Formatting hard drive

[carew97]

I have no experience or knowledge of formatting hard drives. When I attempt to install macOS High Sierra, I get the "The recovery server could not be contacted." I did research, and I am sure it is the format of the hard drive. I only have the following: Disk Images "OS X Base System" that is Mac OS Extended. I believe it needs to be formatted at APFS. However, that is the hard drive being used, and I can't format it. If I'm correct, how can I format the OS X Base System to format it correctly to install the software? Thanks!

 

[OldSchool]

Preparing a disk for a backup or restore | Bombich Software

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[TonyAguila]

I have no experience or knowledge of formatting hard drives. When I attempt to install macOS High Sierra, I get the "The recovery server could not be contacted." I did research, and I am sure it is the format of the hard drive. I only have the following: Disk Images "OS X Base System" that is Mac OS Extended. I believe it needs to be formatted at APFS. However, that is the hard drive being used, and I can't format it. If I'm correct, how can I format the OS X Base System to format it correctly to install the software? Thanks!

If you can provide the details for your Mac, it will help in identifying its limits and capabilites. Look for make (e.g. iMac, Mac mini, MacBook, etc.) model year, storage, memory, CPU, and so on.

 

[carew97]

If you can provide the details for your Mac, it will help in identifying its limits and capabilites. Look for make (e.g. iMac, Mac mini, MacBook, etc.) model year, storage, memory, CPU, and so on.

Yes.

The iMac "Core i5" 3.0 21.5-Inch Aluminum (Retina 4K, Mid-2017/Kaby Lake) features a 14-nm "Kaby Lake" 3.0 GHz Intel "Core i5" processor (7400) with four independent processor "cores" on a single chip, a 6 MB shared level 3 cache, 8 GB of 2400 MHz DDR4 SDRAM that is reportedly onboard a 1 TB (5400 RPM) hard drive, and a Radeon Pro 555 graphics processor with 2 GB of dedicated VRAM. It also has a built-in "FaceTime HD" webcam and stereo speakers.​

 

[TonyAguila]

That would make it the iMac18,1, capable of running the latest version of macOS Ventura version 13.6.8 (22G820). Before formatting the drive I suggest booting into Recovery (restart and press command-R) and checking to see if you will be offered to reinstall macOS. If it works, you can then erase the drive using Disk Utility in Recovery. You should be able to select APFS. Afterwards, you should be able to install Ventura.

 

[MacsBug]

Also just a note.. Your internal hard drive is called Untitled. The OS X Base System is a disk image of operating system on the recovery partition.

On that particular iMac if you are going to install a newer OS I would not do it in your internal drive. I would highly recommend getting a thunderbolt SSD like the SanDisk Pro-G40.