Do I even have a hard drive??

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Is there a way to tell if an iMac (mid 2011) has a hard drive without taking it apart? I bought some iMacs at a local community college auction. While I know they rip the HDDs out of PCs, I wouldn't think they would take the time and effort to take the hard drive out of an iMac and then piece the whole thing back together. I've made an El Capitan installer out of a flash drive, but when I'm prompted to choose the install disk, the only one available is the flash drive. I'm hoping the original hard drive has just been wiped and now can't be seen. Is there any way to find out?

Side note, I'm using a regular keyboard so I can't use any key commands when I boot that involve the command key.

Thanks
Wes
 

chscag

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The Windows key on a standard USB keyboard is the same as the Command key and the Alt key is the same as the Option key on a Mac keyboard.

Boot the iMac with the El Capitan installer and enter Utilities, Disk Utility, and find out that way if the hard drive is present and if it needs to be set up first.
 
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While I can't do that at the moment (at work) i'll just ask, do I have the option to go to utilities? I forgot to mention when I boot without the installer I get the folder with a question mark.
 

chscag

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You need to boot with the installer to get to utilities. Or, if you have another bootable Mac OS X USB flash drive or external hard drive you can use that instead. The folder with a ? just means that it can't find anything to boot from. The hard drive may be there but wiped clean.
 

chscag

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OK, that's great news. Let us know if you need further assistance. :)
 

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