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Accidentally deleted Macintosh HD from disk utility

I wanted to factory reset my 2015 MacBook and in the YouTube video I watched they suggested to erase Macintosh HD from the disk utility but now since I’ve done this I can’t install macOS to any internal drives since they’re gone. I was able to download Sierra to a flash drive and been trying every solution I can online to fix this but I don’t have any Time Machine back ups or any other disks (exc.) showing up in the internal section for disk utility nor does it allow me to “view all” as I’ve seen some suggest. Any suggestions would be really appreciated

MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 14, 2022 10:09 AM

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Posted on Nov 14, 2022 5:37 PM

Please follow these instructions: Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support.


Pay attention to Steps 3 and 4: Be sure to choose Disk Utility's View menu > Show All Devices. The "Device" in its context refers to the entire storage device, meaning not a volume or partition subordinate to that device. That is what you need to erase.


The reason it does not appear at first is that macOS versions subsequent to the one it shipped with reformatted its startup disk to APFS, a file format that earlier versions of DU do not recognize.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 14, 2022 5:37 PM in response to Indecisive_

Please follow these instructions: Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support.


Pay attention to Steps 3 and 4: Be sure to choose Disk Utility's View menu > Show All Devices. The "Device" in its context refers to the entire storage device, meaning not a volume or partition subordinate to that device. That is what you need to erase.


The reason it does not appear at first is that macOS versions subsequent to the one it shipped with reformatted its startup disk to APFS, a file format that earlier versions of DU do not recognize.

Nov 14, 2022 5:27 PM in response to Indecisive_

Does your laptop use a third party SSD? If so, then you need to boot from a macOS 10.13+ installer because older versions of macOS are not compatible with third party NVMe SSDs. Your laptop can run up to macOS 12.x Monterey.


Try booting into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to attempt to access the online macOS 12.x Monterey installer. Unfortunately sometimes this will just boot into the online macOS installer for the OS which originally shipped with the Mac which in your case would be macOS 10.11 El Capitan.


If you have access to another Qualifying Mac, then you can create a bootable macOS USB installer. A Qualifying Mac is one which is compatible with the installer you are trying to download. For example to create a bootable macOS 12.x USB installer generally requires a Mac from Late-2013 to 2020, while to create a 10.13 installer generally requires a Mac from Late-2009 to 2018. You can use the following article to identify Qualifying Macs:

https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility


Here is an Apple article with instructions for creating a bootable macOS USB installer and also the links to various macOS installers:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support


To install macOS 10.14+, you will need to erase the physical SSD as GUID partition and APFS (top option). For older versions of macOS you will need to erase the physical SSD as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).


If your Mac is not using a third party SSD, then the SSD in your laptop is bad since the physical SSD is not shown on the left pane of Disk Utility.


Accidentally deleted Macintosh HD from disk utility

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