I was updating MacBook Pro to High Sierra and it restart few times and suddenly shows black screen with flashing question mark. I tried to restart it several time and same issue. Then I googled and found that, I need to re-select startup disk and I followed the instructions but no luck.
Unfortunately, I didn't backup machine because of space issues so no time machine option. 🙁
I have 2 partitions, one for OS and one for Data. The Data drive was encrypted and I never encrypted OS drive. First strange thing I notice in startup menu that OS drive is also encrypted. (BTW, it accepted my user account password when I try to mount drive in recovery mode) And Secondly it is currently showing APFS format type, which is I guess a new format (released in High Sierra) so it looks like the High Sierra was installed (maybe partially). Currently, the OS drive format type is APFS whereas the Data drive is Mac Journaled (encrypted)
When I boot while pressing option key, it doesn't show any drives; just Wifi option. 🙁
Questions:
- Is there any possibility to fix this?
- Is there any way to go back to 10.12.3 Sierra? (which I was running)
- If I need to re-install OS, is there any way to access user folder and move data? (like in windows we can boot and access/move files using
CMD) - Does this happen because of encryption?
Edit:
- Model: MacBook Pro 2016 with TouchBar
- I am a developer and I have more than 6 months of code in Mamp folder so you guys can understand; how important that would be
Best Answer
I had what I think was the same problem. In the end I was able to install High Sierra from the Recovery Disk (booting with command-R), without losing any data.