No disk available when reinstalling macOS

Question

Level 1

4 points

No disk available when reinstalling macOS

My macOS was working perfectly fine a week ago when I tried to factory reset and discovered my bootcamp was not deleted properly. After removing bootcamp through recovery mode, I have attempted to reinstall OS X Yosemite but there are no disks available to select and install after agreeing to licence agreement.

Starting the macOS brings me a flashing folder with a question mark. Restarting and going into recovery mode, a spinning global pops up with "Starting Internet Recovery" at the bottom.

In recovery mode when OS X Utilities comes up, I go to:

Reinstall OS X
OS X Yosemite - continue and agree and agree to pop up window
Then in select disk where I want to install OS X there is no disk to select from

Finally, in Disk Utility my HDD has a message shown in the picture attached. My computer was working perfectly fine so it is hard to understand how this could be a hardware problem all of a sudden.

Any help is appreciated.

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 5, 2022 7:03 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Owl-53

Level 10

100,609 points

Nov 5, 2022 7:47 AM in response to eHarazi

Just noticed in your above picture the S.M.A.R.T Status indicates Failing

In which case -->>

Have the computer evaluated by the Professionals who have the Special Hardware / Software and Expertise to diagnose the issue and offer possible solutions

Only if the user still want to try and reinstall the Operating System anyways

The user may need to use the Internet Recovery Mode to resolve this issue.

The 3 keyboard combo keys are Option Command R and really suggest using a Wire Keyboard

Also suggest connection the computer via an Ethernet Cable to Router to avoid the tricky Wifi connection

Depending the speed of your connection and the speed of the Apple Servers - a Globe will load.

It can takes some time until it fully loads

1 - It will present options >> Disk Utilities >> View >> View ALL attached Drives.

2 - Choose the Upper Most Drive ( not the volumes indented and list below ).

3 - - Formatting for macOS 10.13 High Sierra and below requires HFS Journaled with the GUID Partition Map

4 - Once that is done >> backup out of Disk Utilities and choose install macOS.

5 - Follow the prompts and it may automatically reboot several time.

6 - Upon a final reboot - Setup Assist will present with the newer version of macOS.

EDITED

Reply

Answer 2

eHarazi Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 6, 2022 1:56 AM in response to Owl-53

Hi.

So originally, I had Catalina 10.15 installed. However, after the first disk format, the "Reinstall macOS" option showed me Yosemite.

I have followed your steps but with a few differences:

HFS Journaled is not an option available for me. The options available are:

APFS
APFS (Encrypted)
APFS (Case-sensitive)
APFS (Case-Sensitive, Encrypted)
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)
ExFAT
MS-DOS (FAT)

I went with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and after completion, I went to "Reinstall macOS". Catalina popped up and going to select disk it showed a greyed out "UNTITLED 2" disk. When I click it I get a pop up saying:

"This disk has SMART errors. This disk has a hardware problem that can't be repaired. Back up as much of the data as possible and replace the disk".

So what I am wondering is:

Why am I able to format the disk but not install macOS on it?
Can I use an external hard drive to install macOS to test and see if it really is a hardware problem?
For an imac that is worth around £200 ($240) is it really worth going to see an Apple professional to sort this?

Thanks

Reply