Stuck with incorrectly partitioned disk and cannot install macOS, stuck in recoveryOS.

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Level 1

4 points

Stuck with incorrectly partitioned disk and cannot install macOS, stuck in recoveryOS.

Sometime ago I tried resetting my M1 macbook air through settings. At the time I couldn't update my OS because some kernel proccess didn't let me do it. Something didn't work correctly and now I'm stuck in recoveryOS running on my main disk drive which is incorrectly partitioned. I want to modify (reformat partitions and make use of the free space I have) it so I can install macOS properly. I've already tried doing it through the terminal yet to no avail.

Also I tried externally booting from USB into ARM supported Linux so I could safely repartition the disk and for that I need to reduce startup security, but this is the result I get whenever I try to change it through startup security utility (screenshot attached below).

I've also attached my current disk partitions so you can get a better understanding of the situation. Please help, I can provide any additional info that would be needed.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.0

Posted on Jan 18, 2025 5:28 AM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

62,162 points

Jan 18, 2025 1:44 PM in response to vakaris272

You need to use Disk Utility to add a new partition since your macOS partition/Container is gone.....it is now shown as "(free space)". If you cannot do that through the Disk Utility GUI app, then you can try creating it using the command line.

diskutil  addPartition  disk0s1  apfs  0

Theoretically this should use all of the "(free space)" after partition/Container "disk0s1" and format it with the APFS file system which theoretically should make the partition into an APFS Container. I've never tried this, so this is just my best guess from looking at the "diskutil" man page.

man  diskutil

Worst case scenario, you will need to perform a DFU Firmware Restore to reset the security enclave chip, system firmware, SSD, and push a clean copy of macOS onto the internal SSD. This will require access to another Mac (most likely requiring macOS 15.x Sequoia).

As for the second picture, accessing anything that requires security access & authentication....that requires macOS to be installed on the internal SSD along with at least one valid macOS admin user account. When the internal SSD is missing macOS, then there is no way to authenticate since there are no macOS admin user accounts available. Same thing can happen if the security enclave chip is bad or its data is corrupted.

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