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Erasing iMac failed and can’t get it to now boot.

I have a 2020 iMac with an APFS drive that had multiple accounts, all connected to iCloud. The iMac was running super slow so I attempted to wipe it using Disk Utility. I didn’t sign out of any iCloud accounts (which I read may have been an/the issue) but rather simply ran the Disk Utility Erase function, kept the formatting as APFS and then attempted to reinstall a clean OS Ventura (which was the OS on the iMac) via recovery mode. That failed and I received a S.M.A.R.T. error. 


I then attempted to reboot into recovery again and this time (and each other time) I’m in an old Internet Recovery mode. I again tried to erase the hard drive but this time only saw MacOS Journaled (not APFS) as an option, which then split my hard drive as pictured into a SSD AND HHD. I then tried again to reinstall a clean OS but this time the option was Sierra, which again failed. 


It also appears that despite erasing the drive, I still see it show in some views that roughly 1 TB (of the 3 TB drive) is still used, so I’m guessing maybe it’s not fully erased and/or that maybe me not signing out of the iCloud accounts froze if. 


Fortunately I back everything up, but I’d really like to fix it and the drive no longer shows any errors. Rather can’t boot up and can’t install a new OS. I’m not sure what is next best or possible. Do I somehow create a thumb drive OS that I can run to fix things? Do I something in Terminal? Something else or is the computer now basically shot?


Any help would be much appreciated for a guy who doesn’t really know what to do next. 

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Nov 14, 2024 11:53 AM

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Erasing iMac failed and can’t get it to now boot.

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