I Mac 20.5 mid 2014 hard drive

[Tony Cipriano]

hello there, I have an older i mac i hardly used ,few months ago it started to get really slow....now I have that folder with a ? ,I did try to force reboot by press the command button and some other letter ,but all I get is a ped lock with a password window .....not sure what it means...
I guess I need a new hard drive? What do experts here think?? Here the pic with the model number hope you can see this

 

[TwoH]

That is a firmware password that has been put on the machine. A new hard drive won't remove it - it is tied to the firmware chip on the logicboard.

You would need the firmware password to remove it.

What is a firmware password on Mac?

Use a firmware password to prevent others from starting up your Mac using an internal or external storage device.

support.apple.com

 

[Tony Cipriano]

Ok ....but i did not put any firmware password....so now what???

 

[TwoH]

Ok ....but i did not put any firmware password....so now what???

Did you buy it straight from Apple - or somewhere else?

 

[Tony Cipriano]

Best buy in New York black Friday special 2014

 

[Tony Cipriano]

UPDATE i got the firmware password, going through the steps, internet is connected mouse and keyboard also connected when I chose to restore or install new OS X Mavericks there is no hard disk for me to select see pic

 

[TwoH]

Good job on the firmware - yeah by the looks of it the hard drive is dead and would need replacing.

 

[Tony Cipriano]

What hard drive can I install in here and where to buy one, also what recommendation you guys have mid 2014 20.5 I mac

 

[getrealbro]

The hard drive failed in our Late 2013 iMac. We now boot and run from an external Samsung T5 that I loaded from the Time Machine backup. The T5 is much faster than the original hard drive and I didn't have to crack open the iMac

GetRealBro

 

[Tony Cipriano]

Interesting and how big of a hard drive can i get since it only has 8 gig of ram and can't be updated and came with a 250 gig hard drive

 

[DeltaMac]

Your hard drive would be a 500 GB HDD, and you can swap that out to 1TB or larger, if you like. Your iMac takes a 2.5-inch (laptop) SATA drive. Even better would be to replace that with an SSD. Or, as getrealbro suggested, you can also use an external USB 3.0 SSD. Works just fine, without needing to cut open the case on your iMac.

 

[Tony Cipriano]

Ok. External hard drive it is then

 

[getrealbro]

Ok. External hard drive it is then

The hard drive in our 2013 iMac was so badly crashed, that it really slowed down startup trying to mount. But you can instruct your iMac to not even try to mount the crashed hard drive. Here’s how

How to prevent a volume from mounting at boot in OS X

You can keep any combination of volumes from automatically being available for read and write in OS X.

www.cnet.com

After you get your iMac booting and running from an eternal SSD, like the Samsung T5, it helps if you erase the internal hard drive using Disk Utility, so the system knows to not even think about booting from it.

GetRealBro

 

[Tony Cipriano]

Well I can try bus as of now the logic board doesn't see any driver
[automerge]1598907752[/automerge]

 

[Tony Cipriano]

What is the difference between Samsung T 5 and T 7?? Is the USB speed ??3.1 and 3.2 ? I think my I Mac is 3.0

 

[getrealbro]

What is the difference between Samsung T 5 and T 7?? Is the USB speed ??3.1 and 3.2 ? I think my I Mac is 3.0

IMHO the “Standard” USB naming is a mess… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

FWIW I have a couple of T5s and a T7. I use the T7 on a 2018 Mac Mini that can use the extra speed today. And I use the T5’s on our 2013 iMac and 2014 Mini. For the small difference in today's price for a 1TB T5 vs T7, I’d get the T7, because it will be more valuable in the future and works just fine with all of our Macs today.

GetRealBro

 

[Tony Cipriano]

Update so I installed an external drive samsung T5,works very good, now I wanted to install mac os catalina becouse some app wont run with osx 10.9.5 ,so but I have this issue ,the mac need a partition for firmware ,i created one by following some steps found on line but it seams that the system does not see the partition that i made for the firmware partition ....see the pic ....im not sure why,please keep in mind that the internal hard drive is not lon ger working