diskutil shows Macintosh HD is missing (with Recovery HD occupying the entire space)

Question

So yesterday I managed to screw up my iMac 2012 (with Fusion Drive) by installing the Mac OS X 10.10.2 update... The installation stalled and when I tried to restore from an external drive using Time Machine I somehow managed to corrupt my hard drive... When I try to reinstall OS X it says I don't have any disks to install it to.

Anyways, now I'm running Disk utility on the command line at boot and I see the Macintosh HD volume has disappeared. Here is a screenshot of diskutil cs list and diskutil list:

It seems that the Recovery HD disk is occupying the entire disk space (3TB). How do I restore Macintosh HD with a new partition so I can finally reinstall OS X?

Update 1

After deleting 'Recovery HD' on the second disk erroneously here a second screenshot of diskutil list:

Update 2

So I delete the LVG and LG and went to Disk Utility... (See screenshot3) But my disks are in red and DiskUtility is forcing me to fix them... (Screenshot4) And when I do Im back to the same setup... (Screenshot5).

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Answer 1

Your Recovery HD doesn't occupy your whole 3 TB drive. It's disk1s3 in the diskutil listing with the common size of 650 MB.

Your Logical Volume Family and the Logical Volume vanished though.

• To rebuild it start to your Recovery HD or to Internet Recovery Mode, open Terminal and enter diskutil cs list.

• Copy the LVGUUID

• To recreate the LV enter diskutil cs createVolume LVGUUID type name size

  In your case probably diskutil cs createVolume 7ABC--i_can't_read_the_rest jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%.

• Now reinstall Mac OS X or restore your system with the Time Machine backup.

Update 1:

Recovery HD doesn't exist anymore - it was deleted by accident. You have to rebuild your Fusion Drive from scratch now:

Preparation:

• Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive)

• Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
  The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
  On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

  I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

  Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Mavericks or Yosemite).

Rebuild Fusion Drive

• Booted to Internet Recovery Mode open Utilities → Terminal in the menubar and enter:
  diskutil cs list to get the CoreStorage listing.
• Copy the Logical Volume Group UUID, it's the first listed in the listing of diskutil cs list.
• Then delete the Logical Volume Group with diskutil cs delete LVGUUID.
  In your case: diskutil cs delete 7ABC--i_can't_read_the_rest
• Enter exit and quit 'Terminal'
• Open 'Disk Utility'. Enter 'Ignore' if you are asked to fix the drives.

• Choose your SSD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
  Please check that the size is ~121 GB

  Example:

  

• Choose your HDD and partition it: 1 Partition Mac OS X Extended (Journaled), hit the Options button and choose GUID Partiton table and hit OK and Apply.
  Please check that the size is ~3 TB

  Example:

  

• Quit Disk Utility and open Terminal

• Enter diskutil list

  Example (your disk identifiers and sizes are different of course: Your volume SSD probably has the Identifier disk0s2 and the size 121 GB and your volume HDD probably has the Identifier disk1s2 and the size 3.0 TB):

  

• Enter diskutil cs create "Name" IdentifierSSD IdentifierHDD
  In your case probably diskutil cs create "Macintosh HD" disk0s2 disk1s2.

  Copy the resulting LVGUUID

  Example:

  

• Enter diskutil cs CreateVolume LVGUUID jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100%.

  Example:

  

• Enter diskutil cs list
  Check the size of your Logical Volume. It should have the size ~3.121 TB

  Example:

  

• Quit Terminal

• Open 'Disk Utility' and check your newly created volume for errors
• Quit 'Disk Utility'
• Attach your external Time Machine backup drive or check this answer if you use NAS or another network share.
• Open 'Restore from Time Machine Backup'
• Choose the appropriate Time Machine backup and restore your system
• Reboot to your restored system.
• Unmount and detach your Time Machine backup drive
• Open 'Terminal' and enter 'diskutil list'
• Check if your 'Recovery HD' is listed.
• If your 'Recovery HD' is missing, usually reinstalling your current system with the latest available system installer (e.g. 'Install OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)' if Mavericks is currently installed) will recreate it without loosing any data. AFAIK Recovery Partition Creator 3.8 will NOT create a Recovery HD on CoreStorage volumes.
• After reinstalling the system with the latest available system installer open App Store and install the latest security fixes.