HELP! I have 7 partitions, 2 EFI, 2 MacHD, etc.

Ravenmoon wrote:

Aside from Disk Utility and BootCamp, I don't have or use other disk or partition management software; that's one thing that makes this so odd! LOL Also, by physical disks you mean both portions of the Fusion drive, yes? Other than that, I only have the one drive giving me problems; my externals are fine.

Yes, I meant the SSD and HDD parts.

I have tried booting in SafeMode (with no other drives present [i.e. physically disconnected]), and nothing changes; the same partitions appear in DiskUtility (as below). The only difference is that the BootCamp partition does not mount. I am still unable to set my StartUp Drive to MacOS X in System Prefs; doing so returns the same error: "Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed."

What does sudo bless --info return? Bootcamp is not expected to work in Safe Mode. What files do you have in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder. Here is my example.

ls -l /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

total 768

drwxr-xr-x 3 root admin 102 Sep 12 2013 CaptiveNetworkSupport

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7309 Jan 29 06:34 NetworkInterfaces.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 232 Sep 12 2013 com.apple.Boot.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 181 Jul 8 2014 com.apple.IPConfiguration.control.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2351 Mar 1 2014 com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 321 Feb 1 2014 com.apple.accounts.exists.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3368 Feb 6 09:26 com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 231 Jul 8 2014 com.apple.eapolclient.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 348 Feb 6 09:26 com.apple.smb.server.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 331785 Feb 6 09:26 com.apple.wifi.message-tracer.plist

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 17167 Jan 14 15:03 preferences.plist

If you have Xcode installed, you can open the .plist files. com.apple.Boot.plist is what can provide some interesting information.

Deleting this folder and rebooting rebuilds it, but it strongly recommended that this folder be backed up elsewhere. Customized settings can be lost otherwise.

Disk Utility Verify returns "Disk appears to be OK" on all partitions except the "Boot OS X," which it is unable to verify (the option is greyed out). My issue is not with Windows recognizing the Mac Drive; my Mac OS X partition appears in Windows just fine. My issue is the 'extra' partitions that I can't get rid of, the fact that I cannot remove all the partitions and repartition the drive, and that I can't set my startup drive to the Mac OS X partition. All of these seem to point to some kind of problem with the hidden boot partitions.

One suggestion would be to install OSX on an external volume - OS X: Installing OS X on an external volume - Apple Support

and testing a clean install of OSX. If you can reboot the Mac and then go to Applications -> Utilities -> Console logs and in the top right search box, type EFI and search, it may provide clues on what is mounting these hidden partitions. After the Debug menu was enabled, were these ever mounted by hand at least once?

1. Which of the hidden partitions I am seeing SHOULD be there for a drive with one Mac partition and one BootCamp partition, and which ones are extraneous?
2. How can I address the 'boot caches' issue so I can designate the Mac OS partition as the startup drive?
3. How can I safely remove those that are extraneous, and restore the correct structure?

(Is it possible that the Boot Camp utility could have created a Mavericks/Yosemite hybrid of some kind? I keep seeing these Core Storage issues coming up with Yosemite, but I haven't used Yosemite.... Though I used the utility in the Applications folder.....)

Your diskutil list output shows the correct ones. EFI and Recovery HD (and Apple Boot) should not be mounted by default. You should only see the LVG (Macintosh HD) and the LV (Macintosh HD - they have the same name which is another source of confusion). Bootcamp should also be visible. There should be nothing else mounted. The external disk boot may help diagnose/fix the boot caches issue. The structure is correct, but the visibility could be better. Pick one EFI volume in DU, and test if you can unmount it.

Be aware that File Vault2 and Fusion Drive both use CoreStorage, even before the advent of Yosemite (since ML 10.8.x). Try the external boot first, otherwise can you set up a Time Machine backup and backup OSX. For Bootcamp, you can use Winclone (Windows backup/restore is problematic on Macs).

Ran a test with a non-Fusion (but CS Volume) and a Reboot. EFI does not automatically mount after reboot on Yosemite 10.10.2.

with Debug turned on...

EFI has not been mounted yet...

EFI is now mounted manually...

I will test with a Mini and DU on Mavericks which has a DIY Fusion (SSD/HDD) and post back.

On a 2012 Mac mini (Mavericks 10.9.5) with 256GB SSD+1TB HDD and DIY Fusion drive, this is what it looks like.

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *256.1 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage 128.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 127.7 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS OSX-Server-ic2sHD 499.8 GB disk1s2

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk2

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage 999.3 GB disk2s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 650.0 MB disk2s3

/dev/disk3

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS OSX-FusionHD *1.1 TB disk3

/dev/disk5

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_partition_scheme *300.1 GB disk5

1: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk5s1

2: Apple_HFS Backups 137.0 GB disk5s3

3: Apple_HFS Music 137.2 GB disk5s5

4: Apple_HFS Extra Space 25.5 GB disk5s7

/dev/disk6

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk6

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk6s1

2: Apple_HFS Time Machine Backups 2.0 TB disk6s2

/dev/disk7

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_partition_scheme *16.0 MB disk7

1: Apple_partition_map 32.3 KB disk7s1

2: Apple_HFS Flash Player 16.0 MB disk7s2

$ diskutil cs list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)

|

+-- Logical Volume Group DF140929-90E7-48E1-AC3D-C9C75BA88D1D

=========================================================

Name: OSX-FusionHD

Status: Online

Size: 1127375384576 B (1.1 TB)

Free Space: 69632 B (69.6 KB)

|

+-< Physical Volume C856A74C-EB57-4D1F-8223-0A22215218ED

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 0

| Disk: disk0s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 128030257152 B (128.0 GB)

|

+-< Physical Volume 80D91A14-CCC9-47B1-B071-B9ADFF23924F

| ----------------------------------------------------

| Index: 1

| Disk: disk2s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 999345127424 B (999.3 GB)

|

+-> Logical Volume Family 019D610F-21AC-4B54-AB0A-6D5F90D520A7

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

Encryption Status: Unlocked

Encryption Type: None

Conversion Status: NoConversion

Conversion Direction: -none-

Has Encrypted Extents: No

Fully Secure: No

Passphrase Required: No

|

+-> Logical Volume D9DC0F70-38C7-4AE6-BAC4-CFBE0F8D4F68

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

Disk: disk3

Status: Online

Size (Total): 1118844862464 B (1.1 TB)

Conversion Progress: -none-

Revertible: No

LV Name: OSX-FusionHD

Volume Name: OSX-FusionHD

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

and Disk Utility shows (without Debug Menu)

With Debug Menu (List All Partitions) and EFI partitions from both disks mounted. Get Info from each mounted EFI shows the difference between the two.

The EFI partitions can be manually mounted/unmounted and do not stay on the Desktop.

1. Can you right-click on each EFI and click on Get Info?

2. The CS volumes spans two physical disks, hence it shows up with that name, twice, in the DU list pane.

3. The mount of EFI does not persist across reboots.

4. Do you have a pending Firmware Update for your Mac?

5. Desktop can have icons whose underlying objects have been deleted/unmounted. These can be addressed and cleaned up.

VMware Fusion was an example of software which enables hidden volumes, you may or may not use it. What other third-party software do you have, like NTFS-read-write tools, Disk and/or Partition Management tools?

Disk Utility has quite a few challenges with CS Volumes. The only reliable method, available as of now, is to use the diskutil cs command set to erase/expand/manage/rebuild.

Can I suggest a Disk Utility Verify/Repair (one thing that seems to work because it is not a CoreStorage command) on both the physical disks? Another approach to address such issues is by using Safe Mode boot. Useful specific key sequences are listed in Startup key combinations for Intel-based Macs - Apple Support.

There are many "hidden"commands (Apple chose not to document these), but can be found either in windows 8 does not recognise Macintosh HD, No drive Letter or http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/.

Do you have a fusion drive?

This is not normal. You could boot up using command-r and then using Utilities erase your drive, and make one partition then use TM to restore everything. I had to do that a few weeks ago to fix a similar issue.

I only had a fusion drive for about a week (a new iMac with multiple power management problems which was returned to the store), but I had a problem first trying to partition it in Disk Utility and then trying to repartition and erase the drive in recovery to be able to return it. I finally managed after several tries - can't remember which step finally worked; try to erase either the entire drive and/or one partition/volume at a time. You can only have 2 partitions on a fusion drive by the way.

FWIW, I got a replacement iMac without a fusion drive because, frankly, I was not impressed as I didn't seem to have control over the drive and there really did not appear to be a speed increase with the SSD.