Disk partions too small can't be repaired

Since you are looking at a newly formatted internal drive, I'd suggest you Reinstall macOS from Recovery mode. Boot again in recovery mode and install the macOS that is offered on that Utilities screen. Then, if necessary, you can upgrade the computer from there.

• If you restart in recovery by using Option-Command-R, then Recovery might offer the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.

Apple's guidance for reinstalling macOS can be found here: How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

Your Mac does not have Apple Silicon, so follow the steps for "On any other Mac".

I think your Mac is having a fit where it displays the devices (physical drive & partitions/containers & volumes) out of order. I've seen this occur a few times with my organization's Macs and it can be a pain to resolve. If you look closely at the last screenshot, the last most item for the internal drive is showing "Apple SSD AP02" which is usually what is shown for the physical drive.

I think the easiest way forward is one of two options.

While booted into Recovery Mode launch the Terminal app from the Utilities menu on the menu bar. Then issue the following commands to unmount all volumes & to write zeroes to the beginning of the SSD in order to destroy the current partition table. This is sometimes necessary when Disk Utility gets confused. Just make sure to disconnect all external devices first so that you do not accidentally erase the wrong drive. Also make sure to confirm the current device identifier for the internal physical drive before using these commands. In your last screenshots the physical SSD appears to have the device identifier of "disk0", but this identifier can change everytime you boot the computer.

Unmount all volumes on drive you wish to erase (confirm the current device identifier first and replace "diskX" in my examples with the correct current device identifier such as "disk0" as shown in the screenshots):

diskutil  unmountDisk  diskX

Write zeroes to beginning of the drive you wish to erase:

dd  if=/dev/zero  of=/dev/diskX  bs=100m  count=10

After this is done without any error messages, then you should be able to quit the Terminal app and relaunch Disk Utility to properly erase the internal SSD as GUID partition and the file system compatible with the OS you are reinstalling. For macOS 10.12 it would be MacOS Extended (Journaled), or for macOS 10.13+ it would be APFS (top option).



Second option would be to perform a DFU firmware Restore using another Mac which will erase the contents of the internal SSD. Afterwards you would need to boot a macOS installer (Internet Recovery Mode Command + Option + R) or possibly a bootable macOS USB installer.

My apologies. I thought you had completed the reformatting.

1) So restart in recovery mode. See which OS version the Reinstall macOS selection indicates.

2) Use Disk Utility to finally reformat the drive to accommodate the macOS version offered. (See previous posts.)

3) After the reformat is complete, run First Aid on the drive and any volumes that have been created. Run First Aid until it reports the drive and all its volumes are okay.

4) Quit Disk Utility and then run the Reinstall macOS selection.

If all goes well you will have a working Mac that finally launches into the Set Up Assistant. Complete that set up process and then use Software Update to update the installed OS. If you still wish or need to upgrade to Monterey at this point, then you should be good to do that.

If you can reboot the Mac in Recovery mode then you may be able to reformat the drive and then reinstall macOS.

You will find guidance for that here: How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

After you boot in recovery, you will first have to reformat the internal drive using the Disk Utility app.

In Disk Utility make sure you click View > Show All Devices. Then select the top most internal device to erase it.

Partition the drive using GUID partition scheme and APFS format.

Use Disk Utility to erase a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support

Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support

Then you can exit Disk Utility and then Reinstall macOS.

that is MUCH less of a mess. But you still have a broad swath, 65.84 GB showing as Unformatted. that is odd.

I suggest you ERASE Again, and see if you get different (perhaps better) results.

If you still have a 65GB partition on that drive, then you are NOT getting the drive erased/partitioned properly. When done correctly you will have the full 256GB available to work with.

To help you further we'd like to see the info that Disk Utility displays about the drive and its partitions. Please post screenshots of the drive as it now appears. Select the internal device and screen shot that. Then select the partitions below the device and post screenshots of each of those. You can post those pics using the "Image insertion" icon at the bottom of your reply window.

Which OS version do you want to use?

For macOS 10.13 and earlier use Mac OS Extended with GUID partition scheme.

For macOS 10.14 Mojave and later (Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey…) use APFS with GUID partition scheme.

SSD drives on Macs intended for MacOS 10.13 High Sierra are the first to assume you prefer Apple File System, which may be very slightly faster.

Everything older uses MacOS HFS extended, and HFS extended will continue to work for a few more versions, and is simpler.

Keith123xyz wrote:

This is fantastic Ty for being so fast. Apologies, but just to confirm, I should not format the drive, I should just restart then do as you say in recovery mode?

You're welcome. 🙂

Yes, everything you have already done was to reformat the drive. It is now ready to have the OS installed and be used as the startup drive. Restart the computer again in recovery mode and reinstall macOS.