iMac mid 2011 ? Boots in macOS Utilities

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Hello ,

My mid 2011 ( not 100 percent sure about the model ) yesterday when I tried to use it , it was frozen . after trying what I could do to unfreeze it .
I finally powered it down using the Power Botton .

Since then , when it starts up it will only show the " macOs Utilities " screen.


When I run First Aid on the " Macintosh HD" ( this is the only internal HD for this computer ) in Disk Utility :
the report shows that the process has failed .

If I try to select a start up disk nothing shows up .

if this a classic case of a HD that had died ?

If so , will reinstall macOS , do anything ?

Do I have any other options to try ?

Thanks for any feedback .
 
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Yes, it looks like the HD is dead and no, reinstalling won't magically heal the broken drive. Although it won't hurt to try, assuming you have a backup. Then once you have convinced yourself that the HD is, in fact, dead, you get a new one put in and restore from the backups. Or get a new iMac.
 
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Do I have any other options to try ?

Thanks for any feedback .


Create a current, working, bootable clone backup to an external drive if you don't already have one, and then use it to boot from and seed if things don't work better.





- Patrick
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Alas think it may be a little too late.
 
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Alas think it may be a little too late.



Methinks that you'd be correct Harry.

But it never hurts to try and it's sure not looking good, but maybe at least copy the username folder to some other volume if possible.





- Patrick
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It looks like the HD is dead , I have looked into the fixes that you have suggested and they didn't work or I could not get my computer to do anything .
The good news is that this is not my main machine . So I am going to try to boot the OS from a USB drive for now .
I have been curious about the process of replacing the HD in that machine , so this is a perfect opportunity to see if I can .


I have to ask this , although it may be very dumb , but I'll ask !

Before this HD crashed on me I had just installed Virtual Box and was running Kail Linux on it. Is it possible this has anything to do with the HD not being found read ?

I did have VB opened and just put the computer into sleep mode .

My understanding is that when a computer is shut down all apps that are open also close .
but I Just through I would ask.
 
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You can check at iFixit.com to see if they have a process for that machine, and if not, you can try at macsales.com (OWC) for their video on how to replace the drive. Between them you should be able to see what needs doing.
 
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I decided to just add to this thread instead of creating a new one , so this is the update .

I finally managed to get the machine to boot from the USB , then I went into Disk Utility and Restored the internal HD , and perform First Aid on the HD.
it came back good , I wasn't expecting that at all .

Then I was able to change the start up disk to the original internal HD and it booted !

To test out the internal HD , I created a simple text document and tried to save it to the HD , it wouldn't let me . I was getting a message that said I did not have permission to perform this task .
I tried to change the permissions , but nothing I tried worked .

I booted back from the USB and the computer would not boot , both drives showed up in Disk Utility , but I got this message from the USB :

This disk doesn’t use the GUID Partition Table scheme

Use disk utility to change the partition scheme. Select the device containing the disk , click the Erase button , select the Volume Scheme and then click Erase .

( I tried doing this but it did not work , also I didn't see anything in the partition tad that mentioned GUID )

I got this message from the Original HD :

This HD is locked .

I read that I can try to reset the NVRAM to unlock the SIP , Apparently High Sierra had this enabled with the latest update . ( I didn't run into this problem before )


Now when I turn on the computer it only will load half way and then the machine shuts off .

I understand that the HD needs to be replaced , I am just curious about all this strange behavior . it is possible the HD started working for a short amount of time and then stopped working again ?
 
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I understand that the HD needs to be replaced , I am just curious about all this strange behavior . it is possible the HD started working for a short amount of time and then stopped working again ?
Yes, sometimes, HDD's dies quite slowly. You may be able to get more "time" out of it, but it's not worth it, in my opinion.
 
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Anything is possible, but I would suspect you have other troubles with Incorrect Formatting and Permissions Problems just to compound the problems, as well as using something that has locked the drive it seems.

The easiest thing to do now would be to just start afresh and using a new replacement drive I'd say.





- Patrick
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I agree , but I wanted to experiment to see if I could get it working . Just for fun , but it looks like I have run out of experiments to try ! lol
 
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I agree , but I wanted to experiment to see if I could get it working . Just for fun , but it looks like I have run out of experiments to try ! lol


Depending on what you are booted from, did you do a Get Info on the drive (maybe not when you're booted from it if that's even possible) and see what it says about "Locked" state, or the "Permissions" status???

You may be able to disable its permissions if that is messing up anything you're wanting to do.





- Patrick
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