MacOS – Reinstalling MacOSX on MacBook from scratch (deleted Macintosh HD volume)

apfsdisk-utilitydiskutilhigh sierramacos

I had Bootcamp Windows on my MacBook Pro. When I wanted to resize the partition and reinstall windows, I opened Bootcamp app but couldn't do it for some reason that I don't remember. Therefore, I used disk utility and formatted the partition but Bootcamp wasn't recognizing the formatted space and I couldn't resize the volume or merge it again with mac's partition. By referring to an online help, I used the deleteContainer command to delete Bootcamp container. But then I couldn't find the space that I deleted in diskutil list.The result was something like this:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0  TB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            750   GB   disk0s2
   3:       Apple_KernelCoreDump                         9.31 GB    disk0s3

As seen above around 233 GB space that belonged to Bootcamp was missing. Since I want KernelCoreDump and also wanted to reinstall Mac OS since long time ago, instead of delete KernelCoreDump and resizing the container, I decided to reinstall OSX. When I formatted Macintosh HD through "Disk Utility" in recovery mode, I still couldn't find the missing space. Therefore, with Macintosh HD selected, I clicked on the "Delete Volume" button. When I ran diskutil list command, the deleted Macintosh HD showed up as "Container disk2" but that 233 GB space was still missing. Like this:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         750  GB    disk0s2
   3:       Apple_KernelCoreDump                         9.31  GB   disk0s3

I'm guessing it's because Kernel dump container is preventing the whole free spaces to merge. Now I am in internet recovery mode and want to make the "Macintosh HD" partition again but also need to get back the 233 GB space from the deleted container that is still missing as well as keeping KernelCoreDump container. How can I do this? Can I delete KernelCoreDump, merge the free spaces and create it again or should I do something else?

Best Answer

Use a different OS like Linux, and see if it detects the drive. Or alternatively you can install OS X on an external drive from Internet Recovery (if its large enough) and then try working with the drive. Usually reading a drive as an external drive has less problems when partitioned on Mac, as I learned when installing Ubuntu and Windows on my MBP. Work with the drive from there and find a way to reformat it as either exFAT or macOS journaled (extended).

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