What to do with a bricked iMac (2013) - accidentally deleted startup disk 11 January at 4:38PM in Techie Stuff 9 replies 254 views

beckstar1975

I've stupidly deleted the start up disk so now I get stuck in a loop when trying to reinstall it as there's no available disk showing to save it to.

I was only clearing it down to sell anyway, can anyone advise on the best way to dispose of it? Are there charities that would take something like this? or if I took it to the tip would my data be safe (ie inaccessible)?

Sorry if the questions sound silly - I genuinely don't know what I've done and if it's recoverable from!

GDB2222

Can you remove the hard disk?

MikeJXE

I did that some time ago, took it to an Apple Store and they recovered it, took a few hours but good as new, it was a 2017 MacBook Pro 

facade

Try the apple support community, if your answer isn't there already, you can post the question.

https://discussions.apple.com/welcome

Apple have declared the 2013 obsolete, which means they won't touch it for repair.

They still seem to fetch £100 ish on eBay when working though so it is worth a few hours of your spare time.

Otherwise, to be sure no-one gets your data when you can't run a sanitizer take the hard disk out dismantle it and destroy the platters, then take the mac to the tip recycling centre, which is a shame if it was working.

DullGreyGuy

facade said:

They still seem to fetch £100 ish on eBay when working though so it is worth a few hours of your spare time.

Mine sold for circa £75 in non-working condition and with no HDD... was an older model but was also about 18 months ago

MSE_James

Might be worth considering installing ChromeOS Flex (free OS from Google) - I've successfully given several obsolete Macs a new lease of life, including iMacs more than a decade old.

gefnew

You could try this.
How to reinstall macOS – Apple Support (UK)

beckstar1975

I am going to try the Chrome OS suggestion, thanks 

MikeJXE

beckstar1975 said:

I am going to try the Chrome OS suggestion, thanks 

To do that you must still have internet connection. I lost everything with mine so you have a way back I didn't 

Bonhomie

beckstar1975 said:

I've stupidly deleted the start up disk so now I get stuck in a loop when trying to reinstall it as there's no available disk showing to save it to.

I was only clearing it down to sell anyway, can anyone advise on the best way to dispose of it? Are there charities that would take something like this? or if I took it to the tip would my data be safe (ie inaccessible)?

Sorry if the questions sound silly - I genuinely don't know what I've done and if it's recoverable from!

No drama. You can download the OS and create bootable installation media. It's within the link supplied earlier by gefnew.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211683
https://www.macworld.com/article/671308/how-to-create-a-bootable-usb-macos-installer.html