Accidentally Erased Partitions, Now have black screen with White Folder with ?

I'm really glad it worked. And I'm glad you enjoyed the process.

I'm just glad I decided to glance at your post since many times I will skip a thread where a high level contributor is already responding (I've been very busy so I haven't had much time recently to really hang out here, but needed a distraction).

Again, THANK YOU so much for taking your time to help another human being in need! Can't thank you enough. And if you have time and don't mind, I'd LOVE to hear the explanation about those command lines you had me type in. From the last set you sent me, that seemed to fix everything. I know I'll never truly understand it all, but would love to try and get the gist of it. What was each line of command doing? What was it affecting? That would be neat to learn HOW and WHY you had me type in all those commands. Just for my own curiosity. Again, I'll never understand it like you or other experts, but it would be fun to see your thought process and what exactly was going on with those commands.

Yeah, Apple doesn't train their front line agents for anything but basic support options. Erase & reinstall is their mantra. I cannot blame them sometimes, since that can be the easiest & fastest way forward since Apple is only concerned with macOS & the Apple hardware working properly...third party hardware & software is generally the responsibility of the user or the third party vendor.

This guy was their "expert". He's a nice guy and he's helped me out before. But it was either one of two things: 1. he just didn't want to take the time to do all this stuff you did because apple wants him to just move on to the next easy fix or 2. he didn't know and is told to just do exactly as you said: whip and reinstall. Because that is exactly what he told me. That he can't help and to just whip and install.

I'm not sure whether Disk Utility will allow you to rejoin those deleted partitions back into your macOS APFS Container automatically or not. If not, then our adventure can continue a bit longer since I have some command line instructions readily available to make sure the space used by those partitions is reintegrated in the macOS APFS Container (I have provided these instructions for people who had botched Windows Bootcamp installations & removals although I'm not sure anyone bothered to follow up with confirmation of success...they worked for me in a test environment involving multiple partitions within a DMG file).

FYI, if you find that you still get an option to boot Linux, then that is another very easy fix since the Linux bootloader resides within a folder on the hidden EFI (aka ESP) partition. There is no automated Linux uninstaller or removal tool.

So how DO I rejoin those partitions back into my macOS APFS container? It's still showing that my entire SSD is 350GB for Mac. And the other drives, while no longer on the desktop, are still in the Disk Utility app, but grayed out now.

No option to boot into Linux.

I hope you don't give up on your Linux experimentation either. A lot of my knowledge comes from using Linux for the last 20+ years. The best way to go with Linux is to either install to an external drive, or use just about any older computer (64bit CPU 2007+), or install into a Virtual Machine running on macOS if your computer has enough system resources. Partitioning & dual booting to a single drive is always risky, but mostly because people usually discover one or more partitions are too small. I dual booted early on when I was learning Linux by dual booting with Windows (actually triple booted one time) since booting to external drives at the time was not a good option with USB1 or even USB2. Windows was worse since it didn't know how to play nice with others.

Definitely not giving up on Linux. I still have Kubuntu on my main desktop PC on it's own SSD (windows on another, so there is not dual booting). And I think I'll try out the external drive way of running Linux on this laptop. That way there is no partitioning or dual booting. It's definitely too old and not fast enough though to allow running Linux in a VM. My super fast really nice desktop I built can barely run a few different distress of Linux in a VM without problems. Others don't work well at all. I'm going to use Linux Mint on an external ssd.

Oh, and another thing. For some reason, the Disks are not going away. I right click and Eject them. But when I reboot each time, they show up back on the desktop again. Do I want to go into Disk Utility and "ERASE" them? Unmount them? Or restore them?

Thank you

So it's probably reverting all the way back to whatever OS came with this laptop. Maybe Mavericks or something like that. That's why the Disk Utility is so old. And I CAN boot back into Recovery mode, that's how I'm sharing these photos. It says it's version 13 (517) Copyright 2002-2012. But this laptop is an early 2014 MacBook Air. So not sure why it's so old?

And I have obviously upgraded it to each new OS when it becomes available. But because of it's age and the fact that Apple won't support things that are older than 5-8 years old, it's last OS it would update to was Big Sur.

To answer another part of your response... the SSD is a brand new 500GB drive I installed about 3 months ago. I copied everything from my old 250GB drive to the new one following approved online instructions and it worked flawlessly.

I've also gone through every single partition and verified the "disk/volume/image" as well as repaired the drives. I've done it 4-5 times now. Not once, does it find anything wrong. Meaning, I look in the details and there is NOTHING wrong in there. Everything checks out. And it says in green: The volume NO NAME (or whatever drive i'm "repairing") appears to be OK. The only drive or volume I can't do anything with is the second one from the top. The one that says disk0s2. It's greyed out and will not let me repair or verify it. It also will not let me Mount it for some reason? I clicked on get more info for the drive and this is what it says... and it's freaking me out! It says Capacity 350.29GB, and that was the size of my MacOS partition. Yet I NEVER erased that partition. I know for a 100% fact. Because I knew that was the Mac partition and to NOT touch it. Yet it's greyed out, not mounted and I can't do anything with it. And it's my Mac drive! Here's a photo of what it says:

All of these drives verify and say Everything checks out after Repair Disk:

500.28 GB Apple SSD SM051...

NO NAME

disk0s4

disk0s5

disk0s6

disk0s7

Then this is a part where you lose me: The first step is to attempt to boot into Internet Recovery Mode using Command + Option + R to access the online macOS 11.x Big Sur installer.

I don't want to install Big Sur ON TOP of anything. I want to restore everything back to normal. So my question is: will accessing and installing Big Sur in recovery mode install over all my stuff? If yes, then I'm not doing that. If no, than can you explain how this works? How would installing a new Big Sur on top of whatever my drive contains allow me to recover my drive how it was 3 weeks ago? I'm not following here. Sorry, I'm not a computer expert.

Then, I will try and get this bootable Knoppix Linux USB stick thing going and see if I can get it to spit out some report on the health of the SSD. My guess is that it should be totally fine. But you never know. I'll report back here once I get that done.

We'll just go with this part first before we go with anything else in here. And before I forget... thank you very much for taking the time to post such a thorough response.

I understand that since you mentioned you had Big Sur installed (or it seemed implied anyway). That is why I suggested using Command + Option + R to access Internet Recovery Mode to see if you can access the online Big Sur installer. Working with the newest installer will give us the best most reliable information about the system since older versions of macOS do not understand the new drive layouts or file systems used by later versions of macOS. Different key combinations are supposed to give access to different versions of the macOS installer. Unfortunately some Macs may only boot to the online installer for the older OS which originally shipped with the Mac from the factory.

Ok, I gotcha you know ;) I was able to use Cmd+Opt+R to get into Internet Recovery Mode. And yes, there is a different looking Recovery system/screen now! It looks much more modern. Says it's Disk Utility Version 20.1 (1715.2). So that's good.

That is because you are using an old OS to examine a new style partition made with a newer OS which the old OS does not understand. That is why you need to boot into a later macOS installer (Big Sur is best, but any from macOS 10.13+ we can work with). macOS 10.13+ uses the newer style APFS Containers and file systems. An APFS Container is just a specialized type of Apple partition.

Ok, I'm fairly certain I understand most of this. Thanks for explaining. I'm learning as well, so thank you.

All those other volumes are not showing any names or listings which is why using a newer macOS installer & Knoppix Linux is necessary to get more information about them.

Ok, this is another part I just realized may or may not work. You mentioned this Knoppix program. And it "seems" to me like it's for running while in Linux? If that is the case, this will do nothing for me, as I don't have Linux on the laptop anymore. It has the dreaded "Oh No! Something has gone wrong" folder and screen. I could not figure out how to get my Linux system back. Everyone on the Linux forums were saying it would be way too hard to figure out EXACTLY what went wrong and to just start over. That is when I went into my Mac Drive in Disk Utility and erased the Linux partitions. So I can't get back into Linux on this laptop (as far as I know).

I'm not asking you to reinstall anything at this point. The point of using Internet Recovery Mode is to attempt to access the Big Sur online installer so we can get more details about the drive layout and so you can run First Aid on the macOS boot volume which should be an APFS Container. We are at the information gathering stage here.

Ok, so just to be crystal clear. At this point DO NOT click on the Reinstall macOS Big Sur button in the Recovery Mode? The second option of the four shown in this photo. Instead, run Disk Utility again? Verify Disks and Repair Disks? Anything else you need me to do?

If the missing macOS, presumably on partition "disk0s2", had Big Sur installed, then reinstalling Big Sur over top of itself will not hurt anything assuming the file system and SSD and laptop are all healthy. As long as you do not erase the drive or modify any partitions, then your data should be relatively safe.

Ok, understood. It "should" be healthy and have no problems. As mentioned, I just purchased this drive and have had zero issues. Same with the laptop.

If Big Sur was completely up to date, then reinstalling macOS over top of itself should not make any difference. If, however, Big Sur was not completely up to date, then reinstalling Big Sur would not leave it exactly as it was before although any update patches really should not cause any problems for most software & setups.

Yes, Big Sur was completely up to date.

***Update***

Ok, I ran First Aid on all the drives. I first clicked on the little View box and Selected: Show All Devices. For some reason, it's not "showing" disk0s2 (which is the Mac partition, the 350GB part). It only shows:

Apple SSD SM0512G

NO NAME

disk0s4

disk0s5

disk0s6

disk0s7

Then My external drive. Then below that, it shows Disk Images and says Apple disk image Media and macOS Base System.

Awaiting further instructions. Thank you

Ok, so here is what comes up when I open terminal and type in the command: diskutil list internal

disk0s2 is showing up. But instead of a type name, it just has FFFFFFFFFFFFFF? No idea what that is. And as "far as I know", I never used filevault. But I could be wrong. It's been forever since I've done anything major with this laptop. I pretty much only use it to rip CD's, put in Apple Music and then transfer to my iPhone.

When I type in the command: diskutil ap unlockVolume disk0s2, this is what terminal says:

disk0s2 is not an APFS Volume

Then when I type in the command: diskutil mount readOnly disk0s2, it says the following:

Volume on disk0s2 failed to mount
Perhaps the operation is not supported (kDAReturnUnsupported)
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option

Ok, so that command does nothing. But I did put that into google and searched and find a few other posts with similar-ish problems and the commands they used. Not exactly sure what they are for, but I'm including a few different photos here for you to view, hoping any will help. The commands I used in order were:

diskutil info /dev/disk0
diskutil info /dev/disk2
gpt show /dev/disk2

Ok, got it ALL right this time. Sorry I missed that hyphen. I double checked everything, but somehow missed it, my mistake.

So I typed in everything and when I got near the last command, it started "running" something on and off until it finished and here is what it said. I think it's good? Not sure though.

Yep, I can get back to a super old version of MacOS now. But again, nothing is working to restore my computer back to it's original state 3 weeks ago. The Restore from TimeMachine option only gives me TWO choices?!?! Its not showing all my backups I've done over the years. And one of them is from 2016 and the other from March, 2024. I've done a LOT of stuff with my music since then and it will all be lost. Why is my Timemachine backup from 3 weeks ago and another one from this summer not showing up?! Is there anything I can do?

Hey there, I just wanted to get back with you, so you know I didn't flake out and leave. I've been really busy after work the last few days and for some reason, all of a sudden, the laptop will NOT connect to my WiFi at work, so I can't work on this stuff in the day and report back at night. But I'm still here and still going to try all of this! I really appreciate you helping this much so far. At this point, it's almost like a fun journey to see if we (basically you) can fix this problem! And yes, I realize I could lose everything. I do have a backup showing from March, 2024, so that just in case, everything goes wrong, I can get back to at least that. Still not great at all, I'm going to lose a TON of ripped music I just did this summer, but at least I'll have most of my stuff back.

Also, not sure why the laptop is doing this now, but when I boot into Internet Recovery Mode, it's usually giving me a Startup Error and a number and not even letting me get into Disk Utility or anything! The one # it says is: -1007F and I think the other is something like 3000? Can't remember now. But I know for sure it's throwing -1007F a lot now. One time it did boot into the Recovery Mode but it was back to that super old version of MacOS, not Big Sur!!! I don't know why it all of a sudden started doing this stuff again?! I was ready to put all your commands into the terminal and see if it worked, and now I can't even get the computer to the Recovery Mode! This is so frustrating.

But just wanted to let you know I'm still here and will be working on this today and this weekend. Thanks

Actually, not sure what happened the first time? I typed in that command and it brought up nothing. I just tried it again and now it works. This is what it spit out:

So here is all the output from putting in those commands. Again, at the very end, disk0s2 is not showing up :( But everything else went well and had no errors.