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

46 replies

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 7, 2015 7:04 AM in response to Drew Reece

If you want to destroy the entire CS volume, here are the commands in sequence. This should be executed when booted in Internet Recovery (if supported on your Mac). If you cannot get to Internet Recovery, ML 10.8.2-10.8.5 is the oldest version with CS commands, which can be a bit buggy and untrustworthy. Mavericks and/or Yosemite external boot is a better path, if necessary. This will destroy all your data on the internal drive. Please backup what you want to save, before the following steps are executed. Do not use Disk Utility during this procedure, it will try to 'Fix' and undo all your work.

1. Delete the Macintosh HD Logical Volume - diskutil cs deleteVolume 77D2C79F-AFAB-4E79-B0A4-E1E7F07F5D8F

2. Delete the Macintosh HD Logical Volume Group - diskutil cs delete 4595DA22-0057-4CBE-A0A2-2E64596FAF8F

3. Initialize the SSD part of the Fusion drive - diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ SSD disk0

4. Initialize the HDD part of the Fusion drive - diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ HDD disk1

5. Rebuild the Fusion Drive. Please note that the SSD MUST come first, otherwise the performance of the Fusion drive will be reduced significantly. Machine reboots can cause the diskN to be renumbered. A verification using diskutil list is highly recommended to ensure that the correct disk and order is picked for the following command. (Note: I have chosen a name which avoids confusion between a LVG and an LV, but personalize it as you see fit).

diskutil cs create OSX-MacintoshLVG disk0s2 disk1s2

7. This LVG can now be split/resized into smaller LVs of the size permitted by total available space. The following three verbs of CS vocabulary can be used. The syntax is included for clarity.

$ diskutil cs createVolume

Usage: diskutil coreStorage createVolume lvgUUID|lvgName type name size

[-stdinpassphrase | -passphrase [passphrase]]

Add a new logical volume to a CoreStorage logical volume group.

Type is the file system to initialize on the new logical volume. Valid types

are Journaled HFS+ or Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+ or their aliases.

Size is the amount of space to allocate from the parent logical volume group.

Valid sizes are floating-point numbers with a suffix of B(ytes), S(512-byte-

blocks), K(ilobytes), M(egabytes), G(igabytes), T(erabytes), P(etabytes),

or (%) a percentage of the current size of the logical volume group.

Example: diskutil coreStorage createVolume

11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555 jhfs+ myLV 10g

$ diskutil cs resizeVolume

Usage: diskutil coreStorage resizeVolume

lvUUID|MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode size

Resize a logical volume, which is one of one or more disks that consume storage

out of a logical volume group. The logical volume group will have more or less

available space after this operation, if it was a shrink or grow, respectively.

Example: diskutil coreStorage resizeVolume

11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555 10g

$ diskutil cs deleteVolume

Usage: diskutil coreStorage deleteVolume

lvUUID|MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode

Delete a logical volume. The volume must be unlocked.

Example: diskutil coreStorage deleteVolume 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555

Some of these are hidden or not documented on man pages, but Usage can be found, if verbs are known (I have asked these to be documented and supported for quite some time, to no avail).

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 7, 2015 7:02 AM in response to Ravenmoon

It is a mystery and a challenge to solve. If they disappear in a few seconds, can you check Applications -> Utilities -> Console logs for anything related to EFI?

Here is my test and the corresponding messages in Console.

mkdir /Volumes/EFI

$ sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI

Password:

$ ls -l /Volumes/EFI

total 67

-rwxrwxrwx 1 MyName staff 33598 Oct 16 16:12 BOOTLOG

drwxrwxrwx 1 MyName staff 512 Aug 19 15:30 EFI

$ diskutil umount /Volumes/EFI/

Volume EFI on disk0s1 unmounted

2/7/15 9:57:26.990 AM sudo[1115]: xxxxxx : TTY=ttys000 ; PWD=/Users/MyName ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/sbin/mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/EFI

2/7/15 9:58:19.344 AM authd[87]: Succeeded authorizing right 'system.volume.internal.unmount' by client '/usr/sbin/diskutil' [1126] for authorization created by '/usr/sbin/diskutil' [1126] (13,0)

2/7/15 9:58:19.346 AM authd[87]: Succeeded authorizing right 'system.volume.internal.unmount' by client '/usr/libexec/diskarbitrationd' [41] for authorization created by '/usr/sbin/diskutil' [1126] (2,0)

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 7, 2015 11:42 AM in response to Loner T

Oddly, I can't get Console to open a log window at all. Few restarts and relaunches, nothing. In the dock it shows two open windows, both "error_log," but the will not show. I have tried setting the "Bring Window to Front" parameter in Console Prefs, nothing. More weirdness, or am I missing something obvious (because I'm a bit fried! LOL)

I am updating my backup now, and will (bravely) try redoing the whole shebang with the commands you've suggested. I will likely not be back on for a bit, gentlemen, so wish me luck!

As I start over, what are your thoughts on setting up BootCamp? The first few times through, BootCamp utility did not create a drive that Windows would either install onto or format (this might have been related to this weird EFI issue? Or might have caused it? I used BC to remove the partition it created; I understand that trying to remove a BC partition in DU can lead to trouble, though I don't know if it's THIS kind of trouble... ).

In your opinion(s), is it better to create the partition using CS commands over DU or BC Utility? (I confess, I'm still not sure I totally trust my grasp of that syntax, TBH!)

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 7, 2015 12:04 PM in response to Loner T

OK, a couple other questions. In the commands listed (thank you, by the way!!!!) you have this:

diskutil cs create OSX-MacintoshLVG disk0s2 disk1s2

That created the overall physical structure (logical volume group, if I'm reading correctly), yes? So I might use:

diskutil cs create OSX-iMacDrive disk0s2 disk1s2

And then initialize the SSD and THEN the HDD sections as you have above. Those are pretty straightforward; SSD FIRST! Got that! But then the delete and create commands have long text strings at the end of each command:

diskutil cs deleteVolume 77D2C79F-AFAB-4E79-B0A4-E1E7F07F5D8F <---

or:

diskutil coreStorage createVolume 11111111-2222-3333-4444-555555555555 jhfs+ myLV 10g

Do I copy those strings from what you have here, or do I need to find them for my hardware....? (Sorry if that's a dumb question; like I said, I'm just barely getting my toes wet in terms of the syntax here!) So how would I construct those commands?

diskutil coreStorage createVolume ???what goes here??? ntfs BootCamp 200g (for a 200GB volume, NTFS format)

Also, do I need to do this for BOTH partitions? So I would FIRST create the 800GB HFS+ volume for the Mac OS partition, THEN the one I intend for BootCamp second? In which case, the first would be something like:

diskutil coreStorage createVolume ???what goes here??? hfs+ Manor 800g (for a 800GB volume, HFS+ format)

And finally, on a 1TB drive, how would I make sure to calculate the sizes correctly allowing for the EFI & Recovery drives? (I suspect 800 + 200 -1TB is WAY too simple! LOL)

Just want to make sure I have all the specifics! I'm pretty fearless in terms of 'what the heck, try it and figure it out' generally with computers, but I know it doesn't take much to make a royal mess in Terminal! Thank you both again!!!!!

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 7, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Ravenmoon

After step 5, you have a 1.1 TB Fusion Drive and a default LV. You should be able to see it using diskutil cs list.

The reason for including resizeVolume/deleteVolume/createVolume verbs is to let you know that they can be used if you need to split/resize the default LV. The default LV is sufficient for being partitioned by BCA, so you do not need any additional work.

All UUIDs come from your machine, steps 1 and 2 are also from the output of you diskutil cs list. They will change after step 5 and new UUIDs will generated.

Feb 8, 2015 12:43 AM in response to Ravenmoon

… Building boot caches on boot helper partition failed …

Cross reference: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=20687163#post20687163 under Very weird problem: Too many hidden partitions, can't repartition! – MacRumors Forums

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 8, 2015 5:06 AM in response to Graham Perrin

I did into spend much time on the ML 10.8 thread (170+ pages), but the outstanding questions in this discussion are

1. Bootcache build failure. (Bless output looks reasonable).

2. The momentary mounting of EFI. (Console logs would really help).

The vagaries of DU and its interaction with CS volumes will get addressed by Apple at some point. I have been after them for many moons.

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Feb 8, 2015 5:46 PM in response to Loner T

Well, I dove into the diskutil commands, and it seems to have worked out OK. I did have to manually make a LV using createVolume, but I did, and it worked. (I'm posting from the new main Mac partition now, repopulated from my backup, and it's purring like a kitten so far....) BootCamp made its partition, and the Windows installer was happy with it. I can boot into Windows or Mac OS from the usual StartUp prefs, and both see each others partitions as expected.

The EFIs still flash briefly onto the desktop at reboot, but that's not going to keep me up nights. I still can't get Console to actually SHOW a window, so I can't give you console logs. :\

I *think* this is as solved as it's going to get. I am going to (cautiously) call this a win!

Thank you so much for your help! Don't take this wrong if I say I hope I don't get a chance to talk to you again soon (ha!), but if I do, I know I'llhave some good folks to help out!

Cheers,

Mith (yes, that is my actual real name!) 😀

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 8, 2015 6:16 PM in response to Ravenmoon

My recommendation is to backup this on TM (and Windows separately) and see if re-installing OSX will fixe the Console issue. It may also fix the momentary EFI mount issue. How many OSX upgrades has this system been through? It would also be a good test to remove DU Debug and see if it addresses the EFI mounting issue.

Glad to see it behave a bit more reasonably (albeit not perfectly).

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 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.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 6, 2015 11:46 AM in response to Drew Reece

My test on CS volumes on Yosemite (non-Fusion drive) does not show this behavior but I can manually mount EFI.

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Feb 6, 2015 12:54 PM in response to babowa

I typically ignore DU on Fusion drive Macs, and stick to CLI and use diskutil cs commands. It is much cleaner for me to understand LVGs and LVs and LVFs.

babowa

Level 9

78,556 points

Feb 6, 2015 12:58 PM in response to Loner T

I'm a happy camper now because the replacement iMac has a regular 7200 rpm drive (well, ok, an SSD would have been better, but I can't afford a 1 TB).......

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Feb 6, 2015 4:44 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Try…

bless --info /

bless --info /Volumes/Manor

You have no /etc/fstab so that is another thing to rule out.

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Feb 6, 2015 8:58 PM in response to Ravenmoon

I believe you can destroy the CS group in Terminal via recovery, so hold on for Loner T, (s)he can probably step through that. 🙂

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