<< Solved >> Big Sur unable to boot

[PrasadK]

I had my bigsur setup for last year plus without problem. Just recently it wouldn't boot. I use open efi. I did no changes and it suddenly wouldn't start. I am guessing my Samsung m2 got corrupted... if I boot with a USB stick then I can see the boot options and then I see a kernel panic. I have attached screenshots. How can I get to recover my system? Any guidance is appreciated.

I have many important documents and photos there. To make matters worse my time machine backup isn't working for a while and I may not remember the password for time machine either. Really need help. I feel really stupid that I ended up in this situation. Tagging previous helpers @Feartech @pastrychef

edit: this is a known samsung Pro 980 firmware issue which bricks your drive. update firmware proactively. see here https://www.pugetsystems.com/support/guides/critical-samsung-ssd-firmware-update/

 

[Feartech]

I had my bigsur setup for last year plus without problem. Just recently it wouldn't boot. I use open efi. I did no changes and it suddenly wouldn't start. I am guessing my Samsung m2 got corrupted... if I boot with a USB stick then I can see the boot options and then I see a kernel panic. I have attached screenshots. How can I get to recover my system? Any guidance is appreciated.

I have many important documents and photos there. To make matters worse my time machine backup isn't working for a while and I may not remember the password for time machine either. Really need help. I feel really stupid that I ended up in this situation. Tagging previous helpers @Feartech @pastrychef

possible drive failure

try and boot into recovery and run first aid on the drive/partitions

 

[pastrychef]

I had my bigsur setup for last year plus without problem. Just recently it wouldn't boot. I use open efi. I did no changes and it suddenly wouldn't start. I am guessing my Samsung m2 got corrupted... if I boot with a USB stick then I can see the boot options and then I see a kernel panic. I have attached screenshots. How can I get to recover my system? Any guidance is appreciated.

I have many important documents and photos there. To make matters worse my time machine backup isn't working for a while and I may not remember the password for time machine either. Really need help. I feel really stupid that I ended up in this situation. Tagging previous helpers @Feartech @pastrychef

Hmm... The third image you posted seems to indicate that your system doesn't even see the OpenCore bootloader, but the first two images clearly show OpenCore loaded...

 

[PrasadK]

possible drive failure

try and boot into recovery and run first aid on the drive/partitions

Less than 2 year old Samsung Nvme. Too bad! The area was a bit hot... Probably that killed it. I will try this. Thanks

 

[PrasadK]

Hmm... The third image you posted seems to indicate that your system doesn't even see the OpenCore bootloader, but the first two images clearly show OpenCore loaded...

Thanks. Third image shows up if I boot without any external USB. I booted through USB in hopes of getting it working then try to pick the partition in opencore boot selector. It shows that I have all boot options before failure. I have 1 Linux and 2 Mac on it. None of them seem to work. I don't remember what error Linux gives. I will check that.

 

[pastrychef]

Thanks. Third image shows up if I boot without any external USB. I booted through USB in hopes of getting it working then try to pick the partition in opencore boot selector. It shows that I have all boot options before failure. I have 1 Linux and 2 Mac on it. None of them seem to work. I don't remember what error Linux gives. I will check that.

Are you able to boot in to the restore partition?

Have you tried cleaning NVRAM a few times?

 

[PrasadK]

@pastrychef @Feartech I have 2 MacOS in boot menu and 1 Linux. Linux boots and both macos don't. Without USB boot nothing will work. Looks like same error both macos.

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef @Feartech I have 2 MacOS in boot menu and 1 Linux. Linux boots and both macos don't. Without USB boot nothing will work. Looks like same error both macos.

Did you try the restore partition? At the OpenCore boot picker, press the space bar and see if the restore partition reveals itself.

 

[PrasadK]

Did you try the restore partition? At the OpenCore boot picker, press the space bar and see if the restore partition reveals itself.

BTW, i was wrong about Linux working on this... Linux is on another disk completely.
@pastrychef I haven't tried restore yet. Isn't restore is for restoring another volume onto this partition?
I was able to add a new ssd, install Big Sur, boot through that and look at data in the corrupted partition. It looks almost perfect... What I noticed is that partition doesn't show up in boot menu as one of the bootable ones. So EFI partition is messed up somehow is my guess though I am able to mount EFI mount using EFI Mounter and contents look okay too. I ran First Aid and I get following output... cc: @Feartech

Running First Aid on “Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB Media” (disk0)

Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking the partition map size
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition’s size
Checking the EFI system partition’s file system
Checking the EFI system partition’s folder content
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Couldn’t mount disk. : (-69842)

Operation failed…

 

[Feartech]

BTW, i was wrong about Linux working on this... Linux is on another disk completely.
@pastrychef I haven't tried restore yet. Isn't restore is for restoring another volume onto this partition?
I was able to add a new ssd, install Big Sur, boot through that and look at data in the corrupted partition. It looks almost perfect... What I noticed is that partition doesn't show up in boot menu as one of the bootable ones. So EFI partition is messed up somehow is my guess though I am able to mount EFI mount using EFI Mounter and contents look okay too. I ran First Aid and I get following output... cc: @Feartech

output doesn't look good