Full internal drive - Mac won’t boot - disk utility can’t repair disk - help!

[Fididi]

I need some basic instructions to 1. free Up space on hard drive - probably using terminal— and 2. Move files from this Mac onto an external drive.

i have a 1. broken iMac 2013 running Sierra 2. A working MacBook Pro 2020 with an M1 chip 3. A western digital external hard drive. 4, a Bluetooth keyboard that can’t talk to the Mac unless paired with the 2013 iMac post initial turn on (meaning I can’t use it to access safe or single user mode. I can access Utilities (it seems to be automatically going into something like recovery mode).

The Disk utility first aid can’t repair the internal disk and the disk won’t mount, the operating system and external hard drive are able to mount. I’ve run first aid five times now - not sure where it’s tripping up. Let me know if useful to have the read out and I’ll run it again.

I’ve found threads which explain how to free up disk space but from a more advanced point (both in terms of the user and the step in the process!).
i would be so grateful if someone could help me out with instructions to use terminal to access the internal drive to clear out some of the files, and to back up onto the external drive.

I’m not at all tech savvy so this is all a bit of a challenge for me!

thank you so much.

 

[Rod]

Let me know if I've got this right. You have a 2013 iMac running macOS Sierra that will not boot but can be accessed via an external HD?

I'll assume that you ran Disk Utilty First Aid on the internal Macintosh HD from the external HD.

It would be helpful to know what the results were assuming it found "problems".

 

[MacInWin]

Why do you think you need to remove stuff from the drive? I would think a bigger problem would be to get it to boot, or to rescue what you have on it that you need, but don't have a backup.

 

[techiesteve]

It would be helpful to know if your iMac is a 21.5", 27", contains a hard drive, fusion drive or an SSD. It sounds as if whatever drive is within the iMac isn't being seen and it's loading from the recovery partition. The worst situation is if you had a fusion drive and one of the 2 drives, more likely the spinner, that makes it up has failed or is very seriously corrupted. Hopefully if your data was important to you you were regularly backing up. Repair would be possible, the chances of recovering data depends upon answering the question re drive type within your iMac.

 

[Rod]

Secondary to my first reply, if your only problem, as you state in the title, is that your iMac's internal drive is full but you can access it by booting from your EHD then the solution is simple.
Boot up with the EHD, connect a second (empty) EHD and drag files from the Macintosh HD to that until you have sufficient free storage, say 20% of total storage.
If that was the only problem, your iMac should now boot up.

 

[Fididi]

Hi there,

thanks for replies so far.

some clarifications (for what it’s worth!)

* I’ve made an assumption the computer won’t boot because the internal drive is full. I may be wrong,

* after trying disk repair using fsck command (which also failed) I tried first aid again from disk utility and for a while there looked promising, but it then returned an invalid node b-tree size error and Is stuck at that and pretty much instantly fails the first aid process.

* I actually have no idea what type of internal drive it is. I’m such a novice so unsure what.a SATA drive means.

* i haven’t tried booting from external hard drive - but I can connect one and it is recognised by disk utility (and mounted). but can’t find anyway to access files on the drive to transfer them.

* and of course, I didn’t back up….kicking myself the iMac contained all my data from the days when I have a G4 Pro Mac going back to 2000s when data was smaller, but still accumulated - so extra silly I wasn’t thinking about back ups. I just thought Macs never failed….

is it time to fork out for pro help or is there a chance of being able to retrieve data myself ?

 

[Jimmysb]

I am confused:
1) You assume it won't boot, it either does or doesn't boot.
2) You have used Disk Utility, is this even possible if you have not booted the computor.
3) In Disk Utility, which you say you have used it say what type of disk it is, this is mine:

4) You haven't booted from a external HDD, yet you have run disk Utility, and it is recognised.
5) So you have managed to run your computer without an external boot, but can read the drive, so why do you not simply copy all your file across to an empty drive.

 

[Fididi]

thanis. So this is what I have in the way of disk showing through Disk utility, the os base system mounts fine - and no issues. The SATA internal drive doesn’t boot / mount. Sorry language probably not quite right,…and as a result the computer doesn’t operate - except into recovery mode. There is no simple way for me to access the files on the disk that won’t mount,

 

[MacInWin]

When you try a normal boot, do you get a warning that there is no system? Typically that's a circle with the bar through it.

The fact the drive is visible at all means it's not totally dead, but the OS may well be so damaged it cannot boot from it. What happened right before the problem started? It may be possible to reinstall the OS and save your data, but it's possible that the data is gone, too.

 

[Fididi]

hi there. Thanks Jake, There is no normal booting - just automatically into recovery mode. And when I attempt to go into safe mode it gives the ‘no entry’ sign. I’ve tried to reinstall the OS. I will try again. Not sure what the fail was last time (may be to do with challenges with internet connectivity).

well this iMac has been off for a year or two now - but I want to 1, hopefully save the data and 2. repurpose as a monitor. when it stopped working it literally just stopped working - grey screens etc. i Had been planning to save up to take it to professional repairer - but that hasn’t been able to happen so trying the DIY avenues first. Would an invalid b tree node stop réinstallation of the OS?

I’m certain that the 0s2 disk being totally full is partially the challenge. There is simply no bandwidth for any normal operation. would the reinstall of OS possibly free up space?

thanks for all the assistance : )

 

[Fididi]

Sorry I meant to Say offline! It was definitively working one day and then not the next. Not a gradual change.

 

[MacInWin]

Would an invalid b tree node stop réinstallation of the OS?

Yes. That is a drive failure. And given that the drive isn't even mounting, it's most likely dead. And without mounting it, you don't know how full it is. All you see in Disk Utility is that the hardware is of a certain size and that all of it is allocated to a partition. How much of that partition may be used is not visible. The drive has to be mounted for that information, but with that error failure, it won't mount. It's dead.

EDIT: IF you want to try some pretty risky things, do a search on "invalid b tree node size" and there are sites out there that claim to be able to fix the drive. Most of them involve reformatting the drive, which will erase everything on it, so you would lose everything. If you are willing to do that, you might be able to do that from Recovery, where you can get to Disk Utility, select the hardware and then use "Erase" to try again to format it. Again, all will be gone, but if it formats, you can try to reinstall an OS to it to get it functioning, minus the data.

 

[Rod]

What Jake has said pretty much sums it up. There is a remote chance that the device would boot from an external source ie. An external HD with a compatible Mac Operating System on board. If the hardware is okay the internal drive (Macintosh HD) would appear as a Folder. Within that folder would be Users, one being you, and within that folder all your old sub folders, eg, Documents, Photos, Music, ect.
In theory the contents of those folders could be copied/moved to another external HD thus freeing up space on your internal drive.

I think any reputable Mac repairer could do this but at a cost of course. It might even be possible to get it running again but it is a 2013 model so maybe not worth the effort.

It comes down to how valuable is the data on this computer to you?

 

[Fididi]

Thanks all so much. This is very helpful. next stop professional - armed with this thread so that they can give me good assessment prior to committing? Thanks so much, Fiona

 

[Rod]

Do let us know how you get on. We're happy to answer any further questions you might have about the process.

 

[Fididi]

Thanks so much, will do. Greatly appreciated.

 

[pm-r]

Thanks all so much. This is very helpful. next stop professional -

I think that is very good choice and a wise decision and will probably give you some more decisions as to what the next steps might be and what their possible costs might be.

And welcome to mac-forums forums.



- Patrick
=======

 

[Fididi]

Thank you Patrick : )