Internal disk not recognized, not even present in /dev, although it is in Linux

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/420567

disk-utility

02-06-2021
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Question

This disk that used to work isn't recognized at all now.

My Mac (mactel) got bricked because I was fiddling with triple boot setups, and at one point I made Mac unbootable. (Will describe what happened later in this question if interested.)

For several reasons, I used fdisk on Linux (Ubuntu on flash drive) to wipe everything off from that internal disk by applying the GPT scheme to the disk. The disk is totally visible as /dev/nvme0n1 on Ubuntu. However it's not on macOS's recovery mode.

When I go into recovery mode (did both Command + R and Option + Command + R but it's always El Capitan for some reasons), Disk Utility GUI won't show anything besides "Apple disk image Media". (It will show USB flash drive if I plugged them in.) If I move onto CLI version of it, diskutil list will return something like this:

/dev/disk0 (disk image):
    #:                      TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:     GUID_partition_scheme                          +2.1 GB     disk0
    1:                 Apple_HFS OS X Base System          2.0 GB     disk0s
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
    #:                      TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:                           untitled                 +5.2 MB     disk1
# ..
# other 11 disks with similar stuff sized in between 524.3KB (half of those) to 6.3MB
# ..
/dev/disk13 (disk image):
    #:                      TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:                           untitled                 +6.3 MB     disk13

Whereas I expect something as follows:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
    #:                      TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:     GUID_partition_scheme                          +1.0 TB     disk0
/dev/disk1 (disk image):
    #:                      TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
    0:     GUID_partition_scheme                          +2.1 GB     disk1
    1:                 Apple_HFS OS X Base System          2.0 GB     disk1s

ls /dev would not show much interesting output, and there certainly are nothing like nvme0.

Are there more cleaning up to do on the disk (such as removing snapshots from APFS? Are these 13 disk images those snapshots from the disk somehow)??

And here is it for post mortem, more specifics for what this is and how it's got bricked.

Hardware

MacBook Pro [Intel, No T2 chip] (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
NVMe SSD that I swapped with original. Although it is not the original SSD, installation (BigSur) worked successfully once, with zero hiccups. So I believe hardware isn't the problem.

How it got bricked

Short version:

I was trying triple boot setup, which was unsuccessful and tried to start it over by undoing it by asking macOS Boot Camp Assistant to wipe them off, which returned the error, leaving Linux partitions un-wiped. Now it won't boot up.

Long version:

Physical upgrade (Successful)

Swapped with new 1TB SSD, formatted with APFS (I think), installed macOS from Time Machine backup. No hiccups, perfect experience.

Dual-boot (Successful)

Installed Windows 10 with Boot Camp Assistant, just as Apple recommends. Left 500GB for Mac and the rest 500GB for Windows. Again, works like a charm as expected, no hiccups.

Triple-boot (Failed)

Boot into Windows and use Disk Management to shrink the Windows partition. Now it's [500GB: macOS] + [250GB: Windows] + [250GB: unallocated]. So far it boots to both OS with no problem (although Mac's Disk Utility GUI might have not be happy with this, but I don't remember.)
Installed rEFInd, so now it boots into rEFInd menu, and shows both Mac/Windows options, as expected. So far so good.
(Try installing Fedora and I couldn't see no success, so I gave up. Wiped off new partition - and everything works just like before.)
Installed Ubuntu but it didn't boot into Ubuntu although the rEFInd menu shows the Ubuntu icon (as it did install /boot/efi into existing EFI partition). Now Windows won't boot.
Reinstalled rEFInd, and now Ubuntu works, but Windows does not.
Now it boots into rEFInd menu, and macOS and Ubuntu works, but Windows does not. I couldn't figure the fix so I decided to start over with simple dual boot setup the way Apple supports.

Starting over (Failed)

Asked Boot Camp Assistant to wipe current Boot Camp. Took a few minutes doing this and that, and it threw some error (which I didn't take memo regrettably). Disk Utility GUI was showing something glitchy (which I didn't take memo neither), and it didn't wipe Linux partitions.
Booted into Linux (Ubuntu) from USB flashdrive, and used fdisk to apply new GPT to the disk.

And now diskutil list won't recognize the physical disk.

Solution

That particular disk that I was using had an OS requirement in description as follows:

Requires Mac OS X 10.13 High Sierra or Higher BEFORE and AFTER installation

Thus the answer was that I needed Recovery Mode of newer macOS version for that disk to be able to detected. If anyone had a similar problem, you should check the requirement for that particular model also.

What I did

I did the following firstly, but you may not need them.

Then I booted Mac into Recovery Mode with Option + Command + R, typed WiFi credentials in, and it automatically updated the Recovery Mode into the latest version (Big Sur).

Proceed to open the Disk Utility, and now it recognizes the disk!

Format the disk and now the latest OS is ready to be installed, and it should work throughly as I did.

But I had to repeat this umpteenth times. If this didn't work in first try, please read follows.

Maybe don't give up, and keep trying!

Now the very odd part was that, I did all that and the result was either

Get "-2003F" error, and full stop there.
Boot into Recovery Mode but the old version of Mac (El Capitan in my case).

Internet connection was reasonably stable (the one for my home that has very conventional setup, no particular firewall fiddling on any port). (I thought Ethernet dongle helps, but apparently it has to be Apple's dongle so perhaps that try had no use.)

Another thing that seemed rather odd is that, Apple's official Mac startup key combinations help page does not make distinction between Option + Command + R and Command + R anymore, which they used to back in the day. Although both of the combinations seemed as though they did try to connect to internet anyways (as it had globe icon), I think it's worth trying for the one with Option key especially if you had machine that are rather old like mine.

Anyhow, I swear I had it for more than 10 times for each, but now it worked. Only difference was the time I tried, which was early afternoon, and I got it through around 11PM, so probably that was about the slow internet connection.

If you were using public WiFi, it might be better to find another stable network until it boots into the latest version of Recovery Mode (of course that is as long as your Mac supports the version later than what you already have.)

Other suggestions

Here's few other options that may work, though I have tested none of these.

Booting from another disk that has macOS of later version installed.

Target Disk mode

Needs cable to connect the two Macs, such as thunderbolt cable

Use other updated machine in target disk mode and connect to the machine with the unformatted disk.
Boot into Startup Manager to boot into the updated version of macOS. Log in and use Disk Utility.

Physically attach the disk

Needs the other Mac to be able to detach internal disk, and an adapter

Take out the disk with new macOS, use adapter (such like SATA to USB adapter) to connect the disk as USB peripheral to the machine.
Boot into Startup Manager to choose that attached drive into the updated version of macOS.

Bypass the driver problem with adapter

Needs an adapter

Use adapter to connect the disk as peripheral (such as NVMe to USB adapter, etc) so the old OS can recognize it as USB drive.
Boot into Recovery Mode and now it should be able to see the drive in Disk Utility.

Credit: @DavidAnderson: Thanks for a little hint and advice!

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