvertently split Fusion Drive. (https://support.apple.com/en-us/102226). I followed the instructions there, managed to successfully enter the indicated commands in terminal to "reconstruct" my Macintosh HD. Now I can see the drive in the recovery utilities options, and am in the process right now of restoring a recent Time Machine backup. Fingers crossed!!!!

Reply

Answer 2

drbmac Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 25, 2024 10:53 PM in response to drbmac

Just to complete the story here... The Time Machine backup did not work, repeatedly ending up with an apparently successful copy, followed by a restart ending in a "hang with Apple Progress Bar at 100%."

I also tried multiple times to repeat the macOS reinstall, but was initially only given the option to restore the original Catalina OS - I've been running Ventura. These all failed as well, reporting something along the lines of: the OS I was trying to install was incompatible with the previously installed OS.

I kept researching, and ultimately (after more Disk Utility first aids and other attempts to clear the impeding issues), found the key strokes to start up in the "Internet macOS reinstall" Recovery mode version again. Ran this just this evening, and Ventura installed perfectly, rebooted, and I now have my entire system back up and healthy!

Reply

Answer 3

Mar 24, 2024 5:19 PM in response to drbmac

Usually when a Fusion Drive breaks, one of the two drives (usually the hard drive) is failing. You may want to check the health of the internal drives using DriveDx (free trial period) and posting the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar.

Reply