What if macintosh hd partition disappeared. Manual creation of the Recovery HD partition. Separating a new section

Hello everyone.
We all know that if there are any problems with the system, it can be reinstalled. The Recovery section helps us with this. During a clean installation of the system, it is created automatically, but it happens that you install macOS after Windows (which is wrong) or you accidentally / intentionally deleted the Recovery HD partition. What to do in this case, if the system is already installed, and there is no way to demolish and reinstall it?

Perhaps a similar solution is walking on the Internet, but I will describe it, as I did.

A little background.

I had macOS 10.13.1 developer beta installed on APFS. Since the work of this file system I was not happy with it, I wanted to octat on HFS + by a clean reinstallation. The trouble was that Windows was already installed, and after removing the APFS container, the Recovery partition disappeared. For some reason, system 10.13 refused to be installed on the cut, so I restored it to empty section backup 10.12.6 from Time machine... After recovery, the Recovery partition did not appear. I quietly updated from 10.12.6 to 10.13. There was still no recovery partition.

A couple of days ago, I decided to upgrade from 10.13 to 10.13.1, and what was my surprise that the installation of the system at the final third stage simply does not reach the end and is thrown to the desktop with an error.

A couple of days later, yesterday, I also tried to install the system, and knocked out on the same error.
After a short thought, I immediately realized that the error was in the absence of the Recovery HD partition. Accordingly, I began to google how to restore it. There were many methods, they were all written under the king of peas, and they did not fit.

I decided to do it simply: what if you cut off the partition from the system manually, get the files from the Recovery partition from the system backup, and assign the Apple_Boot partition type? This is what I will describe in the next steps.

Recovery partition creation.

1. Separate a new section.

This is what my disk layout looked like in the “diskutil list” command.

╭─[email protected] ~ ╰─➤ diskutil list / dev / disk0 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme * 120.0 GB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 78.9 GB disk0s2 3: Microsoft Reserved 134.2 MB disk0s3 4: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 40.0 GB disk0s4 / dev / disk1 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme * 500.1 GB disk1 1: Microsoft Basic Data Files 151.3 GB disk1s1 2: Apple_HFS Time Capsule 348.7 GB disk1s2

As we can see perfectly well, there is no Recovery HD section after Macintosh HD.
In Disk Utility, I split the 650 MB partition from the main one.

After that, the markup looked like this:

╭─[email protected] ~ ╰─➤ diskutil list / dev / disk0 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme * 120.0 GB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 78.9 GB disk0s2 3: Apple_HFS Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3 4: Microsoft Reserved 134.2 MB disk0s4 5: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 40.0 GB disk0s5 / dev / disk1 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme * 500.1 GB disk1 1: Microsoft Basic Data Files 151.3 GB disk1s1 2: Apple_HFS Time Capsule 348.7 GB disk1s2

2. Change the type of section.

Everything seems to be correct, but there is one thing. Recovery partition type must be Apple_Boot, not Apple_HFS. Well, we will change. Open a terminal and enter the commands:

Diskutil unmount / dev / disk0s3 sudo asr adjust --target / dev / disk0s3 --settype "Apple_Boot"

Attention: digits / dev / disk0s3 may differ for you!

Checking the output of the diskutil list command. We are convinced that everything is correct.

╭─[email protected] ~ ╰─➤ diskutil list / dev / disk0 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme * 120.0 GB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 78.9 GB disk0s2 3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3 4: Microsoft Reserved 134.2 MB disk0s4 5: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 40.0 GB disk0s5 / dev / disk1 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme * 500.1 GB disk1 1: Microsoft Basic Data Files 151.3 GB disk1s1 2: Apple_HFS Time Capsule 348.7 GB disk1s2

3. We transfer the content.

Now we just need to drop the files of the Recovery partition from the backup.
I share my backup with you , he is from system 10.13.1, he did not check the performance from 10.12.6.

You need to drop the com.apple.recovery.boot folder to the root of the Recovery HD partition, before that you need to mount it with the command:

Diskutil mount / dev / disk0s3

This is how the contents of the Recovery partition will look like:

I had partitioned my hard drive for Windows to be ran on it through Bootcamp. Everything was working okay, I could run in MacOSX or Windows. After I installed macOS High sierra I began to have issues. When I was in Windows it would not find the MacOS disk. I was only able to load into OS by restarting Windows and holding down the "option" key. I loaded MacOS, then deleted the Windows Partition. Now my disk looks like this:

My diskutil list says:

Macintosh HD is under container disk, I have a bootcamp that cannot be used and I have OSXRESERVED that I don't know what it is for. How can I remove OSXRESERVED, BOOTCAMP, and move Macintosh HD from disk1 container?

1 replies

A few misconceptions to clarify first:

It is correct that the Macintosh HD is in a containersince this is the scope of APFS since the High Sierra. This is the title of your question, so the answer is first here. It is not possible to move an APFS volume from any container. It is correct that the startup volume, the APFS volume, is in the APFS container.

It is correct that Windows no longer sees the Macintosh HD. Apple has not provided drivers with APFS for Windows, and Boot Camp Control Panel does not see Macintosh HD.

With that out of the way, we can deal with the removal of Boot Camp. Make sure you have a backup.

You need to be able<�сильному> open Boot Camp Assistant and select Uninstall Windows .
This will automate the process for you.

Alternatively with disk utility:

1. In Disk Utility, select APPLE SSD. Click the Partition button on the toolbar.
2. you need to see the pie chart of the partition on the disk. Select BOOTCAMP and click the - button to remove it from the pie. Repeat this for OSXRESERVED.
3. Expands container size (Macintosh HD) to fill the rest of the disk, otherwise you will be left with free space not assigned to any partition.
4. Confirms that the rest of the disk partitions look correct, then select Apply.

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I have a 13.3 inch MacPro in mid 2011 with 500GB storage, and recently when doing a Mac update, it froze and still stuck on a gray screen even after several retry attempts.I finally tried Command + R to try Time Machine (neither one was not available), Disk Utility, but "Repair Disk" was greyed out and finally tried to reinstall Mac OS X, but when it was close to completion, it showed that Macintosh HD was corrupted.

1. Disk Utility\u003e External hDD\u003e Partition\u003e GUID Partition\u003e Mac OS Extended
2. Run OS X Installer and picked mine external hard drive as target. Finally, I gave me the ability to transfer my information from another drive. I chose the first option (Mac, etc.), but when it came to booting my internal drive, it didn't boot. I skipped it for a few hours, but still to no avail, so I skipped the process and completed the registration.
3. When my Mac booted it showed a Macintosh HD corruption message. Create immediately backups files.
4. I downloaded Finder, but Macintosh HD is not listed in the device list.
5. I downloaded Disk Utility and at first it showed my Macintosh HD with my 69GB / 500GB ... but then it disappeared after I clicked the Verify button.
6. If I disconnect the external hard drive, the Mac shows a gray screen with a folder and a question mark.

Is there a way to recover data on my Macintosh HD now?

If I don't replace the hard drive and continue to work using my external hard drive, does it work? I'm not sure if it's better to just get a Thinkpad or have the internal hard drive repaired / replaced.

I appreciate all the help and advice you can offer! thank

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I would not suggest continuing to use external storage for your MBP, apart from anything else, it just isn't practical.

It seems like your internal drive has or is about to fail. You / you can check the SMART status with disk utility? Anyway, I would advise not to worry about trying to check or repair it - just try it and your important files will be copied to your external HD / other backup drive while you can still access it.

Replacing HD in MBP is actually pretty easy, ifixit: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Pro_13%22_Unibody_Early_2011 has good instructions.

I replaced the hard drive in MBP 2012 and would rate it as moderately light. Hdd is pretty inexpensive these days and the tools to get it right are available from Amazon with ease for just a few pounds.