I’m installing Sonoma on a late 2013 iMac everything goes fantastic. Just up to the point where I try to install the installer on l the brand- new, extended Journaled external SanDisk Pro SSD. it tells me it’s locked. So I go out make sure it’s unlocked go back again and find out that it’s magically relocked itself. There is no security software on this version of the SanDisk SD I checked with the manufacturer with the model and serial number. I don’t know what the heck is going on. 7 hours later, my wife is looking at me funny cause I anssured her the 200 for the ssd was a good investment. Uh oh.
Any suggestions would be so helpful? I’m so close…
Thank you very much for your time respects and regards from Seven Islands, Northern Quebec
Bonne soirée from that southern Ontario conurbation which, in rare form, tends to unify Canadians from coast to coast to coast in a magnificent, shared contempt.
A couple of questions:
1) With OCLP, which OS are you trying to install to the late 2013 iMac? (this is a model I also own, albeit still with a spinning HDD)
2) When you mentioned “extended Journalled”, are you saying the new SSD was formatted as HFS+ (extended) Journalled?
If so, then this will be part of the problem to weed out first. The first thing to eliminate is the double-checking of all physical connections (which, unfortunately, may require you to break open the new adhesive seal you probably just used to close up everything, post-install).
That a fresh physical drive would be “locked” does seem peculiar, but it
could point to physical connection issues. When you ran into the “locked” situation, was this done when the SSD was outside the iMac (i.e., in an external drive enclosure) or did it happen after you swapped out the old internal HDD with the new SSD inside the iMac?
If the latter, then there could be (in less common cases) connection issues with all the SATA pins not being seated fully
or even possible damage to either the SATA connection (I’ve broken these before) or cable (less likely, unlike really old flat PATA cables, but still possible). I’ve had improperly seated drives show up as existing and something the system is
seeing, but otherwise can’t access due to physical connection issues. It’s rare, but it has happened.
If none of this is the case and you’ve double checked all connections being seated and the like, the next step is software.
Basically all of the macOS builds which OCLP makes possible for legacy Macs (i.e., Big Sur and later) require not an HFS+ partition (which one could use up through, I think, Mojave, possibly Catalina), but instead an APFS partition, which was introduced with High Sierra Macs which shipped with an SSD.
As usual, the SSD, when you first installed it, would need to be formatted with the GUID Partition Table (GPT), as opposed to the vintage Apple Partition Map (APM) of PowerPC Macs. With that fresh formatting, you can begin there with just a single APFS partition or, like I have on a 2011 MacBook Pro, split one SSD into two partitions: an HFS+ (for Snow Leopard) and an APFS (for High Sierra).
When you boot from the USB OCLP-patched installer, at the “MacOS [version name]: To set up… ” splash screen, look for Disk Utility in the menubar. If you hadn’t done so prior to installing your SSD, this is where you’ll want to set up an APFS partition. (Note: if you provisionally formatted the SSD from an external enclosure before you installed it inside the iMac, and you did so from Sierra or earlier, the APFS option was not yet available).
I‘m mostly being general here and might be able to hone in a little better with more info, assuming you’ve checked all of the above and was met with no success. Let us know how things go and feel welcome to share any more technical information you’re able, which should help us figure this out with you.
