High Sierra Killed My Hard Drive?

Your USB installer should have installed. It could be the firmware needs updating. (also see below)

About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers - Apple Support

If you don't see a firmware version listed in this article, it means that either a firmware update is only available as an automatic update, or no firmware update is needed.

If you still have problems, call OWC to see what they recommend. They should be able to talk you through the setup including updating firmware if needed.

-- thanks to petterihiisila of Finland posting on the MacRumors site:

Firmware error with High Sierra?! | MacRumors Forums

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/firmware-error-with-high-sierra.2072535/#po st-25124789

I booted into rescue mode, checked the partitions with "diskutil list" and "verifydisk" (terminal), and fixed the EFI partition. "diskutil repairdisk <your EFI disk/partition>".

You can find more details of the error in the ia.log file, in the installation directory. Look for lines related to firmware, it might refer to inability to mount the MS-DOS EFI partition. That's what I had. But I don't have the logs anymore.

I did the fix above without booting into rescue mode. High Sierra install went without a hitch afterwards.

Forgot to mention, if you do get the drive to erase and you install the original version of OS X, you can choose to upgrade to Sierra instead of High Sierra.

Download OS X 10.12 Sierra https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208202

I had similar issues with Disk Utility in High Sierra. I was able to erase and repair external drives using Disk Utility in an older version of macOS. If you can attach those drive to either El Capitan or Sierra you can erase the drive. Then do nothing to the drive using High Sierra Disk Utility.

While it was never obvious in Disk Utility, I found if I booted into Recovery Drive and ran diskutil list in Terminal, it found multiple partitions made each time I tried to run First Aid to repair the drives. One drive had 29 extra partitions. I had to manually unmount all these extra partitions then I could erase the drive as one partition. After I did this I used Disk Utility in El Capitan to partition the drive.

I highly suggest you send your experiences to Apple:

How to attach a sysdiagnose to send Bug Report

Looking back over your screenshots.....

It appears you are using Disk Utility in Yosemite or older. The internal disk is showing as Read Only. Connection type shows as external which is puzzling. If you select the Base system does the Mount point show as / (slash)?

The last screenshot with multiple untiltled partitions indicate a problem with the drive. One last thing to try.

Assuming you are booted from Recovery....

Open the Terminal under Utilities in the Menu bar.

1. diskutil list

(identify your drive, for example disk0)

2. diskutil unmountDisk force disk0

(replace disk0 with your identifier from step 1)

3. sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=1024 count=1024

(replace disk0 with your identifier from step 1)

4. diskutil partitionDisk disk0 GPT JHFS+ "MyDisk" 0g

(replace disk0 with your identifier from step 1, and MyDisk with whatever name you want...usually Macintosh HD for the internal boot drive)

It is possible that your drive has died. The cost you were quoted seems awfully high.There are videos that show you how to do this yourself. In the US we use OWC sales. See OWC videos: http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

You'll need the model year, serial number and model identifier.

• Under “About this Mac” you'll see model year.
• Next Open System Profiler > Hardware
• Copy the Serial number and model identifier

Example:

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)

Model Identifier: iMac15,1

Serial Number (system): XXXXXXXXXXXX

Since you are in the UK, check out this site for purchasing: https://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/

Their sales should be able to help you selecting the correct drive.

Here is a MX300 525GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal solid state drive, SSD by Crucial for £129.95 (Inc. Tax) https://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/apple-mac-memory/imac-ram/upgrades-for-2012-2013-a nd-2014-imacs/late-2012-imac13-1/mx300-5…

yes I am puzzled as to why it shows the connection type as external for disk0, and additionally, it only appears temporarily then eventually disappears altogether??

This could be the last gasping attempts of the drive to try mounting itself.

"Forced unmount of disk0 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted"

I wonder if all those additional partitions are what also need to be unmounted. Let's try unmounting those individually.

diskutil unmountDisk force disk2

You should get something saying “Forced unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful” if all goes well. Then repeat for the remaining disk3-disk12

If you were successful in unmounting disk2- disk12, let's do the additional steps in the Terminal.

• Best to copy/paste.
• Do not get any trailing spaces at the end.
• It's a zero not the letter O.

Open the Terminal and copy/paste in:

diskutil unmountDisk force disk0

<Return>

You should get something saying “Forced unmount of all volumes on disk0 was successful” if all goes well.

Now you need to totally erase the disk, removing the microsoft higher level partition, so in terminal run the following command. It will prompt you for your password (note you do not see the password when you type it in).

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=1024 count=1024

<Return>

You should get a result that looks like this

“1024+0 records in

1024+0 records out

1048576 bytes transferred in 0.673985 secs (1555785 bytes/sec)”

Now you need to partition the disk as Mac OS Extended Journaled. You can change the name in the quote marks to Macintosh HD or wait and rename it later:

diskutil partitionDisk disk3 GPT JHFS+ "UNTITLED" 0g

Perhaps the the high cost quoted to replace my drive is because it it soldered onto the main board and so can't be replaced in isolation? I'll double check.

I don't believe the MBP drive was soldered on the older MBPs. The MacBookAir were soldered. The videos should show what is required using the Model ID and Identifier.

You can reset the password using the Recovery Drive.

If the user account is associated with an Apple ID, and you know that account password, the Apple ID can be used to reset your user account password.

Otherwise, boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.

When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.

In the Terminal window, type this:

resetpassword

That's one word with no spaces. Then press return. A Reset Password window opens.

• Select your boot volume if not already selected.
• Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
• Follow the prompts to reset the password. It's safest to choose a password that includes only the characters a-z, A-Z, and 0-9.
• Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.

You should now be able to log in with the new password, but you won't be able to unlock the Keychain. If you've forgotten the Keychain password (which is ordinarily the same as your login password), there's no way to recover it. You’ll need to reset your keychain in the preferences of the Keychain Access application.

Moving your data over from Time Machine.

If you can see the Backups.backupdb folder on your Time Capsule, you can drill down to find your User's folder. Drag contents of Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures to the correct folders on your Mac. You can drag over many apps but some like Adobe and Microsoft will need installers. It's best to try starting with a clean User's Library since this is where most problems are located. Some folders in User's Library/Application Support can be brought over like Chrome, Firefox with browser files.

If you can't see the Backups.backupdb folder, then see these links

How to selectively migrate files from Time Machine:

How to Move Your User Data to a New Mac without Time Machine

Not if you have a fusion iMac. If you have a SSD drive it should automatically upgrade you to APFS.

I suggest you stop and make a clone backup of your drive. You'll need an external drive.

Attach drive.

Select Disk Utility while in Recovery Drive. Select Erase to format correctly.

Select Reinstall MacOS, select the new external drive as destination.

When install completes, you should be booted from your clone for High Sierra.

You can partition the drive in Disk Utility to add a volume to backup your internal drive.

Use CCC to make a backup of your Macintosh HD to the external drive.

Now you have options to either erase and do a clean install of High Sierra on your internal drive to try to reinstall over the current files.

https://bombich.com/blog/2017/09/26/resuming-your-bootable-backups-after-upgradi ng-high-sierraResuming your bootable backups after upgrading to High Sierra | Carbon Copy Cloner | Bombich Software

https://bombich.com/blog/2017/09/26/resuming-your-bootable-backups-after-upgradi ng-high-sierrahttps://bombich.com/blog/2017/09/26/resuming-your-bootable-backups-after-upgradi ng-high-sierra

If you can't select your Desktop to boot back into, then I'm afraid anything you try doing from the Recovery Drive could damage or erase your data.

You should NEVER install a new operating system without doing a backup first. In addition to this rule, it's even more important with the change from HFS+ to APFS.

You might have to erase your drive and do a clean install of High Sierra. However, I highly advise you make a clone backup first. I would not rely on restoring your files from Carbonite. I've seen too many failed restores.

The first release of High Sierra does not support APFS on Fusion or HDD internal drives.

>>When I did, I receive and error message that said “Mac OS Could Not Be Installed On Your Computer. The operation could not be completed. (com.apple.Disk management error 0.) Quit installer to restart your computer and try again.”

I just had this issue with 10.12.6 with an HDD on my 2009 iMac. It did it numerous times. Next I booted from a USB thumb drive (same version), zapped the PRAM, and repaired the hard drive (no problems) and then it installed correctly.

I think it's just a glitch in the modern installer and I'm not sure why, but it started working. I then upgraded to an SSD and went to 10.13 and it went no problems this time.

Same thing happened to me on my 27" iMac. It asked me to restart because of that disk error three times.

It never installed.

I had go to the recovery partition and restore from backup. This, of course, means I need to redo two step login and all other logins, not to mention repair photos library and such.

What a pain.

I'm gunshy about installing it on my other macs, 13" MacBook pro, 21" iMac.

I have a Late 2013 MBP too. It has an SSD, so should convert to APFS automatically during the install. It is best to try to get the installation to complete, because going back to Sierra would involve reformatting to HFS+ and probably erasing the disk to do so.

If you now have APFS, then when using Disk Utility, go to the View menu and select "Show all Devices". Run the First Aid on each volume.