Macintosh HD not mounted in disk utility

Question

Macintosh HD not mounted in disk utility

I wanted to do a factory reset on my 2013 macbook pro ( currently on High sierra ), so I started up my laptop, held down command R, went into disk utility but when I went to erase macintosh HD, it says that's it's not mounted. Most of the commands are greyed out, except the erase one, but I didn't try to do that in the end because I didn't know what would happen. I did a factory reset twice in the past on older mac os versions but it never appeared as not mounted. ( by the way my computer works fine, so the disk works ).

Anyone had this happen to them? What would happen if I erased it anyway?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.1), Macbook Pro 13" Retina Display

Posted on Nov 26, 2017 12:41 PM

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Answer 1

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keg55

Level 6

11,755 points

Nov 26, 2017 1:04 PM in response to Undercovergirl

A factory reset, could be done via Internet Recovery which would let you reinstall the OS that your Mac was shipped with. Command+R is for Recovery Mode and let's you reinstall the OS that's was on (in your case High Sierra) prior to erasing.

If you want to reinstall High Sierra, you can use Recovery Mode. When you're in Disk Utility, change View button to Show All Devices. Then select the Container and erase that. You should be able to reinstall High Sierra afterwards. Or if your APFS volume is encrypted you should be able to select your Macintosh HD (greyed out) and mount it. You will be prompted for the password to unlock it. Once you unlock it, you can erase it.

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