Hard drive not formatted correctly in early 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display.

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Hard drive not formatted correctly in early 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display.

I've been trying to reinstall OS X Yosemite on my hard drive because of some various issues on my computer by starting up with a bootable flash drive. For some reason the hard drive doesn't show up as an option for the install drive. I checked Disk Utility to see if I could repair the issue, but the hard drive itself is all that appears (Macintosh HD) and there is no mounted volume that shows up as an option underneath the drive for me to install Yosemite on. The only options for the hard drive itself that are available in Disk Utility are verify and repair (both of which don't fix anything, as they find no problems). I cannot erase the drive and reformat it. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), Early 2013

Posted on Jun 26, 2015 7:46 PM

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Answer 1

babowa

Level 9

78,115 points

Jun 26, 2015 7:51 PM in response to Jonny Meyer

Can you post a screenshot of the Disk Utility window please. Are you booted into the internal drive when you are attempting to do this? If so, you cannot erase the drive you are booted from.

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jun 27, 2015 9:08 AM in response to Jonny Meyer

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It makes no changes to your data.

Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

{ diskutil list; echo; diskutil cs list; } | pbcopy

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.

Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear below what you entered.

The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.

The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.

If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

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Answer 3

Jonny Meyer Author

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Jul 2, 2015 4:00 PM in response to Linc Davis

I wasn't able to get my computer running normally, so I had to take a picture of the results of the Terminal code. Apologies for the noise.

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Answer 4

Jonny Meyer Author

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Jul 2, 2015 5:37 PM in response to babowa

I booted using a bootable install flash drive with Yosemite on it. That's why it doesn't make sense that there are no real options for erasing the drive or what have you.

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Answer 5

babowa

Level 9

78,115 points

Jul 2, 2015 6:19 PM in response to Jonny Meyer

Have you clicked on Partition while your Macintosh HD is highlighted (your second screenshot)? Are the options to partition available? Pick any number other than the one indicated.

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Answer 6

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Jul 3, 2015 5:29 PM in response to Jonny Meyer

You have a Core Storage logical volume group (LVG) with no members. Apple has not provided an easy way to recover from this unusual condition.

Quit Disk Utility if it's running.

In the OS X Utilities screen, select

Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Follow the procedure in this thread to delete the LVG. The long string of letters, numbers, and dashes that you will have to enter will be different in your case. Copy and paste it from the Terminal window into the command.

Quit Terminal to return to the main screen. You should then be able to partition the drive in Disk Utility (if that's what you want to do) and/or install OS X.

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