HDD failure...but not failure...

[Tropicrider]

I Have a mid-2010 (MC511LL) 27 inch iMac.



it started going slow then, when turned on gets up to the progress bar, 3 quarters along, then just goes to a black screen with the spinning rainbow circle and no further. Now by all play and searches this is a hard drive failure BUT I had the harddrive removed and it passed WD (Western digital testing) and I was told hMars drive is not faulty BUT operating system/bootsector may be. That being the case, if the harddrive is fine - how do I reinstall operating system or get this working considering a cant get it to boot up? I did when the drive was in try every single type of reset holding down various keys for safe mode etc etc now worked.



any help would be appreciated!!! I also have no access to a bootable drive or another Mac. I have a 21 inch Mac that within 3 days did exactly the same thing but turns itself off after the progress bar so 2 dead iMacs!



Help please..

 

[honestone]

Western Digital drives are somewhat notorious with "not playing nice" with Macs. But, assuming it is OK to use with your iMac, do you have anything you need on it? Also, have you been making backups to an external device?

What OS are you using? If there is nothing "valuable" on the iMac (and especially if you have no backups), you could boot the iMac into Recovery Mode via the Command+R key combination, select Disk Utility to completely Erase and Format the WD drive, and then do a clean, "virgin" installation of whatever OS you are using. If you have a backup on an external device, you can then use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy needed stuff from that backup. However, there could be "problematic apps/files, etc. on the backup which contributed to the cause of your issues.

 

[Tropicrider]

thank you - I have had the hard drives taken out and hence why I know they are essentially ok. And they've had the data I need transferred off them onto an external drive so no issues there.

Both computers were running El Capitan. Problem being when I tried to boot in recovery it won't - does exactly the same as I described above. And assuming I could get it to boot in recovery and format - how do I get the operating system on it? I have no other Mac and I understand the OS X can only be downloaded from the App Store? Maybe I'm way off track here lol

Western Digital drives are somewhat notorious with "not playing nice" with Macs. But, assuming it is OK to use with your iMac, do you have anything you need on it? Also, have you been making backups to an external device?

What OS are you using? If there is nothing "valuable" on the iMac (and especially if you have no backups), you could boot the iMac into Recovery Mode via the Command+R key combination, select Disk Utility to completely Erase and Format the WD drive, and then do a clean, "virgin" installation of whatever OS you are using. If you have a backup on an external device, you can then use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy needed stuff from that backup. However, there could be "problematic apps/files, etc. on the backup which contributed to the cause of your issues.

 

[honestone]

thank you - I have had the hard drives taken out and hence why I know they are essentially ok. And they've had the data I need transferred off them onto an external drive so no issues there.

Both computers were running El Capitan. Problem being when I tried to boot in recovery it won't - does exactly the same as I described above. And assuming I could get it to boot in recovery and format - how do I get the operating system on it? I have no other Mac and I understand the OS X can only be downloaded from the App Store? Maybe I'm way off track here lol

I have never used Recovery Mode to recover, as I have other, more "guaranteed" ways of doing it. This link explains "recovering and installing" the OS clear:

http://osxdaily.com/2014/12/14/reinstall-os-x-mac-internet-recovery/

If you still have the El Capitan Recovery Disk Partition, then you will be able to install a fresh, "virgin" El Capitan OS. The version you get (from what that link says) will be the same as the Recovery Disk Partition version you have. However, Easing and Formatting the disk would mean that you will get the OS that originally came with the machine. Given that it is a 2010 iMac, that could mean Snow Leopard, Lion or Mountain Lion.

I guess what you could do is to Erase and Format just the partition that the OS is currently on (apparently Sierra in your case), and assuming the Recovery HD partition is still present, this process should give you El Capitan (again not sure which version). However, that still might not completely resolve any "disk" issues you have.