After I replace my iMac hard drive....

[Tim in Scottsdale]

Guys

.....will the iMac prompt me to install OSX? The new drive will be the same as the old.

 

[komatsu]

When you say the new drive will be the same as the old do you mean you are putting in a
cloned drive (i.e. an exact copy)?

 

[Tim in Scottsdale]

No, the same model of drive new out of the box.

 

[roadkill401]

This i don't quite get. if the mac is new enough to have a large spinner, then it more than likely is still under warranty, so Apple would be taking care of everything.

But if it is an older iMac, then why would you want to put in a spinning hard drive when the cost of going SSD is so inexpensive and the speed boost it so great it makes little sense not to. The cost of a temp sensor cable and you will have a mac that will likely feel better than new

 

[Tim in Scottsdale]

That wasn't really My Question was it.

If you do not care to answer my question then don't post here.

 

[simonsi]

No it won't prompt you unless you count booting to the "No entry" symbol a prompt. The iMac won't have anything loaded to run but the bios, the bios will find no attached drive with an OS so will just show you a "no OS" symbol. From there it requires a human to decide what to do. If it is a late enough model you may get prompted to carry out an internet recovery but impossible to say on the info you have provided.

If the iMac is working now you can clone the old drive to the new before you swap them, that requires an external enclosure or SATA cable/power. If it isn't working you can boot from your Time Machine backup and restore from there if you have one. If it is working now you can make a USB drive to boot and install from once the new drive is in.

HTH.

 

[Tim in Scottsdale]

The hard drive is blown, but there is nothing valuable on it. I want to copy another iMac into the iMac getting the new drive.

 

[simonsi]

In that case you have the option of Target Disk Mode to directly copy from the "good" to the "bad" assuming both iMacs support Target Disk mode and you have a Thunderbolt cable.

 

[komatsu]

ok when you put in a new hard drive, you will power up and you will see a icon of a flashing
hard drive icon. (as simonsi has stated)

You will then need to install a version of OS X.

 

[danielwsmithee]

You will not have an OS to boot from so you will get a flashing hard drive icon as stated previously.

You can create a USB bootable installer using the instructions that Apple has provided here.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

A simpler method is to clone the drive from the other iMac onto the new one before installing it using an external enclosure, or target disk mode.

 

[Tim in Scottsdale]

Okay that helps.

My working iMac has OSX 10.10.5 Yosemite and I have the disc coming for that. Once in, I will clone the entire working machine into the new blank hard drive. Thanks guys.