Hey folks, I picked up a Late 2015 27" 5K iMac, and seem to be caught in a bind with erasing/reinstalling it.
Machine specs:
* iMac17,1 (Late 2015 iMac 5K)
* Monterey 12.6.2 (installed and working)
* System was in a wiped state when I received it (new user setup, etc)
* 500GB SSD which identifies as "APPLE SSD SM0512G"
* SSD is formatted APFS
As standard for any used machine, I'd like to do my own erase and reinstall for a clean start.
Booting with Command + R, I get the macOS Recovery option.
Select Disk Utility
The Apple support guides say to select the first device in the list "Macintosh HD", click erase, and reformat the drive before reinstalling the OS.
However, my machine has "AppleAPFSMedia" as the first device, which it says is 500.07 GB of "Uninitialized", with "Macintosh HD - Data" ("500.07 GB Logical Volume APFS"), Preboot, Recover, Update, and VM as children of it. My machine also has a top level "APPLE SSD SM0512G Media" listed, "500.28 GB PCI Internal Physical Disk", which is second in the list but at the same level as "AppleAPFSMedia".
The problem is that none of these devices can be reformatted as APFS. Disk Utility in the recovery mode only offers Mac OS Extended (four versions of it), ExFAT, and FAT. 🤨
I tried the internet version of the recovery mode, and after the lengthy load time, it gave the same result - identifying the APFS volume, but not letting me reformat as the same.
To actually erase this machine, do I really have to reformat with a different filesystem, install an old OS (10.12 Sierra is what Recovery offers), update the OS, and convert the drive to APFS to get back to the current state? 🤨 🤨
Thanks in advance
Machine specs:
* iMac17,1 (Late 2015 iMac 5K)
* Monterey 12.6.2 (installed and working)
* System was in a wiped state when I received it (new user setup, etc)
* 500GB SSD which identifies as "APPLE SSD SM0512G"
* SSD is formatted APFS
As standard for any used machine, I'd like to do my own erase and reinstall for a clean start.
Booting with Command + R, I get the macOS Recovery option.
Select Disk Utility
The Apple support guides say to select the first device in the list "Macintosh HD", click erase, and reformat the drive before reinstalling the OS.
However, my machine has "AppleAPFSMedia" as the first device, which it says is 500.07 GB of "Uninitialized", with "Macintosh HD - Data" ("500.07 GB Logical Volume APFS"), Preboot, Recover, Update, and VM as children of it. My machine also has a top level "APPLE SSD SM0512G Media" listed, "500.28 GB PCI Internal Physical Disk", which is second in the list but at the same level as "AppleAPFSMedia".
The problem is that none of these devices can be reformatted as APFS. Disk Utility in the recovery mode only offers Mac OS Extended (four versions of it), ExFAT, and FAT. 🤨
I tried the internet version of the recovery mode, and after the lengthy load time, it gave the same result - identifying the APFS volume, but not letting me reformat as the same.
To actually erase this machine, do I really have to reformat with a different filesystem, install an old OS (10.12 Sierra is what Recovery offers), update the OS, and convert the drive to APFS to get back to the current state? 🤨 🤨
Thanks in advance
