iMac 2018 SSD drive problem

[Bagpuss66]

We are in the process of installing an image we created on new iMacs in our music suite.

The iMacs are 2018 and all had 256 SSD, problem we are having is that we cant install our image we created for the older iMacs we have.

I have tried to re-install Hi-sierra via Command+R but we get the dreaded 'The recovery server could not be contacted'

Is it because of the SSD format AFPS?

Any suggestions ?

[3s-gtech]

Have you ever had luck putting older images onto newer machines with Macs? My impression was that it wouldn't work - and that older versions of OS X wouldn't image onto hardware that shipped with newer - due to UEFI and hardware compatibility etc.

[Bagpuss66]

I think you have a point, it could well be that the version of the OS is the problem. I can make an image from one of our other new iMacs and see it this works.

I really should have made an image from the new iMac before trying to re-image using the old image Doh!!

[TomHD]

I find that once a Mac has had the latest operating system installed the only way to go back to an older version is to Internet recovery to factory settings and upgrade from there. My experience is coming from 2012 Macbooks so may be different with newer models.

[tg12]

I find that once a Mac has had the latest operating system installed the only way to go back to an older version is to Internet recovery to factory settings and upgrade from there. My experience is coming from 2012 Macbooks so may be different with newer models.

Should be easy enough to do with a bootable installer USB, and wiping the disk first.

 

But yes, I'm not sure what version of macOS came initially on the 2018 iMacs but usually they won't go below whatever the first version was the model shipped with. Bit of a pain, but as @3s-gtech says, think the hardware compatibility is only built into the version that's current on release. Think that's even down to minor updates too.