cant load osx on 27' imac

My partner came across a fairly new imac without an internal hd. So ive been trying to help him get it up and going. Installed a seagate sata 1.0 tb, no luck. Read up about the heat sensors and what not. Shorted out the heat sensor, fans ran rapidly, but hd didnt work using osx install discs. So i had an old 24' imac with a 250 gb. seagate laying around (motherboard went bad) that had 10.5.7 leopard installed on it. The 27' imac recognized it when holding down option, but wouldnt boot up from it. install discs would boot up,and give me the options (chose english) waited for it to install, like it said it was doing, then it came up as "osx cannot be installed on this computer" I was able to go to disk utility and repair disk, tried erasing hd, starting fresh, but still nothing. Then i booted up in safemode and it gave me alot of details that were foreign to me. If you havent already noticed, im still sort of a noob....:Blushing:
imac intel core i5
2.8 ghz
5 gb memory
4 cores
If you would like to see the details from the safeboot....can i send a pic? or i will write them out if need be. let me know if you need anything else on this imac...would really like to get this unit up and going. thanks 4 all the help on this post and all the posts i read whenever i struggle..It really is appreciated when some1 takes the time in responding on an issue you just cant conquer on your own...thanks again,;D The Dirtybird

If this is a 2011 or newer 27" iMac...yes...there are some fairly well known difficulties with replacing the hard drive...give this a read:

Difficulties abound when upgrading a 2011 iMac's hard drive | Macworld

Basically...if I was someone purchasing once of these newer iMacs...I would NOT buy it if the original HD was removed (unless it was busted).

Many people remove HD's from used computers when they sell them...simply because they are too lazy to transfer their files to another HD...or are uninformed as to how to properly & securely erase an HD before sale.

HTH,

- Nick

27' imac not working with new hd

hey nick, thanks. that gave me a lil more input on the whole subject but not really the answer i was looking for. can i buy a heat sensor that attaches to my seagate 1.0 tb hd that will make this 27' inch imac run?

please ? can anyone help me with this?

The first thing you need to do is find out if the unit is really working properly. I would put the drive that you want to use in place and then, if possible, boot it from an external FireWire or USB drive. If it boots, check the diagnostics as follows:

1. Click on the Apple icon in the upper left extreme corner
2. When the dialog comes down, click on "About this Mac"
3. A dialog will appear in the middle of the screen, click on the button at the bottom of the screen that says "More Info..."
4. Under "Hardware" you should see a listing for "Diagnostics" (You may need to click on the triangle to the left of "Hardware" to expand the list"
5. Click on "Diagnostics" It should say it passed.
6. Assuming it passes diagnostics, check the column on the left that says "Serial ATA". A wheel should spin and then the name of the controller should appear followed by the drive model.

If the unit can't boot from an external drive, the logic board is probably bad.
If the unit doesn't report a Serial ATA controller, then the logic board IS bad.
If it sees the HD and reports it correctly then the system is PROBABLY ok.

One important note: When trying to start from start up disks, make sure they're compatible (as in not too early) for the system you're working on. For example, Leopard might be too early for the system you're working on. Apple has scripts in its software installers that check for hardware by type, model number, etc. etc. and if the model you have is newer than the installation software, it won't be recognized and you'll get the "can't be installed on this system" stuff...that doesn't mean it won't work, it just means the installer can't identify the system.

When you did the safeboot, did it boot fully up, and what OS versions are we talking about?

What is it exactly that you need help with? From your first post, I can see that you've got several problems. You can not install Leopard on that machine. And since you didn't tell us the year and model, I have to guess that maybe you can install Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.8. If it's a 2011 model, you can only install Lion OS X 10.7.4. That's the first problem.....

Second problem is if it's a late model iMac, it uses a proprietary hard drive. Actually it's a Seagate Barracuda with special firmware. There are work arounds and if you read that article Nick linked you to, you know what they are.

chscag is 100% correct on both counts.

Can you please give us the specs so we can determine the model? There should be a label on the underside of the base with the basic specs and model ID.

That other issue OWC can help with, but the very fact the fans run full blast shows me it a newer iMac with Proprietary hard drive with special firmware and 8-Pin power connector..

Assuming the specs he provided in his initial post are correct, the model has to be a 27" mid 2010 iMac. That's the only one out of the 27" models that had a 2.8GHz Core i5 processor. It should be model number MC511LL/A.

If he was using Leopard install disks on the unit, regardless of whether the disk was bad or not, it would still fail to install because the system wouldn't be recognized by the install disks. Install disks have to be either 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion).

I would suspect he was able to get the unit to boot in safe mode because it's using a basic kernel with limited extensions.

Once the startup disk issue is resolved I'd verify that the unit is working properly at all. As mentioned before by pigoo3, some people pull the drives out because they're too lazy to reformat them, but taking them out isn't an easy task. Some government agencies and companies REQUIRE drive removal. In government agencies they may be storing classified data or data that shouldn't be publicly available (like IRS info) and in the case of businesses like banks and financial institutions, they have to remove them for liability reasons.

Last but not least, some people pull the drive out because there's something wrong with the unit, which is why I would test it. In fact I would test it with as little re-assembled as possible because you don't want to fully re-assemble the unit only to find there's a logic board glitch of some sort.

i have 10.6 snow leopard, but when i boot holding down "c" key, all it does is show me the grey screen with the apple logo. im assuming the unit is fine, but maybe i need a newer osx disc?

ok, i got it to boot up, but when i entered "english" it said it was installing, then "mac osx cannot be installed on this computer" ..........please help. Went to system profiler and under diagnostics said it had passed.

white or grey Snow Leopard discs?

If grey they are machine specific, if white it's retail and posibily too old.

Spend $70 at the Apple store and get a Lion USB..

Germany_chris is absolutely correct. By machine specific he mean that you can't load SnowLeopard on a iMac if you use MBP grey disks.

Ill have a stab at this.
But doing some digging, i see you said you have a HD from a OLD 24" iMac with 10.5.7 on it. From having a stab at this if that HD is from that era 2007-8ish then you will have no hope of installing anything other than 10.5 onto it. So in conclusion and if it is still the 24"HD you are trying to get up and going, ill reckon 10.5 Leopard will be the best OS you can load onto it. Try and find some BLACK Leopard Disks on ebay. They don't go cheap either as they are a rare commodity.

HTH

Cheers

There are a couple of possible problems (many, actually):

1. Like Germany_chris stated, what type of install disks are they? Are these general installation disks, or are they the type that came with another system? If they came with another system (like your old iMac) they probably won't work. The installer not only looks for items it's unfamiliar with, but install disks that come with specific systems ( a Mac Mini or an ealier iMac for example) will actually be coded to work only on that type or a family of similar systems. This is done to prevent OS bootlegging. Most device specific install disks are grey, but they aren't always. I had an Intel Mac Mini that came with grey install disks to install Tiger and Leopard upgrade disks that looked almost exactly like the general installation disks. Leopard likely won't install on that system since Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and your system is 2010.

2. Do you have access to a bootable USB or FireWire drive that you can install the OS onto with another machine. Anything with an up to date Snow Leopard installation could work. With FireWire you may need to get a 400/800M adapter depending on the types of ports you have on the external drive (your system has FireWire 800). I still think the number one thing you should do is try to boot the unit off an external drive to see if it's even working. If you know someone that has another unit with a FireWire port and Snow Leopard installed, you could put that unit into target disk mode (by holding down the "T" key when starting up) and use that as the bootable drive. The idea here is to make sure your system is even working.

I hate to say it, and you shouldn't worry about this without confirmation, but we've seen a lot of these units that people pick up on auction sites that aren't working, people take out what they can or what they need, and then claim they're working and sell them as-is. When the buyer installs a drive and it doesn't work, the seller claims it was working right and that the buyer broke it. Rule number one of anyone that buys a unit without a drive in it should be to boot if off an external drive with a compatible operating system to see if the unit even operates before attempting to install a hard drive. If there's damage to the bus, bad connectors, etc, it can still pass diagnostics. Diagnostics usually only test control circuitry. At this very moment I have an old PowerBook sitting about 3 feet from me with a cracked trace to the connector to one of the USB ports on the logic board, yet it passes diagnostics.

Just my two cents…good luck.

TattooedMac said:

But doing some digging, i see you said you have a HD from a OLD 24" iMac with 10.5.7 on it. From having a stab at this if that HD is from that era 2007-8ish then you will have no hope of installing anything other than 10.5 onto it. So in conclusion and if it is still the 24"HD you are trying to get up and going, ill reckon 10.5 Leopard will be the best OS you can load onto it. Try and find some BLACK Leopard Disks on ebay. They don't go cheap either as they are a rare commodity.

HTH

Cheers

Click to expand...

I am confused. A HD is a Hard Drive. Why would a Hard Drive from a 2007 24" iMac in a newer Mac not load Lion? The drive has nothing do with what OS will load or not load. That 24" iMac would run Lion just fine but we are talking hard drives here, as long as the drive has a fresh GUID partition, Lion will install just fine as well as SL. 10.5 will not even run on that newer iMac.

Sorry, Maybe I am reading your post wrong.

I think TatooedMac is thinking about the original iMac the OP said he got the drive from. This is turning into a long post. Should be interesting to see how it turns out.

Leopard might, **MIGHT** run on that system, but not if it's installed directly. I don't know if I'd trust it to be reliable though.

Yes but a 24" iMac will run 10.6 and 10.7. I should know, have installed it on many of them. A 24" was a Core2Duo machine.

Tattoo is a great user here. Just trying to figure out what he is saying! Grin

Well i was going off what MacTracker was giving to me.
What is it in a System that makes it have a limitation of what OS can be installed on it?? The MotherBoard ??

If so then I'm way out of the ballpark and forgive me for the confusion. MacTracker says the Latest OS to go onto a 24" 2007 model is Tiger......
Im confusing myself now i think

Tattoo! My poor Head. I own a 20" 2007 Santa Rosa chipset iMac and my friend has the 24" version of the same machine. Same exact hardware on both. BOTH run 10.7 Lion great and I am a dev and installed ML on it and that installs and runs fine.

What is up with Mac Tracker? Going there now! Grin

BTW what the poster here is doing is just using the drive out of the 2007 iMac in the new iMac. And yes it's the hardware and mostly the CPU and Video chipset that is the cut off for an OSX version. His issue though as he does not posses the right version of OSX to boot on that newish iMac!

EDIT, Here is what Mac Tracker says.

Original OS Mac OS X 10.4.10 (8R4031)
Later OS Mac OS X 10.5 (9A581, 9A3129), 10.5.2 (9C3033)
Maximum OS Latest release of Mac OS X

Maximum OS = Lastest release of Mac OSX. That would be Lion. Confusing as it has that Later OS. They should just say oldest and newest.

Have a look at 24" from 2007 and then software, because that's where it says Tiger. It's the earliest model with a 250gb HD ? Lol

TatooedMac:

I've seen Titaniums with speeds less than the "official" limit of 867MHz running Leopard. Apple frequently specifies one thing and then over time seems to taylor it to run on predecessors. You can't install stuff "officially" on them, but the fact is some people will take a drive out of a dead system running something like Leopard and put it into a system that it theoretically shouldn't run it and, voila, it works without needing to do a complete OS install. This could lead transition from PPC->Intel to be misleading/confusing.

IMHO this is no big deal. The OP wasn't all that specific. Let's focus on his problems and help him solve them...THAT'S the real big deal. I'm really curious. I suspect it's some type of mental health problem on my part.!