Can internet recovery still be used on an already formatted hard drive?

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Can internet recovery still be used on an already formatted hard drive?

This might be a ridiculous question, but settle a debate for me? Theoretical question that came up while swapping the hard drive of a 2012 Mac Mini for a SSD. Say I boot up using target disk mode and format the startup disk using Disk Utility on another machine. If I then try to boot in recovery mode will anything happen? Is there a physical trigger that tells the Mac to go on the internet and find the recovery os or whatever it is? Or will it just be completely blank.

Thanks for satisfying this quandary.

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Mar 28, 2020 11:59 AM

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Answer 1

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Niel

Level 10

731,363 points

Mar 28, 2020 12:26 PM in response to anselbobrow

On a 2012 or newer Mac, or some earlier ones with upgraded firmware, the Internet Recovery system is part of the firmware and can be accessed if the internal drive is blank or dead. Otherwise, it won't be available and the next installation needs to be performed from a physical disk.

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Can internet recovery still be used on an already formatted hard drive?

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