Yosemite no longer recognizes internal hard drive.

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Yosemite no longer recognizes internal hard drive.

I have a mid-2007 iMac on which Yosemite is installed. The iMac was upgraded to Yosemite shortly after its release.

The operating speed recently started dropping quite significantly until finally my computer froze. On reboot, I got a white screen with a flashing file folder that had a question mark in it. I tried the various suggested online solutions including:

- booting in recovery mode;

- booting in safe mode and safe with verbose mode;

- booting in single user mode;

- resetting the NVRAM; and,

- resetting the SMC.

In each case, I got the flashing question mark.

Finally I created a bootable memory stick and booted from it. When I ran the disk utility, my Macintosh HD internal drive did not show up in the left hand panel. I am guessing the hard drive is toast, but thought I would run it past the support group first, before I go out and replace it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Posted on Jul 25, 2015 3:17 PM

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Answer 1

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Lyssa

Level 8

41,327 points

Jul 25, 2015 7:42 PM in response to Halvin

7 years is a pretty good run for a hard drive. There's a slim possibility there's a loose cable between the hard drive and logicboard, but otherwise, yes, it's toast.

Check out ifixit.com for instructions if you're interested in doing the repair yourself.

~Lyssa

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Answer 2

Halvin Author

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Jul 31, 2015 3:10 AM in response to Lyssa

Thanks Lyssa.

Not being one to want to delve into the internal workings, I took my iMac into a local authorized reseller. Hard drive was toast and has now been replaced. However I hadn't mentioned in my earlier post that it wasn't the original hard drive, which was replaced back in 2012. In any event, back up and running again.

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Answer 3

Lyssa

Level 8

41,327 points

Aug 1, 2015 1:07 PM in response to Halvin

3-5 years is the lifespan for a hard drive last time I checked, with laptop hard drives being more likely to fail sooner and desktop ones more likely to survive longer.

Good to hear you got things sorted out 🙂

~Lyssa

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