Erase hard drive

This is a late 2012 imac running OS Catalina. It boots but doesn't do much else. I want to initialize the hard drive so I can recycle it to a school that teaches how to work on computers. When I use disk utility to erase the disk, I get this message. I have run disk utility and it says the disk is okay.What can I do?

Earlier Mac models

Posted on Aug 12, 2023 6:48 AM

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Posted on Aug 12, 2023 6:58 AM

Follow the steps at > What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support


It looks like you are trying to erase the entire drive. What you need to do is erase the Macintosh HD while in macOS Recovery Mode. see > Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support

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Erase hard drive

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