Was my disk formatting successful?

From your upside down pic I see you didn't Name the Partition.

Start over. Select the Top entry in the left hand panel then in the center panel select One partition from the Partition Layout area drop down then on the right panel give it a name of "Macintosh HD" (No Quote marks) format Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then click the Options button and make sure the Partition Table is set to GUID.

Then click the Apply button.

No need to post the Information window just highlight that newly created Macintosh HD partition and post a picture of that, preferably right side up.

Post a screen shot like this.

From the screen shots you are posting the partitioning is all wrong. You have a 100GB partition name Macintosh HD and then a second patition named Untitled that is 899GBs and it looks like the Recovery HD files are on that partition as they take up 650+MBs of space.

Like I said in my First reply, Start Over but this time boot the system from the Online Internet Recovery system or if your Mac come with system reinstall discs use the OS X reinstall disc to boot the system.

Once the system is booted from either the disc or the online system open Disk Utility and select the Top entry on the left, the one that starts with "ST" (That is the Physical hard drive), then in the center section select "One Partition" from the drop down area. Then on the right name it Macintosh HD Format Mac OS X Extended and then Options button and make sure it is set to GUID as the partition Table (which it should be already).

Then Click the Apply button.

Once that is finished then you can reinstall OS X on your Mac or restore it from a Time Machine backup.

Yes other than the 2 partitions you have now everything looks fine as far as the format and the Partition table settings.

If you have a external you are starting the system from no need to boot from the Online internet recovery system or a OS X reinstall disc or even from the Recovery HD on your external drive. You can do all the partitioning of the iMac's internal drive from Disk Utility of the external you are starting the computer from.

But please follw my suggestion to repartition the internal iMac drive as One partition (That is unless you want more than one partition for soome reason). Then boot the system from the Recovery HD on that external and select Reinstall Mac OS X and when asked point it to the Macintosh HD partition on the internal drive.

There is no good reason to partition a Mac hard drive into more than one partition. So I don't know why you are making that 100GB partition to install OS X to.

If you post more screen shots don't post the Get Info window, just post a shot of the actual Disk Utility window. It contains all the info needed to answer whatever questions you have and makes it easier to read for people trying to help you.

Yes Now You've got it.

Now boot the system from the externals reRecovery HD partition, Command + r keys, and select reinstyall Mac OS X . Point it to the Macintosh HD on the Internal drive.

You mean you created Installers for those OS X version of USB flash drives?

If so then you can use one of them to install that version of OS X. Have your Apple ID and password for your Apple ID ready because you will be asked for it to Authorize the install.

knarfrh60 wrote:

Forgot to mention that I have 10.8.5 and 10.8.2 and 10.9 all on different flash drives

I find Time Machine works very well, your milage may vary on that. But for me it has always worked. I also have 2 cloning programs that I use but no that often.

You are welcome.