HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized!

HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - Printable Version

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HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - tahoedrew - 06-17-2019

Obviously it boots, but as soon as the OS starts up I get the "you've inserted a drive/volume that can't be recognized" and offers me the options to initialize, ignore or eject.

Ultimately, within minutes I get kernel panics.

The computer was fine on Thursday when I shut it down before leaving for vacation over the weekend. Today this all started at the first boot!

Anyone have any ideas? I'm trying to chase down whether it's related to my RX 570 graphics card too... but that doesn't explain why the OS believes the boot volume isn't recognized.

How do I see all the volume containers on an SSD now? I'm wondering if there's a rogue container that's obviously not showing up and causing issues.

~A

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - rjmacs - 06-17-2019

tahoedrew wrote:
Obviously it boots, but as soon as the OS starts up I get the "you've inserted a drive/volume that can't be recognized" and offers me the options to initialize, ignore or eject.

Ultimately, within minutes I get kernel panics.

The computer was fine on Thursday when I shut it down before leaving for vacation over the weekend. Today this all started at the first boot!

Anyone have any ideas? I'm trying to chase down whether it's related to my RX 570 graphics card too... but that doesn't explain why the OS believes the boot volume isn't recognized.

How do I see all the volume containers on an SSD now? I'm wondering if there's a rogue container that's obviously not showing up and causing issues.

~A

Thank you for visiting the MRF Oh Crap Clinic, where a group of well-meaning and variably experienced MRF nerds will respond to your crisis with vim, vigor, and verve - occasionally providing good advice amongst the snark and non sequiturs.

Your problem description is incomplete: please detail what Mac model is in use, which iteration of MacOS High Sierra is installed (if known). whether the machine will boot into recovery mode, the format of the boot volume (HFS, APFS?), and any other details you may have omitted during your frantic initial post.

Your cavalier, sarcastic, knowledgeable (if sometimes disagreeable) technicians will be with you shortly.

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - hal - 06-17-2019

IS that a 2017 imac with a Fusion drive? If so, it seems like the spinny component has died.

Can you get disk utility launched before you KP? SMART Utility will show the separate components too.

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - pdq - 06-17-2019

Any way to boot from an external drive? (I would guess booting from recovery partition (apple/splat-R when booting) wouldn’t work here).

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - tahoedrew - 06-17-2019

rjmacs wrote:

Your problem description is incomplete: please detail what Mac model is in use, which iteration of MacOS High Sierra is installed (if known). whether the machine will boot into recovery mode, the format of the boot volume (HFS, APFS?), and any other details you may have omitted during your frantic initial post.

For those who didn't pick up on my likely too subtle inferences (in my head I wrote all these details in my original post LOL!)...

Mac Pro 5,1 (genuine, not flashed)
MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6
M.2 sata drive in a StarTech PCIE card is the boot volume
no recovery mode on this Mac (thinking that's a choice I made anticipating an active clone/backup routine, though I hadn't implemented it yet... yeah yeah yell at me later for this Confused

miley-talk034 Smile

APFS as it's required (SSD and High Sierra)

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - Sarcany - 06-18-2019

Safe-boot.

Run Disk Utility.

View > Show All Devices

Is there a partition showing up gray? (Not mounted?)

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - N-OS X-tasy! - 06-18-2019

hal wrote:
IS that a 2017 imac with a Fusion drive? If so, it seems like the spinny component has died.

I HATE when the spinny thing does that!

Re: HELP - MacOS High Siera suddenly tells me my boot drive isn't recognizable and needs to be initialized! - Buzz - 06-18-2019

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=tahoedrew]
Obviously it boots, but as soon as the OS starts up I get the "you've inserted a drive/volume that can't be recognized" and offers me the options to initialize, ignore or eject.

Ultimately, within minutes I get kernel panics.

The computer was fine on Thursday when I shut it down before leaving for vacation over the weekend. Today this all started at the first boot!

Anyone have any ideas? I'm trying to chase down whether it's related to my RX 570 graphics card too... but that doesn't explain why the OS believes the boot volume isn't recognized.

How do I see all the volume containers on an SSD now? I'm wondering if there's a rogue container that's obviously not showing up and causing issues.

~A