Reinstall macOS Big Sur after Erase Mac HD failed, Error…
I knew I shouldn’t have tried this because I thought something would go wrong. And sure enough it did. The instructions are simple enough and yet never go as planned. And to make it worse I need it for work. That’s why I did it on the weekend. This is unbelievable, Apple.
Here’s what happened. I decided to finally try erasing my 2019 iMac Fusion HD and do a clean install of Big Sur to try and fix the ongoing great slow-down after updating from Catalina to Big Sur. And it just gets worse.
Steps:
- Restart
- CMD+R
- Disk Utility
- Erase Drive (APFS) - Erase Volume Group
- Close DU
- Reinstall macOS Big Sur
- Select Mac HD
- Install
After that, it showed over 2 hrs to install but the progress bar was about 75%. It then dropped to 1 hr. I wasn’t sure if it was downloading, uninstalling, installing? When I came back an hour later there was an Error window that the install didn’t work. Closing that revealed another window that was searching for the disk and also asking for “Target Disk”? See pictures. I had to quite both of those then tried restarting with CMD+R to try again. Then there was a “macOS Update Assistant” window, but the progress bar didn’t move. I thought it was maybe updating Big Sur but shouldn’t CMD+R and Reinstall macOS choose latest Big Sur version (11.6.3)? At this point it just keeps going in circles and won’t update or install. I’ve never seen this before but I’ve only Erased/Installed and migrated iMac’s a few time over 15 years.
Any idea what went wrong? I shut it down and will try again tomorrow morning.
I hope my TM backup is ok. Otherwise I’m %$#@! Looks like Genius Bar for me or new 24” iMac (waiting for new iMac Pro)
Now I’m having issue posting this; Your session has expired. Please log in again to restore your question. Same message over and over each time I try to submit this.
Finally. I had to open another browser tab and ask question again.
