*Newbie* needs help installing MacOS on 2009 iMac

[1974darrenh]

Hi.

I'm normally a Windows person but I have bought an old iMac 2009. The hard drive is completely dead, so I've installed a new drive formatted to exFat. I cannot get into any kind of recovery to be able to reinstall the OS that was on it (High Sierra)

I tried installing an OS onto a USB stick and powered on the iMac and it seemed to be loading from the USB as it had the apple logo and a moving bar but when it got to about 3/4, the O with a line through it came up.

Can someone guide me through how I can install an OS on it using a USB stick so I can at least get it up and running? Just to note, I need to use a windows pc to download all the files and do any formatting.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hi.

I'm normally a Windows person but I have bought an old iMac 2009. The hard drive is completely dead, so I've installed a new drive formatted to exFat. I cannot get into any kind of recovery to be able to reinstall the OS that was on it (High Sierra)

I tried installing an OS onto a USB stick and powered on the iMac and it seemed to be loading from the USB as it had the apple logo and a moving bar but when it got to about 3/4, the O with a line through it came up.

Can someone guide me through how I can install an OS on it using a USB stick so I can at least get it up and running? Just to note, I need to use a windows pc to download all the files and do any formatting.

You mean you need a guide to create Mac OS High Sierra installer USB from Windows PC?

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Mac OS High Sierra 10.13 iso : Apple : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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[1974darrenh]

Yes that's correct. I just need to install an operating system on it.

 

[Fishrrman]

The internal drive MUST be formatted to HFS+ using disk utility (running on a Mac).

That's "Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format".

You're not going to install any version of the Mac OS on exFAT...

 

[1974darrenh]

So I need another Mac to be able to format it to HFS+?

Well that's me stuffed then! Now I know why I hate Apple products.

 

[Bigwaff]

So I need another Mac to be able to format it to HFS+?

Well that's me stuffed then! Now I know why I hate Apple products.

No. You need to boot a supported version of Mac OS via USB media. This will boot into Mac OS Installer. Using Disk Utility from within the Mac OS Installer booted from USB media, reformat the internal storage HFS+. Then install Mac OS onto the internal storage using Mac OS Installer booted from USB media. This is the way.