Hey MacRumors - I hope someone would be able to help me out.
Whenever I boot up my iMac (27" late 2009 - running Mavericks), it stays in the apple logo screen with the spinning logo underneath it. It never goes further than this. I've tried everything, from resetting the PRAM to boot up in safe mode, nothing seems to make my Mac go past this apple logo.
I have downloaded El Capitan, and created a bootable usb from it, in hope that I could just format the drive (I have everything backed up to the day before this happened), but when I follow the instructions on how to format the main 'Macintosh HD' drive, it's not actually in the list of drives available to me, so I can't go any further.
Just to make things a bit more clear, I've uploaded a few screenshots here.
When I boot up my iMac holding down the alt/option key I get this first screen:
As you can see, I've got my OSX 10.11 bootable USB in there, together with my Macintosh HD (which can be seen here by my Mac), and the Recovery 10.9. From here I selected the bootable 10.11, and went through to the next screen, when I choose the Disk Utility , and as you can see from this second image, the Macintosh HD is no where to be found, so I can't do any checks on it:
I then went back to the OSX 10.11 install, and followed the steps until it asks where do you want to install the OSX, and the only drive I get is my USB:
I then went back, and tried to boot up in Recovery Mode, but it just hangs there, same as it does when it tries to boot up normally.
Does anyone know what could be the problem here? Does this sounds like my HD has gone? Is there anything I can do just to see if my iMac can see it? Is there anything else I can try - some Recovery tips 'n tricks I can run it through before I go ahead and buy a new HD? I was thinking of buying an SSD for the iMac in any case, but just thought I'd check before I go wild.
If anyone can recommend any SSD's for the Late 2009 iMac, that would be incredible. I've been through Crucial, and they seem to be only recommending their own brand, but if anyone has anything else, I'd love to hear about them.
I've read up that there's a few issues with the fan etc when you swap for an SSD - so any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Whenever I boot up my iMac (27" late 2009 - running Mavericks), it stays in the apple logo screen with the spinning logo underneath it. It never goes further than this. I've tried everything, from resetting the PRAM to boot up in safe mode, nothing seems to make my Mac go past this apple logo.
I have downloaded El Capitan, and created a bootable usb from it, in hope that I could just format the drive (I have everything backed up to the day before this happened), but when I follow the instructions on how to format the main 'Macintosh HD' drive, it's not actually in the list of drives available to me, so I can't go any further.
Just to make things a bit more clear, I've uploaded a few screenshots here.
When I boot up my iMac holding down the alt/option key I get this first screen:
As you can see, I've got my OSX 10.11 bootable USB in there, together with my Macintosh HD (which can be seen here by my Mac), and the Recovery 10.9. From here I selected the bootable 10.11, and went through to the next screen, when I choose the Disk Utility , and as you can see from this second image, the Macintosh HD is no where to be found, so I can't do any checks on it:
I then went back to the OSX 10.11 install, and followed the steps until it asks where do you want to install the OSX, and the only drive I get is my USB:
I then went back, and tried to boot up in Recovery Mode, but it just hangs there, same as it does when it tries to boot up normally.
Does anyone know what could be the problem here? Does this sounds like my HD has gone? Is there anything I can do just to see if my iMac can see it? Is there anything else I can try - some Recovery tips 'n tricks I can run it through before I go ahead and buy a new HD? I was thinking of buying an SSD for the iMac in any case, but just thought I'd check before I go wild.
If anyone can recommend any SSD's for the Late 2009 iMac, that would be incredible. I've been through Crucial, and they seem to be only recommending their own brand, but if anyone has anything else, I'd love to hear about them.
I've read up that there's a few issues with the fan etc when you swap for an SSD - so any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.