iMac hdd recovery

[Jogon]

I have a late 2012 iMac that has a corrupt drive, I'd managed to get the OS up to I think Catalina
but every now and again I'd lose the drive as Catalina would trip and so I had to start again.

In any case, I've took the iMac apart, replaced the drive with an equivalent of the same and I've
since put the adhesive strips round the screen and all is back together and the iMac now has
Mountain Lion on which is I think the OS iorginally came with ... The drive works fine and dandy
and I'll be trying to put it back to Catalina again (or possibly the OS before Catalina as I read
somewhere that there in an inherent problem with Catalina that may have contributed to my
original drives downfall.

My issue is I'd like very much to try and get the data off the corrupt drive, it's been partitioned
several times before it finally gave up....so I was looking for recommendations for a good recovery
program, one that works...It may be that I can't recover the files and thats fine but i'd like to
give it a good go.

The drive is obviously out of the machine so i'll be using a dock ...(any recommendations on that
also?)

Thankyou!

 

[Fishrrman]

1. BACK UP your personal data that's on the drive now.
(looks like you have it on the original drive that's already "out of" the iMac)

2. Boot to INTERNET recovery:
Command-OPTION-R
at boot

3. Open disk utility. VERY IMPORTANT: go to the view menu and choose "show all devices".

4. In the "list on the left", select the TOPMOST item which represents the physical drive inside.

5. ERASE THE DRIVE to APFS with GUID partition format.

6. Quit disk utility and open the OS installer.

7. The installer should offer you Catalina (10.15). Start "clicking through". The iMac will restart one or more times, and the screen may go dark for a few minutes at a time with no other indication of activity. BE PATIENT.

8. When done, you should see the initial setup screen (choose your language). Begin setup. CONNECT YOUR BACKUP if you have one and migrate you data when it asks to do so.

Hmmm...
You may be able to just put the original drive in the dock, and MAYBE setup assistant can "get at it" that way.
If that doesn't work, you'll need to create a NEW account on the iMac, then figure out how to move over your data "piece by piece" later on...

 

[Jogon]

Very Helpful, Thankyou!

I'll get on that over the weekend and give it a go.