MacOS – I deleted by mistake the whole hard disk and now I can’t reinstall macOS using Recovery Mode

disk-utilityhard drivemacospartitionrecovery

In order to fix my problem I started my MacBookPro in Internet Recovery Mode, then I tried to create again the partitions/volumes using Disk Utility and I tried through the Terminal too, but so far I didn't have luck.

I'm getting this error when I try to install macOS:

I leave here the result of diskutil list. (If you need more information, please let me know to update this post.)

Thank you so much for your time <3

PS: Sorry for my English. It isn't my mother language.

Best Answer

Only the first disk shown in your pictures, (internal), is "real". (synthesized) is how your Mac will see the real drive once it's complete, but you can ignore this one for now. All the others (disk image) are made by Internet Recovery as temporary structures, part of your recovery install & will vanish once you are booted normally.

What looks to have happened is you have formatted your internal drive, but not added a volume, only the APFS container.

The 'quick fix' would seem to be to format it again from Disk Utility. Set the View menu to 'Show all devices' first, then select your actual physical drive, not anything within it [you will see devices & their contents as a set of hierarchical folders in this View, so choose the top level] & use the 'Erase' function.
Choose GUID/APFS.

It should then make a new EFI and a new Container Disk, containing one Volume, named as you set in the previous dialog. That should now be ready to accept your install.

Related Solutions

MacOS – CoreStorage Volume not detected

Your GUID partition table and the MBR are bogus. Your second partition disk0s2 has the wrong partition type. Instead of FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF the type should be 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

To modify the partition table destroy and create a new proper one. Afterwards you have to re-add the partitions in the old boundaries but with proper types.

Preparation:

Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.

The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan). If you boot to a full system and login as admin you have to prepend sudo to execute some commands like gpt ... or newfs_hfs ...!

Remove the bogus MBR/GPT and re-add the partitions

Open in the menubar Utlities->Terminal
Enter diskutil list and gpt -r show /dev/disk0 to get an overview

Destroy the bogus GUID partition table/MBR and recreate a fresh one:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt destroy /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt create -f /dev/disk0

Re-add the partitions but with a different type for the 2nd partition (i=2):

gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 488966144 -i 3 -s 1267712 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 332728384 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

The logical volume should mount automatically if not encrypted. If not you may have to unlock it.
Verify the disk and the volume

Your disk contains some uncommon free space. Please ask a second question how to solve this or check other questions and answers here.

MacOS – Corrupted macOS partition after GParted

GParted didn't really create unallocated disk space. Instead the MBR got bogus. The CoreStorage LVG and all subsequent containers got corrupted also, because the whole stack wasn't resized as required. Usually - in macOS - the whole stack is resized with the command diskutil cs resizeStack .... As far as I can say from remote, the ending boundary of the second partition was simply moved to lower block numbers which usually works with normal HFS+ volumes in GParted but not in this case with a CoreStorage stack. Fortunately some invisible data structures of the CS stack weren't overwritten.

Additionally the recovery partition wasn't moved properly. But this a different problem.

Instead of the MBR you should have a pMBR. After removing the bogus MBR you have to destroy and recreate the GUID partition table:

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities -> Terminal
Get an overview (especially the gpt command is important!):
```
diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0
```
Unmount disk0:
```
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
```

Delete the MBR:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=1

Destroy the GUID partition table and create a new one (this also creates a fresh pMBR):
```
gpt destroy disk0
gpt create -f disk0
```

Rebuild all previous GUID partitions:

gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0
gpt add -i 3 -b 488965176 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 409602008 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

If you get a resource busy error after one of the steps, just unmount disk0 again with

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Check the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 afterwards.

Enter diskutil cs list and check if all four CoreStorage containers appear: a Logical Volume Group, a Physical Volume and Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume.

With the UUID of the Logical Volume mount the LV:

Example:

    +-> Logical Volume 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15
        ---------------------------------------------------
        Disk:                  disk17
        Status:                Online

Then use:

diskutil mount 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15

Then after getting the disk identifier of the mounted LV with diskutil list verify the volume:

diskutil verifyVolume disk17 # probably it's disk17, disk16 or disk18

Below I assume the disk identifier is disk17

If the Logical Volume Family and the Logical Volume don't appear try the following:

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities -> Terminal
Get an overview (especially the gpt command is important!):
```
diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0
```
Unmount disk0:
```
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
```
Remove the current partition entry for the second partition:
```
gpt remove -i 2 disk0
```

Add a new "expanded" second partition entry:

gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 488555536 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Then repeat all verify steps:

Check the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 afterwards.

Enter diskutil cs list and check if all four CoreStorage containers appear: a Logical Volume Group, a Physical Volume and Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume.

With the UUID of the Logical Volume mount the LV:

Example:
```
    +-> Logical Volume 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15
        ---------------------------------------------------
        Disk:                  disk17
        Status:                Online
```
Then use:
```
diskutil mount 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15
```
Then after getting the disk identifier of the mounted LV with diskutil list verify the volume:
```
diskutil verifyVolume disk17 # probably it's disk16, disk17 or disk18
```
If you get errors backup the data or the whole partition to an external volume then repair the volume with diskutil repairVolume disk17.

One possibility to backup the data is dd. Attach a HFS+ formatted drive with at least 250 GB free space. Get the path to the external volume with ls /Volumes. Then unmount disk17 and disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk17 and diskutil umountDisk disk0.

Then clone the partition to a file:
```
dd if=/dev/disk0s2 of=/Volumes/ExternalDriveName/disk0s2.rawdevice bs=4m
```
If the volume name contains spaces, escape the spaces with backslashes: ...of=/Volumes/ExternalDriveName\ With\ Spaces/disk0s2.rawdevice....

You can also use asr to restore the partition to another disk (as a temporary "backup"). Check man asr.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – CoreStorage Volume not detected

MacOS – Corrupted macOS partition after GParted

Related Question