Boot Camp Assistant has encountered a Problem

You will need to create the Container before you start the TM restore.

• Erase both physical disks (I will assume that internal disks are numbered disk0 and disk1)
  • diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ SMALLER disk0 (assuming disk0 is the 121GB disk).
  • diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ LARGER disk1 (assuming disk1 is the 479GB Crucial disk)
• Create the APFS Container
  • diskutil apfs createContainer -main disk0s2 -secondary disk1s2
• Now you can restore the TM backup

You will need to create the Container before you start the TM restore.

• Erase both physical disks ( will assume that internal disks are numbered disk0 and disk1)
  • diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ SMALLER disk0 (assuming disk0 is the 28GB disk).
  • diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ LARGER disk1 (assuming disk1 is the 500GB Crucial disk)
• Create the APFS Container
  • diskutil apfs createContainer -main disk0s2 -secondary disk1s2
• Now you can restore the TM backup

Here is the full syntax for the command.

diskutil apfs createContainer
Usage:  diskutil apfs createContainer <disk> [<disk>]
        diskutil apfs createContainer -main <disk> [-secondary <disk>]
        where <disk> = MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
Create an empty APFS Container. You can then add APFS Volumes with the
diskutil apfs addVolume verb. If you specify two disks, then a "Fusion"
Container is created, with the performance usages assigned automatically
unless you use the -main and -secondary options, in which case, the secondary
disk is assumed to be on "slower" hardware. The secondary disk is often used
to store associated "auxiliary" data, such as a Boot Camp Assistant partition.
Ownership of any affected disks is required.
Example:  diskutil apfs createContainer disk0s2

alex710 wrote:

I keep getting that error when trying to access Boot Camp Assistant. Here is a screenshot of "diskutil list"

Please help.

marcelo@Marcelos-iMac ~ % diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *28.0 GB    disk0

   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         27.7 GB    disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         499.9 GB   disk1s2

This is non-standard configuration and will not work. Your iMac has two physical disks. BC Assistant will only support this when the two drives are in a Fusion drive configuration. You have them currently split. The 500GB disk is a non-standard iMac configuration. What is the year/model of your iMac (do not post the serial number)?

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +27.7 GB    disk2

                                 Physical Store disk0s2

   1:                APFS Volume APPLE SSD SM0032L Media 1.4 MB     disk2s1

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.9 GB   disk3

                                 Physical Store disk1s2

   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     124.0 GB   disk3s1

   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 81.6 MB    disk3s2

   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                528.9 MB   disk3s3

   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk3s4

   5:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            11.3 GB    disk3s5

These are independent APFS containers and will not work on the iMac with BC Assistant.

/dev/disk4 (disk image):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        +3.7 TB     disk4

   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Time Machine Backups    3.7 TB     disk4s2

This disk is Time Machine and should be ejected.

marcelo@Marcelos-iMac ~ % disk apfs list

zsh: command not found: disk

Use diskutil apfs list

It looks like you have replaced the stock HDD with a Crucial 500GB SSD. This may cause issue, but we can try to rebuild the Fusion drive and see if we run into any issues.

Can you install the same version of macOS on an external disk, as the one you have on the internal disk and boot from it, so we can rebuild the internal Fusion drive?

Can you post the output of

diskutil apfs list

Boot from it. I assume you are using a separate disk, from the one you use for your TM backup. Once you boot from the external boot disk, we can rebuild the internal Fusion drive and restore your backup.

Can you post the output of

diskutil info disk0

diskutil info disk1

Do you have a Time Machine backup of all your files? If not, can you create one now?

This is a single-disk iMac. Can you run

diskutil repairDisk disk0

fsck_apfs -n -l /dev/rdisk1

alex710 wrote:

• Are these the actual commands that I’m typing in

Or am I substituting “SMALLER disk0” with “disk0” and “LARGER disk1” with disk?

diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ SMALLER disk0 (assuming disk0 is the 28GB disk).

• diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ LARGER disk1 (assuming disk1 is the 500GB Crucial disk)

SMALLER and LARGER are names, which are required, so your are typing the full command, as such (the disk is erased using a GPT format as default).

diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ SMALLER disk0

diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ LARGER disk1

Here is the syntax...

diskutil eraseDisk
Usage:  diskutil eraseDisk format name [APM[Format]|MBR[Format]|GPT[Format]]
        MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
(Re)-partition a whole disk (create a new partition map). This completely
erases any existing data on the given whole disk; all volumes on this disk
will be destroyed. Format is the specific file system name you want to erase it
as (HFS+, etc.). Name is the (new) volume name (subject to file system naming
restrictions), or can be specified as %noformat% to skip initialization
(newfs). You cannot erase the boot disk.
Ownership of the affected disk is required.
Example: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ UntitledUFS disk3

alex710 wrote:

can you tell me if this is just a simple swap of SATA for SSD?

Karla-Catanias-iMac-2:~ Catania$ diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 1000.0 GB disk0s2

This is a single-disk iMac. Create a Time Machine backup, replace the disk, restore your TM backup and test. Do not erase the old disk, till you have everything you need. I will usually keep the old disk intact for 3 months, before I erase it.

You can try to restore your TM backup to this Fusion drive and then try to boot from it. If macOS boots properly, then we can try BC Assistant.

Backup your current data on to TM, and then boot into Recovery. Once you are in Recovery, we need to use the 121GB disk as

-main and the 479GB disk as -secondary.