iMac mid 2011 21.5" Help Needed

[BrettOlbrys]

Hard drive is crashing, so ordered replacement kit and attempted to install last night. Ifixit instructions say to install unformatted hard drive into iMac and connect original drive externally, which I did. Hardest part of install was reconnecting the LCD cable and it took me a while to do. Reassembled everything and followed instructions to hold COMMAND R when I power up, but seems like nothing happened. Power went to the external drive, but nothing on the display.

I'm confused though, if there is an unformatted drive in the IMac, what is supposed to load so I can reinstall OS? Is something supposed to load from the external drive, which was the original hard drive?

Thanks

Brett

 

[Glmnet1]

It sounds like your display is not plugged in correctly.

Once you see the boot menu (part of the firmware) you'll be able to boot from the external drive (on macOS or on a recovery partition) or from a cd/usb with a macOS installer.

There is also a way to install Internet Recovery on the EFI firmware of your Mac, it comes by default on newer devices. You could use any of those to install macOS on your blank drive.

 

[BrettOlbrys]

Thanks. It's it possible I could have damaged the LCD cable? If so, is this something I can repair / replace myself??