MacOS – No Partition to install Yosemite to

bootinstallmacospartition

I wanted to have a clean Yosemite installation.
Therefor I deleted the existing partition to make sure a completely clean installation is made.
The problem is that I cannot choose the partition to install to any more.
After accepting the license there is no partition to select from. Except for the recovery partition itself.
Macintosh HD is still there in the partition tool. but I cannot select it or rework it in any way because all options are greyed out.

Tried booting via recovery partition and stick.

How do I get back to having a partition to install to?

screenshot from partition tool
enter image description here

Best Answer

This post is for a different problem, but contains the same solution:

How do I fix my SSD after installing Yosemite and Enabling TRIM? No boot & can't erase

I had to go to the terminal (it is available in the installation tool) and do as described in the link:

Use diskutil list and check which volume/partition you want to delete (for me the clue was the size corresponding to my hard drive).

Then type diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ name disk0. "name " will be the name of the volume you create.

Close the terminal, go back to the installation tool and install as you would expect.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Missing Yosemite Recovery Partition

I had the same issue since the beta and the official release did not solve this issue. In the terminal I had the following output:

diskutil list

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            210.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                40.1 GB    disk0s4

a recovery partition was available (but not working)

The following did fix my issue:

downloaded the yosemite installer (again)
created a bootable installation (8GB USB) drive with yosemite (USB drive volume name is Untitled).

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app --nointeraction

Removing the not working recovery partition

diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ ErasedDisk /dev/disk0s3

merging the free space with the Macintosh HD partition

diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ MacHD disk0s2 disk0s3

Install (like you upgrade) Yosemite over your existing (Yosemite) installation and complete the installation procedure (I used the installer from the fresh created USB).

After the installation was completed I rebooted the machine and I was able to use the find my Mac option again (error related to the recovery partition was gone).

This worked for me, a small (typing) error might result in loosing your installation + data. Please be sure you have a good working backup before you start!

Used resource: removing-and-rebuilding-a-malfunctioning-recover-hd-partition/

MacOS – Can not boot from USB to make a clean install of Yosemite

I had the same problem. You have to drag the file from finder into terminal to get the official name of the installer. The end result is something like /Applications/Install OS\ X\ Yosemite.app

At least that is what worked for me.

Hope that helps.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Missing Yosemite Recovery Partition

MacOS – Can not boot from USB to make a clean install of Yosemite

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