I've been working at this for about a week now to no avail so if anyone can help me I would be so, so thankful. Here's what happened:
I get a lot of software through my academic institution, which means that I give it to IT and they load all their stuff. This means that when stuff breaks, like my 2013 MBP Retina did last week (screen broke), I also have to use them as primary tech support. So I made a time machine backup, and when they gave me back the fixed computer I restored from the backup using the data migration. But this time I noticed something weird:
Basically in Disk Utility my "Macintosh HD" partition was listed as a sub-partition of "disk0s2" which itself was a partition of the internal solid state drive. I don't know if this is even possible but that's what was showing, so if I used "diskutil list" in terminal, my actual OS X hard drive was given the path /dev/disk0s2s1 . I thought it was odd but didn't think much of it but then when I tried creating a bootable capitan external hard-drive, the computer stopped being able to boot. Basically when I used diskutil in from Recovery, it now didn't list my Macintosh HD partition at all, it now only had this:
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: 46860E2C-2310-4F96-99F6-616D0B4CB55D 499.4 GB disk2s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk2s3
I had to return the external hard drive I used so I no longer have the time machine backup. I needed the computer to work and work soon so I eventually had to wipe the disk and reinstall the OS. Before doing that I made a disk image of the overall hard drive, which I now have saved on another external hard drive. When I try to mount the image, I run into issues with the filesystem. Using debug in Disk Utility I can reveal all hidden partitions so I now see disk2s2 as a partition but can't mount it because there is no recognized filesystem. I have tried using gdisk and testdisk to recover the partition but I don't know how to make it work.
My hypothesis is this: because of that strange configuration of partitions that I mentioned in the beginning, the "Macintosh HD" partition I want is offset somehow within disk2s2. I'm honestly at a loss of what to do now because I haven't found anyone in a similar situation with the original redundant partition problem.
Please, please, please let me know if anyone has any ideas on what I should do
I get a lot of software through my academic institution, which means that I give it to IT and they load all their stuff. This means that when stuff breaks, like my 2013 MBP Retina did last week (screen broke), I also have to use them as primary tech support. So I made a time machine backup, and when they gave me back the fixed computer I restored from the backup using the data migration. But this time I noticed something weird:
Basically in Disk Utility my "Macintosh HD" partition was listed as a sub-partition of "disk0s2" which itself was a partition of the internal solid state drive. I don't know if this is even possible but that's what was showing, so if I used "diskutil list" in terminal, my actual OS X hard drive was given the path /dev/disk0s2s1 . I thought it was odd but didn't think much of it but then when I tried creating a bootable capitan external hard-drive, the computer stopped being able to boot. Basically when I used diskutil in from Recovery, it now didn't list my Macintosh HD partition at all, it now only had this:
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk2
1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
2: 46860E2C-2310-4F96-99F6-616D0B4CB55D 499.4 GB disk2s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 134.2 MB disk2s3
I had to return the external hard drive I used so I no longer have the time machine backup. I needed the computer to work and work soon so I eventually had to wipe the disk and reinstall the OS. Before doing that I made a disk image of the overall hard drive, which I now have saved on another external hard drive. When I try to mount the image, I run into issues with the filesystem. Using debug in Disk Utility I can reveal all hidden partitions so I now see disk2s2 as a partition but can't mount it because there is no recognized filesystem. I have tried using gdisk and testdisk to recover the partition but I don't know how to make it work.
My hypothesis is this: because of that strange configuration of partitions that I mentioned in the beginning, the "Macintosh HD" partition I want is offset somehow within disk2s2. I'm honestly at a loss of what to do now because I haven't found anyone in a similar situation with the original redundant partition problem.
Please, please, please let me know if anyone has any ideas on what I should do
Code:
$ DISKUTIL info /dev/disk2
Device Identifier: disk2
Device Node: /dev/disk2
Part of Whole: disk2
Device / Media Name: Apple UDIF read-only compressed (zlib) Media
Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)
File System: None
Content (IOContent): GUID_partition_scheme
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: Disk Image
SMART Status: Not Supported
Total Size: 500.3 GB (500277790720 Bytes) (exactly 977105060 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space: Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes
Read-Only Media: Yes
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (no file system)
Ejectable: Yes
Whole: Yes
Internal: No
OS 9 Drivers: No
Low Level Format: Not supported
$ diskutil info /dev/disk2s2
Device Identifier: disk2s2
Device Node: /dev/disk2s2
Part of Whole: disk2
Device / Media Name: Hard Drive
Volume Name: Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted: Not applicable (no file system)
File System: None
Partition Type: 46860E2C-2310-4F96-99F6-616D0B4CB55D
OS Can Be Installed: No
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: Disk Image
SMART Status: Not Supported
Total Size: 499.4 GB (499417796608 Bytes) (exactly 975425384 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space: Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size: 512 Bytes
Read-Only Media: Yes
Read-Only Volume: Not applicable (no file system)
Ejectable: Yes
Whole: No
Internal: No
