Macbook OSX Lion - how to restore OS to the internal hard drive

[bayankaran]

The OS X Lion installed on a friends Macbook was not booting up. After some struggle I got the OS installed on a memory stick - it downloaded to the internal hard drive - and it now boots up.

Now, how to restore the OS on the internal hard drive and save/use the data?

When I boot up using the memory stick I get a working computer. But its a temporary solution as any reboot will delete any data.

The original hard disk is inaccessible. What will be a command/procedure to bring it up (there's nothing wrong with it) and restore the OS to its original location?

 

[MacInWin]

The original hard disk is inaccessible. ... (there's nothing wrong with it)

it downloaded to the internal hard drive - and it now boots up.

Now, how to restore the OS on the internal hard drive and save/use the data?

Welcome to the forum. Those two sets of statements seem illogical to me. If the drive had nothing wrong with it, it should be accessible if you mounted it when booted from the memory stick. And it should be visible to Disc Utility even if it's not mounted. If you cannot mount it, then something is wrong with it. And you said the OS downloaded to the internal drive and now boots up. If that is so, then the USB stick is no longer needed. I'm confused.

Tell us what is actually happening and we will try to assist.

 

[ferrarr]

Also, please provide the model and year of the MacBook? Pro or Air? 2006, 2007, 2008, etc?

Do you have another Mac to work from?

Do you have another (larger) external drive?

What size is the USB drive you are trying to work from?

 

[bayankaran]

Also, please provide the model and year of the MacBook? Pro or Air? 2006, 2007, 2008, etc?

Do you have another Mac to work from?

Do you have another (larger) external drive?

What size is the USB drive you are trying to work from?

Slightly long reply. I use Linux and Windows...so resetting a Mac is somewhat a new experience.

Here's the MacBook model...MacBook Pro 2010, with OS X Mountain Lion.

What happened?

The machine won't boot up. So went to the recovery mode using Cntrl +R (or Option R) and was given three / four choices. One of the choice was reinstalling the OS. But it did not verify the Apple Id - which is strange - and gave a very generic error message dialog. First Aid did not show any error with the internal hard drive (Mac OS X) but it did not allow any activity on that.

Finally, I could get a terminal, and poking around I saw a folder which had an installer for OS X - maybe it downloaded from the previous operations. I could get it installed to a formatted memory stick. And now it boots from the memory stick.

What needs to be done is to get the OS X installed and booted from the internal hard drive.

So, why is the internal hard drive not getting mounted - when First Aid showed it as not having errors - when I am booting from the memory stick?

What needs to be done to mount the internal hard drive, save all the data and then install OS X?

Thank you in advance.

 

[MacInWin]

To mount the internal, boot from the Memory stick, then go into Disk Utility and select the internal drive and then "Mount" on the menu. If it's ok, it should then mount. The reason it's not automatically mounting is that it isn't the boot drive and the boot process on the memory stick doesn't have it as a drive to mount.

 

[bayankaran]

To mount the internal, boot from the Memory stick, then go into Disk Utility and select the internal drive and then "Mount" on the menu. If it's ok, it should then mount. The reason it's not automatically mounting is that it isn't the boot drive and the boot process on the memory stick doesn't have it as a drive to mount.

Here's the problem. The Disk Utility does not show the internal drive. (This is the reason I asked the question in the first place.) But when I took the First Aid option (before installing OS X on the memory stick) it showed the drive as "healthy". I don't think the drive got damaged in the last few hours or during the installation to memory stick.

Is there any other utility / command which will scan for all drives/volumes in the system?

 

[MacInWin]

If Disk Utility is not showing the drive, it's not powering up or connecting to the system. In other words, it's dead.

It may have been "healthy" at one instant, but if it's not showing and won't boot, it's dead.

 

[ferrarr]

If you start up from the USB drive, can you install the OS to the internal drive? It sounds like the HDD has died. Do you have another you could test with?

 

[bayankaran]

If you start up from the USB drive, can you install the OS to the internal drive? It sounds like the HDD has died. Do you have another you could test with?

I cannot "see" the internal drive. Maybe when an installation works from the memory stick (for some strange reason) hides an internal drive. I am more or less certain the drive is not completely dead for not to show up.

If I can see the internal drive, I can somehow save the data and maybe install the OS to that.

I will give you an update today night...I had to give the laptop with the OS running from the memory stick for her to use. Let me get it back.

 

[MacInWin]

I cannot "see" the internal drive

Then it's dead or the cable to it has broken or it's not connected..

Maybe when an installation works from the memory stick (for some strange reason) hides an internal drive.

No, it doesn't. If Disk Utility cannot show you the drive, it's not there. It's dead or the cable is broken or disconnected. No other options..

I am more or less certain the drive is not completely dead for not to show up.

What makes you so sure it's not dead? It isn't showing up, which means either it's not powering up, or it's not connecting. I know it's hard to believe it just died, but there you are.

Good luck with it. What I would suggest when you get it back is to take the drive out and see if it can be seen by another computer. If so, then the problem is in the cable or connections. If not, that is confirmation that it's dead.

 

[bayankaran]

What makes you so sure it's not dead? It isn't showing up, which means either it's not powering up, or it's not connecting. I know it's hard to believe it just died, but there you are.

There's no 100%, but a drive which was showing up as healthy should not really go completely dead in a few hours unless I did something drastic.

The issue with the drive was probably free space. The person using it was complaining "computer is now slow". I asked what she did recently and got the reply "I had to copy a lot of video files, I need to find a drive to copy to".

I don't know how Mac works, but maybe swap space got full, disk got full and so on and refused to boot in a normal mode.

And before I installed the OS on the memory stick I could find a terminal and poke around.

So my instinct is that the drive is fine, but its hiding somewhere. That said it could be dead as well.

I hope its not soldiered on to the motherboard. If its not dead I can take it out, and fix it in an enclosure and save data.

 

[MacInWin]

Well, if that is the original drive, it is now 7-8 years old, which well past the typical time when drives start to fail. (Lion was released in 2011, replaced in 2012, so the drive has to dome from that era.) Her report that it was slow is a symptom of a failing drive. The disk getting full would not make it disappear, just make it very slow as it struggled to find open space. Disk Utility would still see the drive, but working with it would be slow. Not seeing it at all is a symptom of failure.

The testing that First Aid does on a drive does not show impending failures very well. All it tests for is "did the read/write work" and not "how many tries did it take?" The "how many" is the cause of slow performance as the drive internals have to do multiple shots at writing/reading the drive before it works. But all Disk Utility cares about is that it did or did not work, not how many tries. So a drive can be near failure and DU will be reporting no problems. And when the drive finally fails, it "disappears" because it is no longer responding to the operating system at all, at any speed. Hence, there is some high probability that that old drive has died. Now, it MIGHT be the cable, as cables can get brittle and break if they get messed with. But frankly, if you haven't taken the drive out that is a low probability. And most of the time cables don't make a drive "slow" as she has reported. They are more of a yes/no component. Either work or not.

 

[bayankaran]

Thank you. I am now typing from the MacBook. The Macintosh HD comes and goes. Its a 500GB disk, and 21 MB free space!

Here's a log of the Disk Utility...it showed the drive. When I ran "df" command from terminal the Macintosh HD on Disk Utility disappeared!

*********
2018-10-30 21:09:26 -0400: Disk Utility started.

2018-10-30 21:20:49 -0400: Verifying and repairing partition map for “APPLE HDD HTS545050A7E362 Media”
2018-10-30 21:20:49 -0400: Starting repair tool:
2018-10-30 21:20:49 -0400: Checking prerequisites
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: Error: Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400:
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: : Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup.
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: [DUDiskController mountDisk] expecting DUDisk, but got nil
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: Verify and Repair volume “Macintosh HD”
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: Starting repair tool:
2018-10-30 21:23:43 -0400: Repairing volume failed: Disk object invalid or unable to serialize.

I think we might be able to salvage the HD. Tho I am not sure how.

 

[MacInWin]

I think it is in the process of failing. 21MB free is not really enough, it should be in the 75-100MB range (15%+). But that would only slow processing slightly as swapping lacked space, not make it disappear.

I would suggest removing it from the machine, putting it into an external enclosure and reading off the user's data from there to a backup. Then replace the internal with a new drive if the rest of the system is acceptable to her, reinstalling the OS and restoring her files from the external (formerly internal) drive.

 

[bayankaran]

Pls take a look at the image. I restarted the machine and got to the Boot Options.

If I "Restore" I believe the internal HD will be formatted. Is there anyway I can get a terminal and copy stuff to a memory stick? Or a Finder program?

 

[MacInWin]

I don't even see the internal drive in that image. What I see is data about the stick and a "disk3" with a "Base System." This link: https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...base-system-disk-image-on-my-2011-macbook-air

discusses what that is. Basically, it is a disk image mounted during the installation process and probably initiated from the stick as a virtual drive. So, based on what you posted and what it shows, the internal drive is not there. And that is consistent with it being dead. It's not even showing up as a device at all. The hardware should be named "APPLE HDD HTS545050A7E362 Media" as you saw it earlier in your post, but it's NOT there, so it's not alive to the booted system. At this point, even if you did a restore, it isn't going to be touching the internal drive because it is not there.

Given that your log shows it was there for a little while (5 seconds or so), I would say the drive is on it's last legs and is deeply failing or maybe even totally failed.

I think your only hope to recover it is to remove it from the Mac and see if it can be mounted on some other Mac as an external drive. And if you can, do the copy of the critical data as quickly as you can because that drive is nearly dead and won't last long.

 

[ferrarr]

If you have a SATA external HD enclosure, you can put the drive in that, and connect it to the MBP. Then see if pressing/holding "option" at startup, it may show as a boot drive option.

 

[bayankaran]

I have ordered an enclosure as data needs to be saved. Seems that's the reasonable option at this point. The Macintosh HD shows up, if there was a way to mount it I could have copied data, erased HD etc. Here's a picture when I take a different boot option.

Will keep you folks posted on how it goes. Many thanks for your suggestions and guidance.

 

[ferrarr]

Did you try Safe Mode?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

I really think you will need to be booted into Mac OS X, in order to possibly save the data. Do you have another drive to put into that MBP, to accomplish this goal, even temporarily?