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All-in-one desktop computers from Apple. iMacs were equipped with Intel processors from 2006-2021.

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My iMac 2009 won't recognize the internal hard drive

I got the question mark of death so I removed the hard drive from the iMac and installed it into a SATA to USB enclosure and tried to connect it to my MacBook Pro. The MacBook can't detect the hard drive either. The disc is definitely spinning. I can hear it. I'm wondering if there might be something wrong with the little circuit board on the outside of the hard drive case. But the fact that the disk isn't dead makes me want to believe I can still get this data off the drive without spending a grand for data recovery. My local repair guy says he has some software that will do a "deep scan" and takes like 8 hours. I just don't understand how that's possible unless the drive can be detected in the first place. It's a 1TB 3.5" hitachi drive that came standard in the iMacs.

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If you can't see the drive you can't fix it. I use TechTool Pro when Disk Utilities won't see it. Others use Drive Genius.

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Thank you. I guess what I'm asking is whether anyone knows an alternate method to accessing the hard drive. Like I said, I can hear it spinning so it powers up. Somehow my MacBook just isn't reading it. Are there any windows utilities that would allow me to try to scan the drive even though it's Mac formatted?

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I wouldn't get it anywhere near a windows machine.

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You can try running SpinRite on it, hooked up to a PC. You will need to hook it up as a SATA drive, and boot the PC from a Spinrite CD/DVD. It is worth a try, but more than likely, the drive controller/electronics are bad. If so, the only way to get the data off the drive is to find another drive of the same model, and swap the circuit boards. This is essentially what the data recovery companies do s a first step.

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james.c.pollard will be eternally grateful.
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