Can not change name of HD

Question

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Can not change name of HD

My son accidentally changed the name of my hd to exactly this:

'' \\\\\\\\\\\

Upon trying to change it get back I get the the following message:

Try using a name with fewer characters, or with no punctuation marks

Needless to say the name doesn't have too many character or punctuation and it just reverts back to the name with the ", spaces and, \'s.

What concerns me most is that my Time Machine has since stopped the auto backup and every time I turn the computer on my iCloud account is asking for the password (which I just close out without entering).

I have a late 2013 iMac with a 1 TB Fusion drive.

Any ideas?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Dec 28, 2015 3:46 PM

Reply

Answer 1

DonH49

Level 6

16,704 points

Dec 28, 2015 3:57 PM in response to JBJere

if you have one available boot that iMac with an external drive containing a bootable osx. You'll be able to change it for sure.

Reply

Answer 2

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 28, 2015 4:03 PM in response to DonH49

Nope. I don't have any externals that are bootable...only time machine.

There's got to be a simple fix...maybe a terminal command? I've tried everything I can think of.

I just don't understand what is wrong that it won't allow me to do this. I have run disk repair from recovery startup and everything checked out.

Reply

Answer 3

Dec 28, 2015 4:54 PM in response to JBJere

The command-line command involved is diskutil, you can check this and this, or run some web searches for more examples of the command:

diskutil rename device newlabel

diskutil rename oldlabel newlabel

The following uses a space in the label, so there's necessarily a backslash ahead of the space. For what you're doing, specify the first of the two formats above, and pick something simple for the new label, then go use Finder... The # is a comment delimiter, and the $ is the shell prompt.

Longer example:

$ diskutil rename Yosemite Yosemite\ Installer

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Yosemite Installer

$ diskutil rename Yosemite\ Installer Yosemite

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Yosemite

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

{other unrelated disk expurgated}

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *32.0 GB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Yosemite 31.7 GB disk1s2

$ # following used the wrong device name /dev/disk1,

$ # ...should have used the partition name /dev/disk1s2...

$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1 Yosemite\ Installer

Volume must be mounted

$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1s2 Yosemite\ Installer

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Yosemite Installer

$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1s2 Yosemite

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Yosemite

$

By coincidence, that USB disk happens to be a bootable Yosemite kit, too.

Reply

Answer 4

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 29, 2015 7:58 AM in response to MrHoffman

Tried the disk util route and it didn't recognize the name - no such volume.

I'll try to create a flash start-up disk.

Maybe I should just restore from last backup? I would rather avoid that if I could.

Reply

Answer 5

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 29, 2015 8:54 AM in response to JBJere

Here's a twist-

For the heck of it I went into recovery mode to see if I could restore the last back up in case that was the route I needed to go.

It could not recognize a destination disk. Same situation if I went to install fresh system...

As far as I can tell the comp and system are working, but I can't rename the hd following above instructions and TM doesn't recognize that there is even a HD.

Something deeper is obviously wrong...

Any ideas?

Reply

Answer 6

Dec 29, 2015 8:57 AM in response to JBJere

JBJere wrote:

Tried the disk util route and it didn't recognize the name - no such volume.

I'll try to create a flash start-up disk.

Maybe I should just restore from last backup? I would rather avoid that if I could.

That's likely a command error of some sort. Please post the specific commands used and the error messages received, and the output of the diskutil list command. (If — for reasons of confidentiality — you need to change a volume label somewhere, do that. But please don't change the format or output or anything else in the list output, other than changing that specific string from "sensitive label name" to "expurgated", or some such.)

Reply

Answer 7

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 29, 2015 9:06 AM in response to MrHoffman

Please bear with me...my terminal knowledge is limited at best.

Here is the content of the window:

Last login: Tue Dec 29 11:46:27 on console

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$ diskutil

Disk Utility Tool

Utility to manage local disks and volumes

Most options require root access to the device

Usage: diskutil [quiet] <verb> <options>, where <verb> is as follows:

list (List the partitions of a disk)

info[rmation] (Get information on a specific disk or partition)

listFilesystems (List file systems available for formatting)

activity (Continuous log of system-wide disk arbitration)

u[n]mount (Unmount a single volume)

unmountDisk (Unmount an entire disk (all volumes))

eject (Eject a disk)

mount (Mount a single volume)

mountDisk (Mount an entire disk (all mountable volumes))

enableJournal (Enable HFS+ journaling on a mounted HFS+ volume)

disableJournal (Disable HFS+ journaling on a mounted HFS+ volume)

moveJournal (Move the HFS+ journal onto another volume)

enableOwnership (Treat as exact User/Group IDs for a mounted volume)

disableOwnership (Ignore on-disk User/Group IDs for a mounted volume)

rename[Volume] (Rename a volume)

verifyVolume (Verify the file system data structures of a volume)

repairVolume (Repair the file system data structures of a volume)

verifyDisk (Verify the components of a partition map of a disk)

repairDisk (Repair the components of a partition map of a disk)

verifyPermissions (Verify the permissions of a Mac OS X volume)

repairPermissions (Repair the permissions of a Mac OS X volume)

eraseDisk (Erase an existing disk, removing all volumes)

eraseVolume (Erase an existing volume)

reformat (Erase an existing volume with same name and type)

eraseOptical (Erase optical media (CD/RW, DVD/RW, etc.))

zeroDisk (Erase a disk, writing zeros to the media)

randomDisk (Erase a disk, writing random data to the media)

secureErase (Securely erase a disk or freespace on a volume)

partitionDisk ((re)Partition a disk, removing all volumes)

resizeVolume (Resize a volume, increasing or decreasing its size)

splitPartition (Split an existing partition into two or more)

mergePartitions (Combine two or more existing partitions into one)

appleRAID <verb> (Perform additional verbs related to AppleRAID)

coreStorage <verb> (Perform additional verbs related to CoreStorage)

diskutil <verb> with no options will provide help on that verb

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$ diskutil rename '' \\\\\\\\\\\ MacHD

Could not find disk for

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$

Reply

Answer 8

Dec 29, 2015 10:06 AM in response to JBJere

Please post the output of:

diskutil list

Please consider using the following syntax:

diskutil rename DEVICE newlabel

and not the syntax that requires quoting:

diskutil rename OLDLABEL newlabel

The bash shell is fussy about quote characters. If you do need to quote — use the DEVICE syntax to avoid that, here — then use the vertical " double quote characters, and not the ' single quotes, and definitely do not use the angled double quotes — the OS X system-wide "smart quotes" setting can be deadly, here — if you do want to use the label syntax. Or as I'd suggest here, jusrt use the DEVICE syntax and avoid the whole problem.

Here is a shorter and hopefully less-confusing example of that sequence, showing the diskutil list output, and a couple of example commands:

$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

{other unrelated disk expurgated}

/dev/disk1

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *32.0 GB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_HFS Yosemite 31.7 GB disk1s2

$ # following used the wrong device name /dev/disk1,

$ # ...should have used the partition name /dev/disk1s2...

$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1 Yosemite\ Installer

Volume must be mounted

$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1s2 Yosemite\ Installer

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Yosemite Installer

$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1s2 Yosemite

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Yosemite

$

In the above, the /dev/disk1s2 is a device name, as determined from the diskutil list output.

Reply

Answer 9

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 29, 2015 11:42 AM in response to MrHoffman

OK...I think I follow...

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$ diskutil list

/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

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1 MacHD

Volume must be mounted

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$ diskutil rename /dev/disk1s2 MacHD

Volume must be mounted

Like I said my Terminal knowledge is sketchy. I am obviously doing something wrong. Does this need be done in recovery mode?

If you can show me an exact script to try based on above info I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for your patience.

Reply

Answer 10

Dec 29, 2015 12:34 PM in response to JBJere

Have a backup of all of your data.

Ah, that looks like a Fusion drive... Syntax for those is different.

Post the output from the following command:

diskutil coreStorage list

The command used with a Fusion drive is the diskutil coreStorage rename command. Note the answer over there shows | to mark an or — either the logical volume group UUID (lvgUUID) or the logical volume group name (lvgName). If you specify the existing string as the volume label, use double quotes around it, as mentioned earlier.

Reply

Answer 11

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 29, 2015 1:14 PM in response to MrHoffman

Thanks for the help...the problem is the LV name

new-host-2:~ jbjeremias$ diskutil coreStorage list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)

|

+-- Logical Volume Group

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

Name: Macintosh HD

Status: Online

Size: 1120333979648 B (1.1 TB)

Free Space: 114688 B (114.7 KB)

|

+-< Physical Volume

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

| Index: 0

| Disk: disk0s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 120988852224 B (121.0 GB)

|

+-< Physical Volume

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

| Index: 1

| Disk: disk1s2

| Status: Online

| Size: 999345127424 B (999.3 GB)

|

+-> Logical Volume Family

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

Encryption Status: Unlocked

Encryption Type: None

Conversion Status: NoConversion

Conversion Direction: -none-

Has Encrypted Extents: No

Fully Secure: No

Passphrase Required: No

|

+-> Logical Volume

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

Disk: disk2

Status: Online

Size (Total): 1111826497536 B (1.1 TB)

Conversion Progress: -none-

Revertible: No

LV Name: '' \\\\\\\\\\\

Content Hint: Apple_HFS

I have a time machine backup, but since the accidental name change, it doesn't recognize the HD and hasn't backed up (about a week).

Reply

Answer 12

Dec 29, 2015 1:57 PM in response to JBJere

Get a backup via Disk Utility then, or whatever. Create a disk image from your boot disk, etc. Because if the following messes up something, you're going to want your data back. You may well end up restarting Time Machine to get out of this, too.

Got the backup? Okay...

I'd expect to see a UUID associated with the Logical Volume. In the absence of that UUID — and I'd use that UUID, if it's actually shown in the listings and has simply been expurgated from your postings — then here's what I'd try:

diskutil coreStorage rename /dev/disk2 MacHD

Here's what I'd prefer... What I don't see in that list is the associated UUID, but here's an example of what I'd use if I had a UUID shown there:

diskutil coreStorage rename 12345678-9ABC-DEF0-1234-56789ABCDEF0 MacHD

Reply

Answer 13

JBJere Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 30, 2015 6:36 AM in response to MrHoffman

Tried both lines with same result

7B9C235B-3B19-481E-A112-BB87BD155923 does not appear to be a valid Core Storage Logical Volume Group UUID or name

So the terminal route is a bust?

Disk First Aid recognizes the HD in a command r restart, but if I try to restore from Time Machine or install a fresh os there is no recognition of a target disk. Am I at the point where I should erase the disk using First Aid and then install new system followed by restore from TM? The last TM backup has just bout everything anyway. There were minimal files created since this began.

Reply

Answer 14

Dec 30, 2015 9:02 AM in response to JBJere

JBJere wrote:

So the terminal route is a bust?

Please post the unexpurgated output of the diskutil list and diskutil cs list commands, and the particular diskutil rename commands that were used.

Reply

Answer 15

DimV

Level 1

0 points

Feb 1, 2016 6:25 PM in response to JBJere

Hi

I did the same thing to mine last week... Did you figure out a solution? I have been all around the web but nothing...

Reply