How do I get my macbook working after my hard drive got erased?

October 8, 2016 10:15 PM

Aaaaaaaahh!!! Friend tried to fix my macbook and erased my hard drive in the process. Now I get a white "stop" symbol when I try logging in, which apparently means that my Mac can't find a valid System Folder to start up from. I'm beyond warranty--how do I get my macbook working again?

Recovering files is not an issue because they're all backed up on google drive. The goal is just to get my macbook working again. I (sadly, stupidly) don't have a Time Machine backup, so that's off the table.

Here's what my friend did:

Restarted my mac and pressed cmd-R to get to macOS Utilities.
Went into Disk Utility and erased "Macintosh HD" (format Journal, Encrypted).

Here's what we've tried to do to fix this mess:

1. Reinstalled macOS Sierra from macOS Utilities. We got to the page where we could supposedly start installing, but then it didn't start at all. We were connected to the internet, so that's not the issue.
2. Ran first aid on the new Macintosh HD that popped up in place of the one that was deleted. Got an error message saying that the operation failed.
3. Tried pressing "Restore" on the new Macintosh HD. The only option was to restore from OS X Base System, which failed.

Is this salvageable? Help!

posted by melancholyplay to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Even if you're out of warranty, the Apple Store will still provide free software support; they just won't (usuallyish, exceptions can happen) do hardware repairs for free. Assuming nothing is wrong with the machine itself, they should help you reinstall the OS there, if you can't get it working yourself. That way, if it does turn out to be a hardware failure, you'll know you exhausted the software troubleshooting steps first. Make an appointment online so you're not waiting forever.

That said, it sounds like the drive may have failed. What model MacBook is it? That will give you an idea of what's involved in replacing the drive.

Do you get a specific error message from Disk First Aid when it fails?
posted by zachlipton at 10:23 PM on October 8, 2016

Response by poster: Thank you, zachlipton! Really helpful to know that geniusbar help is an option. I have the MD711LL/b shown here. Dearly hoping that this isn't a hard drive issue that requires replacement!

The First Aid failure says the following in the details:

Unable to bootstrap transaction group 27489: inconsistent crosscheck
No Valid commit checkpoint found
The volume 3B5E09C2-8B27-4A01-B78E-17A4374754DF was found corrupt and needs to be repaired
Storage system check exit code is 1.
Storage system verify or repair failed.
Operation failed...
posted by melancholyplay at 10:41 PM on October 8, 2016

Have you tried erasing the disk again? If that doesn't work, I'd definitely take a shot at the Genius Bar. It's almost certainly not broken at a hardware level, but unbreaking it...
posted by wotsac at 12:02 AM on October 9, 2016

Best answer: -What was your friend originally trying to fix? Because if it was something related to a failing "hard drive" (technically our drive is a solid state drive aka "SSD") that drive will still be failing even if you reformat it, but a SSD is usually more reliable than a hard drive, as there are no moving parts.

-The volume name ("3B5E09C2-8B27-4A01-B78E-17A4374754DF ") says to me your friend probably wasn't successful in fully erasing the drive originally.

-Did you have Filevault2 enabled on your drive? Because the volume name looks like a Logical Volume Group (LVG) alphanumeric UUID for your CoreStorage volume. Apparently some encrypted Filevault2 volumes kick up errors when you're trying to erase them. Look at this post about booting into recovery mode and deleting the UUID so you can fully erase it and start over.

If all else fails, I'd try a Genius Bar visit.
posted by bluecore at 3:58 AM on October 9, 2016 [3 favorites]