My late-2012 iMac Hard Drive Adventure

[schmadrian]

(Here is my original thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/high-sierra-boot-drive-issues.2243634/ )

So my iMac's hard drive died. I spent well over an hour on the phone with an exceptionally patient and resourceful Apple service rep. We tried everything. Nothing worked. No matter what I did, I could not get proper access to the Recovery mode.

Quite remorseful over some unbacked-up data, I sent it to a friend of a friend whose business addresses such issues.

They recovered all the data (family stuff that is especially precious, as I lost my mother and my only sibling within nine months recently.)

And the friend-of-a-friend told me "It wasn't the drive. The drive is fine, we tested it. It was something funky going on with the OS."

He sent back the iMac. (He'd installed Catalina, which was a surprise.) I immediately made multiple backup copies of files. ("I was born at night, but not last night.")

Everything looked fantastic. For a week.

Yesterday, things went south. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get anywhere with it; it appeared the HD was pooched.

I was about to make arrangements to send it back, when the HD mentioned in my initial thread as linked about caught my eye on my work table.

Here's where I learned something: I wiped clean the external 500Gb SSD, went into Recovery mode and installed a fresh OS. (Catalina, of course.)

Voila! A new setup. But wait!

I wasn't expecting it, but the original 1Tb iMac HD was accessible.

So now I have a fast(er) SSD boot drive, all the recovered data and a total of 1.5 Tb of storage. For the time being, anyway. LOL

I'm posting simply because there are always things to learn that are...for me, anyway, and I've been using Macs for almost 30 years...sometimes difficult to find online. (OK; I have been called a doofus on occasion.)

Hopefully someone who could benefit from my tale will see it.

 

[wardie]

Glad it worked out for you... have you learned to use a regular backup too (if not a couple)? I’m always amazed of the number of people that don’t, not realising how fragile the digital memories are that are important to their lives.

 

[schmadrian]

Glad it worked out for you... have you learned to use a regular backup too (if not a couple)? I’m always amazed of the number of people that don’t, not realising how fragile the digital memories are that are important to their lives.

You'll laugh at my multi-levelled backup regimen; seven standalone hard drives in action executing several sometimes-overlapping protocols, three Mac internal hard drives, and at any given point, a half-dozen flash drives ranging from 8Gb to 256Gb. (Then there are the drives that I've taken out of rotation over the past two decades.)

And yet just when you think it's safe to go back in the water... LOL

 

[Retroworldnews]

sad, my old iMac is confirm the hdd spoil. Managed to recover I does fresh install able to work for one week but broke down again. In fact last week I do a scan got I/0 error, I message a guy on facebook at my local country saw he provide service to fix apple stuffs , so i message him he claim most likely HDD gone going to break down . I does google around check alot claim if u scan noticed got i/o error most likely hdd going to give up soon

 

[wardie]

You'll laugh at my multi-levelled backup regimen; seven standalone hard drives in action executing several sometimes-overlapping protocols, three Mac internal hard drives, and at any given point, a half-dozen flash drives ranging from 8Gb to 256Gb. (Then there are the drives that I've taken out of rotation over the past two decades.)

And yet just when you think it's safe to go back in the water... LOL

Wow, with all those backups, how did you suffer data loss? I’m not trying to criticise, I am more just surprised... The biggest thing I’ve learned over the years is to make the backups automatic, because the one thing that fails is... me.

 

[Hexley]

Imagine making a 14TB Fusion Drive!