MacOS – How to choose the disk to install macOS Sierra

macmacbook promacos

I'm so new to macbook and I just download and update macOS to the latest version and it's not able to complete the installation. However I manage to get to the recovery mode but there's still a problem.

When I select install macOS on the recovery mode, I am asked to choose the disk but I couldn't select Macintosh HD as it said,

'You may not install to this volume because it is currently being
encrypted'

How do I fix this? Please help

Thank you

Best Answer

I don't know how good this may work, but once you boot into recovery mode, from the menu bar on the top, under Utilities you should find Disk Utility. Once you open disk utility, select the disk you want to install the OS on, and then click the Mount option, this should give you a prompt to provide the password to unlock the drive.

Once you have successfully unlocked and mounted the drive, quit Disk Utilities, and the default window with the option to install macOS should come back, from thereon you may continue with the installation as usual.

I didn't have the opportunity to boot in Recovery mode and make sure this works, so your milage may vary. Also, I would highly suggest you take a look at the guide posted by one of the comments, as well as make a back up of everything important in that drive before you proceed with this! Good luck!

Related Solutions

MacOS – How to install Mountain Lion on a disk that cannot be formatted in recovery mode

You should be able to use dd to destroy the partition's header. You can then format (erase) it and run the install.

From the installer run Terminal and type the following:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0s2 bs=1024 count=1024

Do be warned, this will irrecoverably destroy all data on that partition. But it looks like that's what you're expecting. Make sure you don't accidentally target the wrong thing.

Also note that I haven't done this, exactly. I've used this technique to destroy the entire partition table, not just a single partition. But I think it should work.

When you're done quit Terminal and run Disk Utility. You won't get any complaints about Core Storage.

MacOS – How to install macOS on a encrypted, journaled filesystem

I know you have a working answer already, but I thought to share my experience anyway, only updated for High Sierra and using Apple's new file system APFS.

My motivation: I was driven by the (constantly varying) 6-14 hour estimate for FileVault to finish on a new install with no additional user data.

So this is what I did to install macOS on an already-encrypted filesystem - much like yours:

Create a bootable macOS installer
Erase and format as APFS (Encrypted)
Install High Sierra

Pros:

< 10 mins to encrypt by Disk Utility? (possibly less, I didn't monitor closely)
FileVault already enabled.

One main difference is that you supply a password earlier when formatting with Disk Utility, rather than being given one (the Recovery Key) when enabling FileVault post-install.

Hope this helps someone.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – How to install Mountain Lion on a disk that cannot be formatted in recovery mode

MacOS – How to install macOS on a encrypted, journaled filesystem

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