I don’t think you can literally accidentally delete your startup disk. At least not in the sense of making the physical drive disappear. Usually what happens is that people either erase the startup volume or delete an APFS volume in Disk Utility, and then macOS no longer has anything it can boot from. This is exactly what is accompanied by flashing question mark instead of the Apple logo
I’m much more familiar with Windows than macOS, so I can’t really tell you how to recover files after deleting a startup disk on a MacBook Pro. Hopefully someone with more Mac experience can help with that.
Though, getting the Mac working again is usually just a matter of reinstalling macOS. I’d hold off on doing that until someone confirms what exactly was deleted, since reinstalling could complicate data recovery if your files are still salvageable.

First, don’t reinstall macOS yet if your files are important.
Can you open Disk Utility again and tell us exactly what you see in the sidebar? If needed, click View > Show All Devices so everything is visible.

A couple of questions:

• Do you still see the physical internal SSD at the top?
• Do you see an APFS Container underneath it?
• Is Macintosh HD missing completely, or do you still see it?
• Do you see Data partition in the APFS container?
• When you say you “deleted something,” do you remember clicking Delete Volume or Erase? Those are two very different things.

If you only deleted an APFS volume, your situation is very different from erasing the entire startup disk. Right now we need to figure out which one happened before suggesting anything else.

A few months ago, I erased my startup disk on my Mac, thinking I could recover the files afterward. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.
After reading up on it, I found out that most modern Macs use SSDs, so once the drive is erased, TRIM can start clearing the deleted blocks. Mine was an Apple Silicon Mac, which made things even worse because of the built-in hardware encryption. By the time I started looking into recovering data from a formatted Mac startup disk, there was basically nothing left to recover. In the end I had to accept that my files were gone and just reinstall macOS. Hopefully that’s not what happened in your case.

I turned on Show All Devices like you suggested and I think I have a better idea of what happened. The physical SSD is still there, and I can still see the APFS container. What’s missing is Macintosh HD and Data. So I don’t think I accidentally deleted startup disk on my macbook pro, it looks like I somehow deleted just volumes.
Does this mean I have a better chance of Mac startup disk recovery and getting my files back? Or can deleting a volume still wipe everything? I’m honestly afraid to click anything else at this point.

​​My situation was actually pretty similar - I accidentally erased Macintosh HD and lost data, although mine was an older Intel Mac.
I thought I’d lost everything after deleting the wrong volume, but I stopped using the Mac immediately and started looking into Mac data recovery software instead of reinstalling macOS.
I found a comparing the best recovery apps, and Disk Drill kept coming up as one of the top recommendations. I also followed a YouTube guide that was technically made for Windows, but the workflow is almost identical on macOS and that was enough to get most of my documents back.
But if you have an Apple Silicon model and the internal SSD was actually erased, TRIM and hardware encryption can make recovery much less likely.

Quote from big_sir98 on July 4, 2026, 4:22 pm

I turned on Show All Devices like you suggested and I think I have a better idea of what happened. The physical SSD is still there, and I can still see the APFS container. What’s missing is Macintosh HD and Data. So I don’t think I accidentally deleted startup disk on my macbook pro, it looks like I somehow deleted just volumes.
Does this mean I have a better chance of Mac startup disk recovery and getting my files back? Or can deleting a volume still wipe everything? I’m honestly afraid to click anything else at this point.

Trying to recover lost Mac data from a modern Mac is incredibly difficult. You can certainly try one of the Mac data recovery software tools and let it scan the drive, but on Apple Silicon Mac with an internal SSD, I honestly wouldn’t get my hopes up. Between TRIM and the way the M-series chips handle hardware encryption, there often isn’t much left to recover.
Whether you’re trying to recover deleted files on Mac or restore Mac after disk erase, the outcome can end up being the same if the internal SSD has already been cleaned up.
Do you have any backups at all? Time Machine, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, an external drive… anything? I’d check those first. If there aren’t any backups and the recovery software doesn’t find anything useful, you’ll probably have to reinstall macOS after deleting the disk and move on.

I never thought that me MacBook Pro startup disk was delete or something similar ever happen to me, so I never really took backups seriously. Lesson learned, I guess.
At this point I’m assuming my files are probably gone, so I’d at least like to get the Mac working again. What’s the correct way to do that? Can I simply reinstall macOS from Recovery mode, or is there something else I should do? Is there any sort of startup disk repair process I should try in my case?
I just don’t want to make things even worse by clicking the wrong thing again, sorry.

The simple option is to reinstall directly from Recovery. Since you’re already there, choose Reinstall macOS and follow the prompts. If the installer can see the internal drive, that should be enough to rebuild the system.
If Recovery keeps failing, the startup disk not found, or you get weird errors, then try Internet Recovery Mode or make a macOS installer USB from another Mac and boot from that instead. Apple has instructions for doing it with Terminal, or you can use third-party tools to create a bootable installer with less command-line work.
But before reinstalling, I’d still run First Aid in Disk Utility on the internal SSD/container if it lets you - it may catch obvious disk structure issues before you install macOS again.

I really appreciate all the advice. It sounds like I’ve done all I can on the data recovery side, so I guess it’s time to accept it and move on. I’m going to try reinstalling macOS now and hope I can at least get my MacBook working again. I’ll report back once it’s finished

Just a quick tip from someone who’s not very comfortable using Terminal - use Disk Drill to create the macOS installer instead of doing it manually with Apple’s createinstallmedia command.

That’s exactly what I did after my MacBook factory reset went wrong. The installer couldn’t find anything to boot from because my startup disk disappeared, so I ended up creating a bootable USB installer used Disk Drill.

Funny enough, I still keep that USB drive in my desk drawer. Hopefully I’ll never need it again, but after one scare like this, it’s nice knowing it’s there if something goes wrong in the future.

Let me try to summarize everything that’s been discussed here, because there are a few different scenarios mixed together.

First, if we’re talking about a modern Apple Silicon Mac with its internal SSD, you generally can’t restore an erased hard drive. Unlike older Macs with traditional hard drives, Apple Silicon relies on hardware encryption. Once the encryption keys are gone, the remaining data is effectively unreadable, and TRIM only makes the situation worse over time.

That’s why, if you start searching for how to fix a deleted startup disk on Mac, you’ll usually find one of two things:

• legitimate guides explaining how to reinstall macOS and get the computer working again (which is the correct solution, even if it’s not the one you wanted), or
• marketing pages from recovery software claiming they can bring everything back. Be careful with those. Many of them give people false hope in situations where recovery is no longer technically possible.

The best recovery strategy is still the boring one: backups. I know everyone gets tired of hearing that, but this thread is a perfect example of why they’re so important. Apple gives every Mac owner a free backup solution with Time Machine, and for most people it’s all they’ll ever need. If Time Machine doesn’t fit your workflow, there are plenty of reputable third-party backup and disk imaging tools available as well. Unfortunately, that’s just how modern Macs work.

P.s. Although this is not the topic of this thread, if you had a Data partition left, you could try copying files from it via Terminal or the Share Disk function (Target Disk Mode) in macOS Recovery Mode.

Just to confirm what’s already been said above.

We do have plenty of guides on recovering files on Mac, and data recovery software is still a great option in many situations. In fact, we recommend it regularly for external hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, and other removable storage (those are also the devices that almost nobody backs up). For the internal SSD in a modern Apple Silicon Mac, though, backups are by far the most realistic recovery option.

Hopefully this thread saves someone else from learning that lesson the hard way.

I come back and close the loop - I managed to reinstall macOS, and my MacBook is working normally again. I’m still really disappointed that I lost all my photos and files, but I don’t think there’s anyone to blame but myself. I should have been making backups long before this happened.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to explain what was going on and point me in the right direction!