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macOS (APFS) and bootcamp partitions no longer mount

I recently applied two updates to my Windows 7 system (system is kept up to date regularly). They were applied following a shutdown. When I rebooted a short time later, the system started from my High Sierra backup drive. My primary macOS (High Sierra, APFS) and Windows 7 partitions configured on a hardware RAID drive (Velocity x2) did not appear in the Finder.

I ran diskutil list in a terminal window and got the following results:

The RAID is 500GB total created from two 250GB Samsung SSDs (disk5). It is encouraging to see two partitions showing up in the terminal window, although the APFS volume shows as HFS.

I wanted to post here before I make any recovery attempt. Another user suggested booting into Parted Magic. The Partition Editor has an option to scan but I'm concerned that it might do more than read and report. Although the Windows bootcamp partition is actually more important to me right now, I would like to get back the APFS partition also if possible.

Hopefully this is something simple for those skilled using the terminal window.

Good to see that Loner T is still active here. 🙂

My system is a 2009 MacPro.

Posted on Mar 9, 2018 1:48 PM

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50 replies

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 15, 2018 3:51 AM in response to Jeff Robertson

You should salvage all you data on the RAID disks, before you reconnect them to the Apricorn card on the Mac. Once you have the data saved, reconnect the disks to the Apricorn card, with the disks in the 'original' order and see if it works. If it does not work, rebuild your RAID set but consider a different RAID configuration instead of RAID0.

Mar 15, 2018 9:21 AM in response to Loner T

I would not expect anything to change just by removing and reconnecting them to the card, unless I come across some RAID reconstructor software to do a repair in place.

As of now, it does not look like there will be a cost-effective way to save my data either. I understand. Data recovery is big business. I would rather put the money into a new drive. I think I will just go with a single 500GB disk on the Mac's slow SATA interface and use it until something better comes along (if it ever does). NVMe's are usable in High Sierra but not bootable at this time.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 9, 2018 5:36 PM in response to Jeff Robertson

See How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support .

Mar 10, 2018 9:39 AM in response to Jeff Robertson

Here is that thread, by the way:

Bootcamp startup "missing operating system"

I noticed a screenshot or two of how the drive used to look!

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 9, 2018 3:46 PM in response to Jeff Robertson

Can you post the output of diskutil list when booted from the external disk?

Mar 9, 2018 5:11 PM in response to Loner T

There is no bootable external drive attached. The bootable "Backup" drive is internal.

The RAID appears as an "external" drive because that is the way macOS treats these types of storage devices.

Mar 9, 2018 5:13 PM in response to Loner T

I *can* boot from an external drive, by the way. I will just need to create a High Sierra bootable USB thumb drive, then I can run terminal from there.

Mar 10, 2018 7:38 AM in response to Jeff Robertson

I booted back into recovery but the output was the same.

Mar 10, 2018 7:46 AM in response to Loner T

That works. No surprise there, since there isn't anything wrong with that drive.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 10, 2018 7:52 AM in response to Jeff Robertson

Which specific drives are you running into an issue with? Can you post the disk numbers?

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 10, 2018 9:05 AM in response to Jeff Robertson

It seems to have Microsoft PKI links, so it may be a valid Windows disk. Do you recall if this was a GPT disk or MBR disk?

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 10, 2018 3:50 PM in response to Jeff Robertson

Do you have enough SATA slots to connect the two Samsung SSDs to the MP directly, bypassing the Velocity card?

What type of RAID did you have these configured in?

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 10, 2018 4:15 PM in response to Jeff Robertson

We should try and get the disks/RAID card back to a PC and check if the Velocity utility can be used to check the health of the SSDs.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 10, 2018 9:10 PM in response to Jeff Robertson

I personally dislike the EVOs, and prefer the Pro series. Try to rebuild the RAID set, which is your only option at this point.

Loner T

Level 9

59,471 points

Mar 12, 2018 11:22 AM in response to Jeff Robertson

Spin-rite is a good solution for mechanical hard drives, but the ssd is a different animal.

macOS (APFS) and bootcamp partitions no longer mount