Cannot install macOS, ‘installation requires content not available’.

[shinseiromeo]

Brief summary. Partner and I own two 2017 iMacs. Yesterday I wanted to clean install both. 21inch iMac, cmd + option + r, delete partition, reinstall latest version of macOS with internet recovery.

Now I go to my iMac, 2017 27inch. Same steps, cmd + option + r, delete drive, install macOS. “Installation requires downloading important content. That content can't be downloaded at this time. Try again later." I followed all the instructions”.

This makes zero sense. The only difference between the install is her iMac is on WiFi when downloading macOS. My Mac is hardwired with Ethernet.

So this morning I spent two hours on the phone with AppleCare. A senior advisor seemed to have no interest in helping me over the phone, wanted me to format it as APFS even when I stated multiple times I have a fusion drive. Then they wanted me to run terminal with diskutil commands and erase partitions. When it failed multiple times he stated my fusion drive must be ‘toast’ and to just go to my local store for help. Except I don’t have a local store, it’s hours away.

From research this seems to be an Apple server error, it an issue on my end. Any ideas?

 

[Laucian Nailor]

I’ve had the same/similar issue today, although the Apple Manager (2nd line?) was superb trying to solve it for me.

My issue arose due to an inability of boot camp assistant to partition the HD part of a fusion drive. Eventually we went down the erase disk and install the OS again and I also had the ‘update files could not be downloaded. Try again later’ message for over 30 mins. My thoughts were it was an Apple server issue, however diving into terminal showed that there were in the region of 21 drive partitions (all but the two expected ones hidden) that could not be erased. The conclusion is that something funky is going on with the fusion drive (not sure if it’s an HS bug), but a trip to my not so local Apple store has been set up for the weekend.

 

[shinseiromeo]

Same here!

I noticed 19 partitions, now 21. It seems to add two more per each hard drive erasure and reboot.

 

[shinseiromeo]

Laucian, I believe I just fixed it!

So here’s what I did... I attempted to erase the drive over and over. No change. On another forum someone suggested trying to format to exfat then back to macOS journaled. Exfat format failed. So then I attempted to force erasure as apfs. That also failed and created three partitions. One ssd, one hd, one untitled. I formatted all three to macOS journaled.

Afterwards I launched terminal and typed this:
diskutil cs create Macintosh\ HD disk0 disk1

Then ran first aid on the drive, went back to disk utility and formatted again to macOS journaled and named the drive Macintosh HD.

BAM, worked!


To note, the 21 random disk images still show under terminal command diskutil list

 

[Laucian Nailor]

Sorry for the delayed response. My visit to the Apple store resulted in a failed HD hardware test (bad sectors). Upshot is that they replaced the HD and all now appears to have restored and be working fine.

Just have to get a new install of Win10 on the thing now

 

[shinseiromeo]

Sorry for the delayed response. My visit to the Apple store resulted in a failed HD hardware test (bad sectors). Upshot is that they replaced the HD and all now appears to have restored and be working fine.

Just have to get a new install of Win10 on the thing now

I'm about to clean install 10.13.5 this week. I did it today on my partner's 2017 iMac, zero issues. I'll report back after I attempt my clean install.

I did ask apple over the phone and in store that if I do in fact have a bad HD, would they just install an SSD. I would of course pay any differences. Unfortunately I was told no, systems have to stay the same way as they came in the box.