Reinstalling macOS/OSX on new HDD - Mid-2011 iMac

The HDD in my Mid-2011 21.5-inch iMac failed a while back (ran AHT twice and this confirmed it). A third party technician took it in to recover the data due to me being unable to at the time. I got the machine back and tried to boot into recovery mode, only for it to cut straight to internet recovery, which resulted in a blank screen (I assume the machine never had the internet recovery firmware update). I had another relatively new hard drive with CloudReady installed on it gathering dust, so I installed that into the machine without formatting, as I assumed this could be done later. I fired up the machine again with the new HDD. Again no recovery mode (no surprises), and again internet recovery resulted in a white screen. So I held down option after a restart, and the new drive IS being recognised under the name EFI Boot, but a black screen went attempting to mount it.

I did some more research, and discovered that my iMac shipped with OSX 10.6.6, and thus I should have an install disk somewhere. Well, I couldn't find that. So currently I have no clear method of reinstalling OSX 10.6.6, any genuine help here?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Jan 1, 2021 12:06 AM

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Jan 4, 2021 7:01 PM in response to willyzz

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Turns out not just my HDD was failing, but the video card was too, resulting in lots of blank white screens when trying to boot into USB installer images. I baked the video card in the oven for eight minutes at 200 degrees celsius. Reinstalled the card, successfully booted into an OS X Lion USB, installed Lion, and now running High Sierra beautifully.

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Reinstalling macOS/OSX on new HDD - Mid-2011 iMac

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