iMac 2012 and a seemingly missing internal HDD

[anyjungleinguy]

Hi

My dad has a 2012 iMac 21.5" - it was reformatted a couple of weeks ago in preparation for it to be sold but now he's experiencing a couple of issues.

Disk utility shows no internal HDD whatsoever from the internet recovery section. Booting it up just shows the folder and flashing question mark.

I ran the AHT and it showed no problems so I was putting it down to the HDD failing.

However, we've took the screen off and I've taken the HDD out and connected it to my Mac using a SATA to USB cable and it seemingly works fine - it appears in Disk Utility and I can read all the folder structure fine.

Any ideas what to look at next? Faulty internal SATA/power cable maybe?

 

[chscag]

Any ideas what to look at next? Faulty internal SATA/power cable maybe?

That would be my guess also. You know the drive is good and that is was working ok in the iMac prior to reformatting it. Those cables are very fragile and get brittle after a lot of use. Their failure is more common in portable Macs but I have seen it happen in iMacs.