Storage system verify or repair failed 69716

Hey y’all. So I tried everything, and I mean EVERYTHING I could find online for this issue to no avail. I tried Apple support and they couldn’t figure it out either. Took it into Apple for them to diagnose it, they ended up wiping the hard drive & installing Monterey (no charge btw) and now it works fine. 🤷‍♀️

I would not waste my money on Tech Tool Pro. Yes, it has a utility it claims can repair an APFS volume, but it does not really do anything and the rest of the Tech Tool Pro suite I personally find is very subpar. TechTool has never been that great of a utility suite (it was the third one on our list even back in the PPC days) and the last time I tried it a few years ago it was no better and no more useful. Anything included within it can be done much better with other individual apps. Apple has not released the necessary APFS documentation so any utilities out there are not going to be much more than what First Aid is. If you cannot repair an APFS while using First Aid from Internet Recovery Mode or from a bootable macOS USB installer, then save your money and backup your computer before erasing the whole drive and restoring from the backup.

You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer and all external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data.

-69716 System verify Storage Repair failed…

on an iMac (late 2012) with a 1TB Fusion Drive.

anyway, long story short... needed to recreate the fusion drive from the recovery terminal (after Backup, of course). After recreation, installation worked fine. 

This is definitely a Fusion hardware issue. I think that the drive is bad and needs to be replaced.

BDA Aqua - we have the same issue in upgrading from Mojave.

We are following the apple.com instructions to recreate our fusion drive from the recovery terminal, but are not prompted to type "Yes" (Step 4 under "Using Mojave or later" instructions) so can't seem to complete this process. Any suggestions on how to resolve this. We have literally spent days trying to upgrade from Mojave to Monterey - we have erased our hard disk, reinstalled from external time machine back up, tried to upgrade from Mojave to Catalina (also not working). Not sure how to move forward on this.

Any help you can offer would be MUCH appreciated.

It would help to know at what step you are having a problem with performing a clean install of macOS. And it would help to know what error messages are presented.

Also how are you booting the macOS installer? Internet Recovery Mode (which keys were used) or from a bootable macOS USB installer?

It would also help to have the exact model of the Mac. You can get the exact model by entering your serial number here:

Check Your Service and Support Coverage - Apple Support

Edit: And how are you erasing the drive? On an Intel Mac it is best to erase the whole physical drive. It may be necessary to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drive appears on the left pane of Disk Utility. Depending on the OS being installed you may need to erase the drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled), or as GUID partition and APFS (top option)....use the latter if it is available. If you are installing macOS 10.10 or earlier, or if you have an M1 Mac, then things are a bit different.

What version of macOS are you attempting to install?

I would be concerned that the hard drive of your Fusion Drive setup may be failing. I would suggest running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect all drive failures so if the diagnostics pass, I would run DriveDx to check the health of both drives. Within DriveDx, click on the physical drive in the left pane and select the "Save Report" icon on the right side to save the report as a text file. Repeat for the other physical drive. Then open the saved report and copy everything in the file, then paste the contents here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

We followed the instructions on this page.

How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support

Our drive wasn’t split but we tried it anyway, maybe that’s why we didn’t get prompted to type “yes” as per step 4 in the instructions.

We called Apple Support. They suggested upgrading the OS from the internet rather than download. Gave the same storage system fail error. Apple Support have said I need to take the iMac into a store as it’s likely a hardware issue. I’ll be doing this Friday but if you have anything else I can try, we will!

Boot into recovery and rum disks utilities.Error 69716 from Monterey Update - Apple Community

Then boot normally and go to thee App Store (updates) and make sure you have all your updates. Then you should be able to upgrade.

How to get old versions of macOS - Apple Support

I found you may have to go to an intermediary OS before going to one like Monterey. You cant jump too many OS updates.

So to do so you need to back up to a drive. And then go to one like Big Sur and then Monterey

Can anyone recommend an alternative to Disk Utilities? It seems useless in this case. I've been making attempts to upgrade from Mojave to anything when I have time for months. Disk Warrior doesn't work on APFS drives unfortunately.

Unfortunately none of the options are working. I erased the drive and attempted to install Catalina and Monterey several times both in regular and safe mode. Then I used the internet disk tools several times and tried to install Catalina again with no luck. I can get by for another month or two with Mojave and then I think I need to chuck my computer off a bridge.

I wonder if it's a broken Fusion drive???

-69716 System verify Storage Repair failed…

on an iMac (late 2012) with a 1TB Fusion Drive.

anyway, long story short... needed to recreate the fusion drive from the recovery terminal (after Backup, of course). After recreation, installation worked fine. 

This is definitely a Fusion hardware issue. I think that the drive is bad and needs to be replaced.

In Terminal…

diskutil resetFusion

Hi all and sorry for the delayed response. This what I did. It was an accident and it seemed to work. I erased the drive and then attempted to restart the computer w/o any OS on it lol! At some point I was forced into internet recovery mode and was able to install Catalina. This is working (for now) b/c I needed the switch over from iTunes to Music to happen. In a couple weeks I will be in a place to upgrade further. Is it better to upgrade to the next OS up and just keep doing that until I reach Monterey or is going directly from Catalina to Monterey OK?