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Model A1224 / Mid 2007 and Early 2008 / 2, 2.4, or 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo processor

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iMac not reading hard drive

My imac hard drive failed and i had to replace it. Once i replaced it the imac booted up fine and i started an install and it said installation could not be verified so i got a different copy of osx 10.9 but when i booted up the imac it would not read the hard drive. I thought the drive went bad but when i removed it and tested it on another system it worked just fine so i reinstalled it but nothing . Screen just showed a folder with question mark flashing and when i tried to install an os it started to mount and when installing i got a circle with a slash through it.

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Can you give us the make and model of the HD you are trying to put in.

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yes i did format the hard drive. the mac even read it at first

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imac 20" 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, Seagate Barracuda 7200 320gb

model:ST3320620AS

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Your Seagate drive specs: Barracuda ST3320620AS

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How about checking your systems firmware levels to make sure they are up to date. Follow this Apple TN: About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers. Make sure you are at least at the levels listed or newer.

The Seagate Barracuda drive you got is a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) drive so you are using the correct drive for your system. Jump to section 3.2 in the drive manual for more info.

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If i had yosemite running already before my drive crashed you think it may have already updated? Unfortunately i cant seem to get to the mac infoor disc utility because it wont see a drive to install on but ut will recognize the bootable usb

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It makes no difference which drive the system is booted up with. If you can get it to boot up with a USB drive you should be able to at least check the firmware level.

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Its a osx image not an operating system. It reads the usb image to install then it goes to write to the hard drive and i get a circle with a line through it. I guess meaning there is nothing to write the os to.

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OK that explains things. You'll need to redo your USB thumb drive using a friends Mac. Prep it up with a GUID partition map and format it with a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition using Disk Utility. Then using your friends Mac download the OS installer file from the Apps store so you can correctly install the OS onto the USB thumb drive (don't use the image file). Then copy the OS installer onto the thumb drive so you'll have it to install the OS onto your Mac. Booting up under this USB drive you should get the system to come up. Then repeat the process prep your new drive using Disk Utility and then run the OS installer app on the thumb drive. at the end of the install process it will ask you if you want to migrate your User accounts, Apps & Data over if you want you can try recovering your files from the old HD or your backup.

Image files are difficult to use as they require having them selves on a correctly formatted drive to virtualize onto. So you need to have the drive formatted with GUID and have a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition for them to run. I gave up using them as its just easier doing it the way Apple designed things.

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And now the battle starts for i have no one in my circle with a mac in my town..lol would you happen to know of any windows program that could format the usb?

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Did you format the drive first? Format it GUID, give it one partition? Format it Mac OS-X Extended? Did you do a full system installation?

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