Hi, I have a 10+ years old iMac I want to give away and try to factory reset it. When I access disk utility, the erase icon does not turn active and I cannot erase it. Any idea how to fix it? or other options to reset the iMac?
iMac 21.5″, 10.13
Hello, Lantern4me.
In order to erase and restore the macOS on the startup drive, you have to boot the Mac in recovery mode. Do this by restarting the Mac, and when you hear the startup chime, press and hold the Command-R keys (⌘R) until you see the Apple logo and progress bar. When the Mac finally displays the macOS Utilities window, you can select Disk Utilities and proceed to erase the internal drive and then reinstall a fresh copy of macOS.
Please see:
What to do before you sell, give away or trade in your Mac - Apple Support
Hello, Lantern4me.
In order to erase and restore the macOS on the startup drive, you have to boot the Mac in recovery mode. Do this by restarting the Mac, and when you hear the startup chime, press and hold the Command-R keys (⌘R) until you see the Apple logo and progress bar. When the Mac finally displays the macOS Utilities window, you can select Disk Utilities and proceed to erase the internal drive and then reinstall a fresh copy of macOS.
Please see:
What to do before you sell, give away or trade in your Mac - Apple Support
Disk utility will not erase the drive/partition it booted from.
Try erasing only the MacOS partition from recovery mode instead of the whole drive, or alternatively create a bootable USB installer to use to erase and reinstall MacOS. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
Thanks! It worked!
Thanks! It worked!
You're welcome. 🙂
Disk utility erase
