IOS – Disk Utility (recovery mode) stuck at loading

disk-utilityinstalliosmacos

I want to do a clean install of el capitan OS. I booted to recovery mode, chose reinstall os x and followed the steps. So far so good. When it came to choose the destination disk where I wanted to install the OS, it did not show any hard drive, i.e Macintosh HD was not shown so I could select it. I figured I had to format it first. So I close the installation and went to Disk Utility. The problem is Disk Utility is stuck at loading and does not show anything.

My OS is corrupted, that is the reason why I want to do a fresh installation. With corrupted I mean, I can boot my system only if I go to single-mode and mount the hard drive with mount -uw / and then exit. But this is not a long term solution. I search everywhere in the web and there are many solutions out there, but none worked form me.

I tried erasing and formatting the hard drive when in single-mode with the help of diskutil. But this did not work because the DiskManagement Framework was missing. So I tried loading the files manually with launchctl. But still I can not use diskutil in single-mode.

I tried also fsck, it did not do any good.

I ran out of options. I don't know what to do.

Here is an image when I try to erase the partition via Disk Utility

And here is an image when I try to reinstall the OS. No Hard disk is shown to select

Best Answer

A solution for getting the disk utility unstuck is opening Terminal and running this:

sudo ps ax | grep hfs

You will see a line that looks like this:

**970**   ??  U      2:08.88 /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/./fsck_hfs -y /dev/disk2s4

Take note of that first number and run this:

sudo kill -9 970 # (use your own number here)

The Disk Utility gets automatically unstuck. If your hard drive shows up, but the drives are grayed out, try restarting into Recovery mode (pressing Cmd+R after booting). After a couple of restarts you might be able to finally run First Aid on your drive.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Problem after erasing the HD of a brand new Mac (OS X Yosemite) with Disk Utility

Basically you have a CoreStorage Logical Volume Group without a CoreStorage Logical Volume now. You may delete your Logical Volume Group (-> step 4) or restore a Logical Volume (-> step 7).

Requirements: Booted to Recovery Mode

Please quit Disk Utility.
Open Utilities/Terminal in the menubar

Enter diskutil cs list and hit enter. The output will look like this:

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 5B8350BF-20EF-4199-82E6-129EFF19E9EB
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         250640592384 B (250.2 GB)
    Free Space:   6111232 B (6.1 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 907FCDE2-0C62-4951-A39E-36F19244FDB7
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     250634481152 B (250.2 GB)

To delete the Logical Volume Group enter:
```
diskutil cs delete lvgUUID 
```
The lvgUUID is the UUID of the Logical Volume Group and usually the first listed.
In the above example:
```
diskutil cs delete 5B8350BF-20EF-4199-82E6-129EFF19E9EB
```
This will delete your CoreStorage LVG and reformat it as an unencrypted HFS+ volume.
Enter exit, hit enter and quit Terminal
Open Disk Utility to format your disk like you want.
After step 3 you may create alternatively a new CoreStorage Logical Volume in your orphaned LVG by entering:
```
diskutil cs createVolume lvgUUID jhfs+ NewVolName Size
```
Using the above example
```
diskutil cs createVolume 5B8350BF-20EF-4199-82E6-129EFF19E9EB jhfs+ MyMac 100%
```
would create a new full sized (≈ 249.5 GB) Journaled HFS+ volume with the name 'MyMac'

Disk Utility stuck at exit code 0 during partition restore (in Recovery Mode)

In theory, exit code 0 means "No errors found, or successfully repaired" - though I don't know why it has then failed to complete & light the Done button.

Exit code 8 was "A corrupt filesystem was found during a check, or repairs did not succeed." which would not really be surprising if you were trying to work on the partition you were booted from.

Disk Utility is actually running a process called fsck_hfs which has published exit codes on the OS X developer pages

EXIT VALUES
     fsck_hfs indicates some status by exit value.  The current list of exit status results is:
           0       No errors found, or successfully repaired.
           3       A quick-check (the -n option) found a dirty filesystem; no repairs were made.
           4       During boot, the root filesystem was found to be dirty; repairs were made, and the
                   filesystem was remounted.  The system should be rebooted.
           8       A corrupt filesystem was found during a check, or repairs did not succeed.
           47      A major error was found with -E.

If you cannot normally Quit Disk Utility, force Quit it with Cmd ⌘ Opt ⌥ Esc , or persuade the Mac to restart or shut down normally, then you may have no option but to hold the power key until it shuts down.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Problem after erasing the HD of a brand new Mac (OS X Yosemite) with Disk Utility

Disk Utility stuck at exit code 0 during partition restore (in Recovery Mode)

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