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

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Level 1

30 points

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

I have no idea how this happened, but my internal HD has ended up with 7 (yes, seven) partitions, 6 of which are invisible, and several of which are duplicates. Neat trick, I know, and no, no clue how!

Specs: iMac 27" Late 2012, running Mavericks 10.9.5. Have tried rebooting into Time Machine (external drive), a CarbonCopy Clone (other external drive) and Recovery Mode, none of these will allow me to re-partition the drive. Here is what Disk Utility shows (with hidden volumes enabled):

When I run diskutil list, the drives appear as follows:

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage 121.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk0s3

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_CoreStorage 999.3 GB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk1s3

/dev/disk2

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Manor *1.1 TB disk2

This all started when trying to set up BootCamp, which also threw up a list of 7 volumes, none of which could be used to install Windows.

I am pretty much out of ideas...... Help?

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 27&" 3.4 Ghz Core i7

Posted on Jan 29, 2015 4:51 PM

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Answer 1

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Jan 31, 2015 12:07 PM in response to Ravenmoon

I see this is getting lots of views and no answers. Eeek!

Is this configuration a normal thing? Am I worried about nothing? Although I still can't re-partition the drive, which I kind of need to do, so....and more ideas on that?

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Answer 2

tbirdvet

Level 6

13,665 points

Jan 31, 2015 5:34 PM in response to Ravenmoon

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.

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Answer 3

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Jan 31, 2015 6:18 PM in response to tbirdvet

I tried booting into Recovery Mode (command-R) and the options to reformat the drive are greyed out. I can erase the main partition, but I can't re-partition it. That's the sticky part - I could wipe the whole thing, but no method of booting will allow me to re-partition.....

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Answer 4

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Jan 31, 2015 6:40 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Do you have a fusion drive?

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Answer 5

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

Jan 31, 2015 7:04 PM in response to Ravenmoon

You need to do…

diskutil cs list

…in Terminal to show the core storage setup.

Please post that here, it will make it easier to see what you have.

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Answer 6

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Jan 31, 2015 9:24 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Drew: Here's the results of diskutil cs list:

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)

|

+-- Logical Volume Group 4595DA22-0057-4CBE-A0A2-2E64596FAF8F

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

Name: Macintosh HD

Status: Online

Size: 1120333979648 B (1.1 TB)

Free Space: 114688 B (114.7 KB)

|

+-< Physical Volume 11DB863A-1C0B-4B94-9E8C-1544FBB1F5A2

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

| Index: 0

| Disk: disk0s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

|

+-< Physical Volume C1885864-73C5-421D-A586-8FDA851C638B

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

| Index: 1

| Disk: disk1s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 999345127424 B (999.3 GB)

|

+-> Logical Volume Family 1FE488FF-14E6-4A4D-9A80-1A8FD336A190

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

Encryption Status: Unlocked

Encryption Type: None

Conversion Status: NoConversion

Conversion Direction: -none-

Has Encrypted Extents: No

Fully Secure: No

Passphrase Required: No

|

+-> Logical Volume 77D2C79F-AFAB-4E79-B0A4-E1E7F07F5D8F

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

Disk: disk2

Status: Online

Size (Total): 1111826497536 B (1.1 TB)

Conversion Progress: -none-

Revertible: No

LV Name: Manor

Volume Name: Manor

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

babowa: Yes, it's a fusion drive, but this structure stills seems wrong to me. Shouldn't I still be able to do a re-partition in Recovery Mode?

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Answer 7

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Jan 31, 2015 9:44 PM in response to Ravenmoon

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.

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Answer 8

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Jan 31, 2015 9:53 PM in response to babowa

Thanks for the tip. I wonder what to do about the oodles of extra hidden partitions? Those seem to be the ones causing trouble. What I'd like to have (eventually) is two partitions; one for Mac OS, and one for BootCamp. But the extra EFIs and such are freaking out the Windows installer.... I have a feeling that the 'extra' hidden drives were created by BootCamp, but I 'reunited' the drive using the BC utility, so it should have corrected for that, I'd think. Alas...

I'll keep pecking away at it, though....

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Answer 9

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 4, 2015 3:13 PM in response to Ravenmoon

I have gotten BootCamp to behave, but I still have an excess of hidden partitions. Except when they're not hidden.

Because this is what happens when I reboot:

'Manor' is the primary internal Mac Boot drive, BootCamp is well, BootCamp, partitioned off the internal drive. 'Archive, 'Warehouse,' and 'Carbon Copy' are all external USB drives. It's the three EFI beasties I'm concerned with! I can understand having one for the internal drive, and maybe one for BootCamp. But three? And should they be showing up like this? They all vanish after a few seconds, but I'm thinking this is not supposed to be a thing? There are still two hidden partitions called 'Macintosh HD' that don't mount on reboot, but are still lurking there.

Any other thoughts? It doesn't SEEM to be a performance issue, and they're not that big, so it's not like it's costing me space I need, but it's weird. I don't like weird when it comes to my Mac; I depend on it too much! LOL But, I remain at a loss.

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Answer 10

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 4, 2015 3:20 PM in response to Ravenmoon

AND the plot thickens. Last reboot my Mac started into BootCamp. I figured I'd forgotten to change it back in the Prefs. I went to do that and got this:

Clearly I CAN boot into Mac OS, but I have to do that by shutting down and holding 'Option.' So maybe this IS a serious issue.....

Er, HELP?

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Answer 11

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Feb 4, 2015 3:37 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Sorry, this is beyond my realm as I don't use and am not at all familiar with Bootcamp; on top of that, I do not understand why the EFI are showing as they shouldn't be. Hopefully someone will chime in shortly.

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Answer 12

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 5, 2015 4:19 PM in response to Ravenmoon

It is possible that the GPT is corrupt on each of the two disks. You have a 1TB Fusion drive (120GB SSD/1TB HDD).

Can you post the output of the following commands?

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

sudo fdisk /dev/disk1

These will show the GPT and the MBR on each physical disk.

Was Windows installed using EFI, rather than the traditional Hybrid MBR?

There is also a bug in Disk Utility (and the System Report -> Storage view) where the same storage can be reported more than once.

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Answer 13

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 5, 2015 7:16 PM in response to Loner T

Thank you for the reply, LonerT. I will run those commands and post the result here shortly.

As to the Windows install, I'm not sure what you mean. I used the BootCamp software to partition and restart, but I did have to go back and change the BootCamp partition to NTFS in order to install Windows onto it. Once I had done that, the Windows installer was able to format the partition, and the install went smoothly. But the 'extra' partitions were already there at that point. Other than that, I did not do anything different in the Windows install process.

As to a reporting error, I still have three EFI drives appearing at startup, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with DiskUtility....

Terminal results in a jiffy!

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Answer 14

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 5, 2015 7:20 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Results:

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk0

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=121332826112; sectorsize=512; blocks=236978176

gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 236978175

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 236306352 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

236715992 262144 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

236978136 7

236978143 32 Sec GPT table

236978175 1 Sec GPT header

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 14751/255/63 [236978176 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 236978175] <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

sudo gpt -vv -r show /dev/disk1

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Suspicious MBR at sector 0

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1

gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167

start size index contents

0 1 MBR

1 1 Pri GPT header

2 32 Pri GPT table

34 6

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

409640 1317547968 2 GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1317957608 1269536 3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

1319227144 248

1319227392 634296320 4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

1953523712 1423

1953525135 32 Sec GPT table

1953525167 1 Sec GPT header

sudo fdisk /dev/disk1

Disk: /dev/disk1 geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]

Signature: 0xAA55

Starting Ending

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

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

1: EE 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 1 - 409639] <Unknown ID>

2: AC 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 409640 - 1317547968] <Unknown ID>

3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1317957608 - 1269536] Darwin Boot

*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [1319227392 - 634296320] HPFS/QNX/AUX

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Answer 15

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Feb 5, 2015 7:51 PM in response to Ravenmoon

You have Disk Utility Debug Menu turned on which shows hidden partitions. You have two disks. Each has an EFI and you can tell by the Grey disk icon, that they come from the internal disk. They show up in Disk Utility menu. The third EFI has USB icon, which comes from an external disk.

If you use VMware Fusion and eject an external disk which has a VM, it shows not only the ejected disk, but also the otherwise hidden partitions like EFI and Recovery HD from the external disk. I can reproduce this behavior when I have a Mac OSX 10.7 VM on an external SSD under Fusion.

Here is my VMDK file for this VM.

# Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

encoding="UTF-8"

CID=db27db07

parentCID=ffffffff

isNativeSnapshot="no"

createType="fullDevice"

# Extent description

RW 1000215216 FLAT "/dev/disk3" 0 partitionUUID @disk:diskModel=External|20USB|203.0,diskSize=512110190592,diskVendor=PI-548

# The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.toolsVersion = "9284"

ddb.longContentID = "b872167954cac30c923b22ccdb27db07"

ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 97 70 b1 3d 90-84 6a 62 40 e2 bb 72 7d"

ddb.geometry.cylinders = "62260"

ddb.geometry.heads = "255"

ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"

ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = "1024"

ddb.geometry.biosHeads = "255"

ddb.geometry.biosSectors = "63"

ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

This is the article I used to build my external USB VM -http://technologist.pro/virtualization/boot-from-external-physical-hard-drive-in -vmware-fusion

PS: Saw your two outputs. The reason they vanish and cleanup (but will stay in Disk Utility if Debug stays on) is because OSX is cleaning up objects and associated icons after the eject process for the external USB device is complete.

You can turn off and on the DU Debug menu using the following commands respectively.

To disable DEBUG

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 0

To enable DEBUG

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

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