MacOS not allowing me to restore media files from one external drive to another

hard drivemacmacospartitionrestore

I am trying to restore media from an external drive to another
external drive now both the partitions have been formatted with the
same partition map GUID partition map (I am also getting an APFS
partition message on clicking the partition map option available under
disk utility)). Now whenever I am trying to restore the partitions, I am coming across several errors.

This was the first attempt: I selected the main volume (as the source volume from which the media files are to be restored) which is at the top of the volume tree (Sandisk Ultramedia)

I am facing this error! (I have attached some screenshots to further explain my problem)

Error No.1

Error No.2

This time I selected the volume within the container APFS volume (as the source disk from where the media files are to be restored) which is the Sandisk USB External Drive/MacOS USB. But, again I got the same error.

Best Answer

This seems to be a bug with macOS Mojave. Even I tried to do the same. I came across the same errors you are facing. Luckily, I was able to clone the disks which is same as restoring.

There are several ways to clone a disk. You can use some utility tools available on and off the macOS App Store.

I tried this https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html cloning utility to clone my main drive to an external SSD both having the same partition map - APFS. This should solve the problem.

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MacOS – What does “EFI system partition couldn’t be created” mean

Set your Disk utility in to Debug mode.

Now you should be able to "see" the hidden partitions like EFI and the Recovery HD.

To enable the Debug mode use your Terminal:

Enter the following command at the Terminal prompt:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

Needless to say, there is a reason for those partitions to be hidden, so do not mess around with them on your start up disk.

MacOS not allowing to change the sequence of partitions from command line!

You can't expand disk0s4 to lower blocks numbers with on-board tools! To "expand" disk0s4 you would have to remove disk0s2 , add a new partition with the same size and type as disk0s4 directly following disk0s1 all with gpt, dd disk0s4 to disk0s2, delete disk0s3 and disk0s4 with gpt and finally expand disk0s2 with diskutil into the unallocated space between disk0s2 and disk0s5.

Instead of the last two steps you can also use the diskutil mergePartitions ... command.

All that booted either in Internet Recovery Mode or an external drive with macOS installed.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode or an external boot drive (if you aren't superuser you have to prepend sudo to gpt ... and dd ... commands.

Get an overview and check disk and volumes (repair if necessary) :

diskutil verifyDisk disk0
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2
diskutil verifyVolume disk0s4
diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0

Remove disk0s2:

diskutil umountDisk disk0
gpt remove -i 2 disk0

add a partition with the same size as disk0s3

diskutil umountDisk disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 485642672 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

copy disk0s4 to disk0s2:

diskutil umountDisk disk0
dd if=/dev/disk0s4 of=/dev/disk0s2 bs=4m

merge disk0s2-disk0s4 and rename macOS 2 to macOS:

diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ "macOS" disk0s2 disk0s4

Best Answer

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MacOS – What does “EFI system partition couldn’t be created” mean

MacOS not allowing to change the sequence of partitions from command line!

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