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I follow the advice steps but cannot erase the HD on my iMac. It says Erasing (name of disk') and creating (new name) and then 'Erase process has failed. Press done to continue.'
Then back to square one!
What do I do?
Have you tried erasing the drive twice in a row? I've encountered a few instances where the erase will fail the first time, but succeed if I immediately erase the drive again.
Are you booted into Recovery Mode, Internet Recovery Mode, or from a bootable macOS USB installer?
Try running the Apple Diagnostics (may not be possible on an older system without the original system DVD).
You may have a failing hard drive.
Edit: Here is an Apple article on how to prepare your Mac for sale or disposal:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065
Have you tried erasing the drive twice in a row? I've encountered a few instances where the erase will fail the first time, but succeed if I immediately erase the drive again.
Are you booted into Recovery Mode, Internet Recovery Mode, or from a bootable macOS USB installer?
Try running the Apple Diagnostics (may not be possible on an older system without the original system DVD).
You may have a failing hard drive.
Edit: Here is an Apple article on how to prepare your Mac for sale or disposal:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065
I am trying to erase the Drive to sell the imac.
I have followed all the steps of advice to do this. 'How to erase a disk for Mac'.
When I reach item 2 I get the list of disks and click on the top one ST..........., then click on Erase. I name the disk and press erase.
Many attempts have failed. I have tried following other routes and erased the Macintosh HD disk leading to my needing to install a backup because I couldn't reinstall the OSX from Disk utility when it opened. It told me something like 'the system is not available.
The order of Drives on the iMac is
ST......
Mac HD
Apple disk image
OS x Base System.
Am I deleting the wrong one?
Assuming you are booting into Recovery Mode, or Internet Recovery Mode, or from a macOS USB installer, It seems like you are doing it correctly. The "ST....." item should be the physical drive for your iMac. Are you selecting GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled) when erasing the drive?
If you are reinstalling macOS 10.11 or earlier, then you may need to use the "Partition" tab instead where you would select "1 Partition" in the drop down list box and MacOS Extended (Journaled) should be the default file system. Just verify after the partitioning that "GUID partition" is being used (it should be if macOS was booting on the drive).
If the drive won't erase (or partition for macOS 10.11 or earlier), then the drive may be failing.
unable to erase hard disk on my iMac before sale.
