Home > Questions

iMac can't boot and Fusion Drive not showing in Disk Utility

My 27-inch iMac from 2014 crashed and is unable to boot up the OS. There is a cut through the middle of the circle. Entered the disk utility but was unable to view the HDD. I formatted a different drive from my MacBook Air using Mac OS Extended (Journaled). installed and started up in recovery and disk utility. The new drive is invisible. Though I'm very sure the MB controller is the problem and the computer is toast, I wanted to double-check that I selected the correct format and didn't forget anything.

Best Answered by

Amanda Wong

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

When the iMac won't boot and there is a circle with a slash through it, the Fusion Drive could be split and won't function as a whole logical drive. Thus, you should fix the split Fusion Drive to boot up from it again.

The steps to fix a Fusion Drive that is not showing or working could erase the drive data, therefore, make sure you have created a backup for the Fusion Drive before the failure, or using third-party data recovery software such as iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get files off the problematic Fusion Drive first.

Then you can proceed to fix the split Fusion Drive without losing data. The specific steps to fix a split Fusion Drive are different depending on the macOS, on macOS Mojave and later, or on macOS High Sierra and earlier.