Hi all,
New member, so hope I'm posting in the right place. If not, apologies! The following issue has happened over quite a long period of time due, in most part, to my laziness/having another computer to cover my needs. I've tried to be as specific as possible, but obviously if other details are required, I'm happy to provide. Bear in mind that my computer knowledge is patchy at best so again apologies if there are any glaring omissions.
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Ok, so I got my iMac EMC 2308 about 8-9 years ago. Everything worked fine up until Jan/Feb 2016 when I decided to upgrade to El Capitan X. So I proceed with the upgrade, all goes smoothly, download finishes and starts applying the update. This is when it does the usual restart that's standard after an upgrade/new install.
At this point, the computer does nothing but come up with a white screen, and a folder symbol with a flashing question mark. I am led to believe that this is to do with the startup disk or something related, however due to the timing (immediately after upgrading) I can't see that it would be anything physically wrong with it.
Problem is that from thereon out, I can't access anything, I can't start it in safe mode or any of the other button combinations that the Apple team suggested at the time. It was at this time that I got a new computer via my job and therefore wasn't particularly fussed about sorting it at that time.
So now we come to the last month or so, where I opened up the mac, cleaned everything up, checked to see if there was anything particularly obvious that looked awry. Nothing stuck out to my very electronically ignorant eyes, so I carefully removed the hard drive and put it into the hard drive cradle I purchased. This was not recognised by my brother's macbook and similarly doesn't appear to be detected by my Windows laptop either.
This particular hard drive has about 7 years worth of photos on it that are important (important enough, in fact, that should it come down to it I'd probably suck it up and pay the 100's/1,000's or £'s it would cost to recover them. That being said, I'm not particularly keen on that, so my questions are as follows:
- Is it likely to be something physical or would it be a conflict between existing software and the El Capitan X upgrade I performed?
- If it is indeed the startup disk, can this be replaced physically (does it even have a physical element or is it a particular partition in the hard drive? Being that I can't actually operate the iMac in anyway, how would this be remedied?
- Can a new HD be installed without essentially starting the computer from scratch?
- Can the HD cradle even work if my computer was password protected?
Any answers to the questions above, or any answers to questions that might assist me are more than welcomed!
EJ
New member, so hope I'm posting in the right place. If not, apologies! The following issue has happened over quite a long period of time due, in most part, to my laziness/having another computer to cover my needs. I've tried to be as specific as possible, but obviously if other details are required, I'm happy to provide. Bear in mind that my computer knowledge is patchy at best so again apologies if there are any glaring omissions.
---
Ok, so I got my iMac EMC 2308 about 8-9 years ago. Everything worked fine up until Jan/Feb 2016 when I decided to upgrade to El Capitan X. So I proceed with the upgrade, all goes smoothly, download finishes and starts applying the update. This is when it does the usual restart that's standard after an upgrade/new install.
At this point, the computer does nothing but come up with a white screen, and a folder symbol with a flashing question mark. I am led to believe that this is to do with the startup disk or something related, however due to the timing (immediately after upgrading) I can't see that it would be anything physically wrong with it.
Problem is that from thereon out, I can't access anything, I can't start it in safe mode or any of the other button combinations that the Apple team suggested at the time. It was at this time that I got a new computer via my job and therefore wasn't particularly fussed about sorting it at that time.
So now we come to the last month or so, where I opened up the mac, cleaned everything up, checked to see if there was anything particularly obvious that looked awry. Nothing stuck out to my very electronically ignorant eyes, so I carefully removed the hard drive and put it into the hard drive cradle I purchased. This was not recognised by my brother's macbook and similarly doesn't appear to be detected by my Windows laptop either.
This particular hard drive has about 7 years worth of photos on it that are important (important enough, in fact, that should it come down to it I'd probably suck it up and pay the 100's/1,000's or £'s it would cost to recover them. That being said, I'm not particularly keen on that, so my questions are as follows:
- Is it likely to be something physical or would it be a conflict between existing software and the El Capitan X upgrade I performed?
- If it is indeed the startup disk, can this be replaced physically (does it even have a physical element or is it a particular partition in the hard drive? Being that I can't actually operate the iMac in anyway, how would this be remedied?
- Can a new HD be installed without essentially starting the computer from scratch?
- Can the HD cradle even work if my computer was password protected?
Any answers to the questions above, or any answers to questions that might assist me are more than welcomed!
EJ