Troubleshoot after an upgrade
I fix computers for a living, recently the Mac repair center in my town went away and I'm working on more Macs these days and searching online a lot.
A client told me he tried to upgrade to the latest OS (not sure what he had or what he was upgrading too). it is a 27" iMac, not sure of year but can likely get it if needed. When he came back to the computer after a restart it only gives the folder with the question mark.
So I went into recovery mode > Disk Utility and I can see a 121GB SSD and a 2TB HD showing as internal but not mounted and the mount button is gray. I run first aid on the SSD and it returns 'problems found that may prevent startup' ... obviously, but no repair option and i run it repeatedly with the same result. THe 2 TB returns no errors but still won't mount.
I need to backup these drives before I wipe before I try to reinstall. I can connect and format an external drive but the restore option is not available.
What is the next step?
thanks for any help