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theSeb

macrumors 604
Original poster
Aug 10, 2010
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So I had some serious issues when trying to upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 10 and I have followed the path, which has lead me to some serious issues with my 2013 Mac Pro running Yosemite 10.10.5

I decided to reinstall Windows using Bootcamp Assistant. Something went wrong towards the end of the repartitioning process. My Windows partition was gone, but Windows still appeared when holding down opt during start up.

I managed to partition my drive to 1 to get my bootcamp space back and then I ran Bootcamp Assistant again to create a Windows partition. I then removed it using Bootcamp assistant and this time it worked fine. Windows no longer shows up in the start up menu.

However, during this fun exercise I discovered some weird things. I decided to play it safe and completely format my drive and start again since I have TM backups and clones made using CCC. When I boot into the clone's recovery HD I cannot see the internal drive, so I cannot format it. The same issues happens if I start up using the TM backup.

Even going into the terminal and trying to mount /dev/disk0 does not work. It does not show up in /dev at all. However, it boots perfectly fine from disk0 into OS X. The other thing that I discovered is that the Recovery hd on my internal drive does not work. It shows up in the start up menu, but it won't boot into it. It starts to boot and then a few seconds later the screen goes black.

So I used another Mac and connected the two via a TB cable. I then started the Mac Pro in target disk mode. I could see the Mac Pro's internal drive and so I formatted it (not just the volume with OS X). I figured that should sort out all of these issues. I have now tried to start up using the recovery hd from a Yosemite USB installer, a CCC clone and a TM backup. None of these are able to see the internal drive, which is quite concerning, as you might imagine.

I am kind of stumped here. I could go back into TDM and run CCC from the other Mac onto the Mac Pro's internal drive, but that is not going to resolve the potential underlying issue.

Any ideas?

Update: I have gone back into TDM and created a recovery partition on the Mac Pro using CCC. I then tried to restart the MP using the recovery hd and it still won't boot into the recovery partition. The progress bar gets about a third of the way and then the screen goes blank.

Update 2: This gets even better. I cannot reinstall OS X from Internet Recovery either. When I first go into it and then into the terminal, "diskutil list" shows the internal disk. But if I go into disk utility GUI, or try to reinstall OS X, the internal drive does not show up. Also, if I try to use the terminal again after trying the reinstall, then the internal no longer shows up in diskutil list.

I am starting to think that there is a hardware issue here.

Update 3: I went back into TDM and then ran carbon copy cloner from the other Mac to put Yosemite back on. OS X itself works perfectly, but the Recovery HD on the internal disk still does not work and the internal drive still does not show up if I boot using a different recovery partition (TM, clone, internet recovery and a USB installer).

It's not the end of the world, but basically I can never do a clean OS X install on the Mac Pro, unless this problem magically sorts itself out, which I doubt.
 
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