2010 27' iMac won't recognize Internal HDD after 10.13 install.

[kennfletch]

We have a 2010 iMac that wouldn't update to El Capitan so I decided to by pass it and make USB High Sierra and install. I booted from the USB and installed and erased the HHD. I chose the HDD I erased. It seemed to work but towards the end I reboot and a flashing fold with a "?" popped up. I tried the recovery, disk utility, FireWired 2 Macs, safe mode, holding down buttons at start, internet recovery, etc... I did a ton of searching on the web but can't any help.

I was able to install to an external HHD and it boots from there but it doesn't see the internal at all. It won't recognize the HDD. I guess it was a bad install. How can I recognize that HDD? Is there a free program that will see the internal drive and repair? Thanks.

 

[redheeler]

The internal HDD doesn't even show up in the Disk Utility sidebar? My guess then is that the drive itself has failed. Being a 7-year-old drive the possibility of failure isn't all that unlikely at this point, and in fact some of the 2010 iMacs in particular were known to ship with high-failure-rate drives.

As the owner of a 27" 2010 iMac myself, I installed an SSD in place of the original HDD, and I can tell you the upgrade was worth it. Having an SSD really makes a difference with performance on newer versions of OS X.