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Reinstalling OS after disk erase - disk locked

I erased the hard drive on my intel iMac and when I follow the internet recovery process to reinstalling the OS - in this case it’s offering me high sierra - the HD is locked and I can’t go any further. I’m a gumby and I wonder if during the erasure process I should have reinstalled the OS without exiting, after the erase was complete . Can’t remember for sure but I think I quit entirely out of there. When I restart, command-R doesn’t work, it takes me straight to internet recovery, not to recovery mode. No deal trying to reinstall the OS from time machine either, I get an error message about compatibility.


The machine is a 2017 model and was running big sur. It was refusing to update either to later big sur, or to monterey, and I erased because an OS reinstall attempt from recovery mode also failed.


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please note I have admitted stupidity above so don’t need posts to that effect.


Cheers!

Posted on Sep 25, 2022 8:47 PM

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Posted on Sep 27, 2022 6:17 PM

It appears you have a split Fusion Drive. To fix a split Fusion Drive will destroy all data on both the SSD and hard drive, plus it will require you to reinstall macOS followed by restoring/migrating from a backup.

How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support


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6 replies

Sep 26, 2022 8:44 PM in response to den.thed

Thanks! I had a go at that, but it hung up on the “erasing macintosh hd” screen as below. I tried running first aid but it reported that it couldn’t unmount the volume for repair. The original erase was really fast, but I was still stuck on the message below after about an hour. This all seems a bit suspect to me, any thoughts?

Reinstalling OS after disk erase - disk locked

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