Imac 5K late 2015 not booting properly

[Jon eames]

Imac 5K late 2015 the hard drive died so i decided to get a 2 TB SSD.

It took me ages to get into internet recovery not sure why but tried 20 times then finally booted. It just kept going to the apple logo with no progress bar.

Any way i went into the SSD and installed OSX Monterey on it then once that update added my latest TM (was catalina) backup. I logged on and added all my login detail and was running perfectly. all apps running and email et

I then shut it down and then powered back on and it has gone back to just the apple logo again and no progress bar. Cant get into internet recovery again. I'm gathering if I keep trying it will finally go in. tried PRAM reset.

Any help really appreciated

 

[TwoH]

To me it sounds like there could be an issue with that 2tb drive. Your best bet would be to physically unplug the 2tb from the machine and see if it boots fine into recovery without it

 

[Jon eames]

thanks for the quick reply. no it doesn't boot properly, it does the exactly the same.


when i used a wired keyboard the caps lock light flashes once then doesn't come back on if that's anything to go by. when you press the caps lock it has no light. I use another keyboard exactly the same. Not sure if this is standard

 

[stradify]

Try booting into Safe Mode. If it boots then run Disk Utility on the 2 TB SSD. If you have DriveDx that would be worth running as well.

 

[rpmurray]

You could try booting with the Option key held down and then select the external. Once you have it booted, go into System Preferences (Settings) and change the startup drive to the external.

 

[Jon eames]

It doesn't work whatever button i press. Option key, safe mode or Recovery

 

[TwoH]

Try booting into Safe Mode. If it boots then run Disk Utility on the 2 TB SSD. If you have DriveDx that would be worth running as well.

^definitely this if possible.

One other thing I can think of - have you upgraded/changed your ram at all too?
Else do you know if your machine was purely hard drive or if it was a fusion set up and actually has a flash ssd still installed causing issues?

 

[Jon eames]

I have taken both sticks of ram out and tried to boot and does the same things

^definitely this if possible.

One other thing I can think of - have you upgraded/changed your ram at all too?
Else do you know if your machine was purely hard drive or if it was a fusion set up and actually has a flash ssd still installed causing issues?

think you are onto something here, just read my spec and it says fusion drive 128GB and 2TB. do i need to find the fusion drive and take it out ?

 

[TwoH]

I have taken both sticks of ram out and tried to boot and does the same things


think you are onto something here, just read my spec and it says fusion drive 128GB and 2TB. do i need to find the fusion drive and take it out ?

It's possible the flash-side portion of the fusion is faulty and causing further issues with your machine - if possible I would look at removing it. It is at the back of the logicboard however and requires a full teardown

 

[Jon eames]

yep on it now will come back with the outcome, thanks mate thats great

 

[ignatius345]

It's possible the flash-side portion of the fusion is faulty and causing further issues with your machine - if possible I would look at removing it. It is at the back of the logicboard however and requires a full teardown

The flash part of my 2014 iMac 5K's Fusion Drive was dying according to DriveDx, so I opened up the machine and replaced the SATA spinner hard drive with a SATA SSD and left it at that. I didn't dive into replacing that blade SSD and just reformatted it and left it as a weird little 128 GB drive I never used.

If you DO go down the road of replacing the blade SSD, there's a great thread about it here:

A list of successful iMac 27" (2012-2019) SSD upgrades

Here you can find and discuss all the collected knowledge regarding upgrading the HDD, blade SSD and CPU of a 27" iMac 2012-2019, as well as a list of performed upgrades. Here is a list of all 27" iMac models subjected in this thread: Late 2012 - 13.2 - MD095LL/A (2.9Ghz i5-3470S, HDD only /...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[rpmurray]

The flash part of my 2014 iMac 5K's Fusion Drive was dying according to DriveDx, so I opened up the machine and replaced the SATA spinner hard drive with a SATA SSD and left it at that.

Which model SATA SSD did you go with as the replacement?

 

[Jon eames]

The flash part of my 2014 iMac 5K's Fusion Drive was dying according to DriveDx, so I opened up the machine and replaced the SATA spinner hard drive with a SATA SSD and left it at that. I didn't dive into replacing that blade SSD and just reformatted it and left it as a weird little 128 GB drive I never used.

If you DO go down the road of replacing the blade SSD, there's a great thread about it here:

A list of successful iMac 27" (2012-2019) SSD upgrades

Here you can find and discuss all the collected knowledge regarding upgrading the HDD, blade SSD and CPU of a 27" iMac 2012-2019, as well as a list of performed upgrades. Here is a list of all 27" iMac models subjected in this thread: Late 2012 - 13.2 - MD095LL/A (2.9Ghz i5-3470S, HDD only /...

forums.macrumors.com

My blade isn’t coming up at all in disk utility so guessing that I have to take mine out for it to boot. Annoyingly

 

[stradify]

There are good reports on the 1TB WD770 NVME blade as a replacement for your iMac at the link Ignatius365 provided.

I see it's still for sale over on Amazon for $60:

Western Digital WD_BLACK 1TB SN770 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, Up to 5,150 MB/s - WDS100T3X0E

Get ready to game even faster with the WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD. Zoom past load times and get into the action now with a purpose-built gaming drive that boasts up to 40% faster performance and up to 20% more power efficiency at maximum speed over the previous generation(3) (1TB model), plus a PCIe...

www.amazon.com

 

[Jon eames]

Thanks for all the information everyone is was the fusion drive, stripped it down and its back together and working

It's possible the flash-side portion of the fusion is faulty and causing further issues with your machine - if possible I would look at removing it. It is at the back of the logicboard however and requires a full teardown

 

[TwoH]

Thanks for all the information everyone is was the fusion drive, stripped it down and its back together and working

Glad it helped!