Upgrade and S.M.A.R.T errors

[Jogon]

Issue is this,
iMac i7 - Mid 2010 - Hdd replaced under warranty some years ago, went from Seagate to Samsung

Machine has been fine until recently when the HDD started getting slower, ran disk utility and it usually behaved itself and on we went.

Until last week where it asked me for an admin name and pw as opposed to the usual pw....I thought I had the admin name but nothing would do....

In the end and after scouring the net I came to the conclusion that I'd have to reinstall the OS...I hadn't backed up for ages so it was a bit of a hit but nothing that was too bothersome.

Into recovery mode, disk utility and the installing the OS again and thats where I came further stuck, everytime I went to install it it gave me the icon of the HDD but when clicked it told me I had S.M.A.R.T errors and to back everything up and that was it, it seemed to stall at that point....

So, I created a partition and faffed about a little and eventually I was able to find a backup hard drive that had a backup from my daugthers MacBook Air Yosemite OS and when going back into recovery mode and managed to install the Yosemite back-up to my NEWLY partitioned HDD and here I am now....*waves*

It has given me limited functionality and I can at least surf/download documents and do some amount of work on the mac but it has limited capabilities, doesn' quite see the magic keyboard and app store wont see my ow purchases but instead a limited amount that my daugther obviously downloaded onto her Macbook Air

I have since tried to install an update, High Sierra and it downloads to my partitioned drive and the partition I'm working off but when I go to install it it brings up the same original error with the failing drive...

Is there any way round this or am I stuck forever more (or at least until I can get round to having the hard drive replaced.....

Any help/ advice would be great, yes I know the machine is old but it's been fantastic and it would be a shame to have to give up on it right now ....

Thankyou!

 

[DeltaMac]

If the hard drive is reporting SMART errors, and the install won't continue because of that - then you may find out there's nothing worth doing that doesn't involve replacing the hard drive.
(S.M.A.R.T. errors don't suddenly go away, or fix themselves - they get worse as time goes on)
It's not a particularly difficult task to replace the drive yourself.
You can check out the steps here - https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2390+Hard+Drive+Replacement/8919
That even offers to sell you the tools you might need for the task.
If that appears beyond your skills, it still shows the steps that someone else can follow (maybe someone you know can help out, too)
IMHO, that iMac (27-inch) remains a useful tool, and you would even have the option of upgrading to an SSD, replacing the old hard drive with something that will noticeably improve the speed of virtually everything you do on that old computer!

 

[Jogon]

Thanks for the input, I agree it's a uselful item, only problem I encountered on it other than the current one is that I was unable to upgrade to Mohave and presumably the same for the upcoming Catalina, Apple seem to class older machines as 'junk' after a not so reasonable amount of time and so their OS's don't appear to cater for them....

But thats that, this is now and I would still like to try and get High Sierra on.....since partitioning the drive and managing to get the macbook air update on it there hasn't been a problem, it loads quickly works as it should, fan doesn't kick in etc etc.......Im wondering if it's possible that the smart issue can be mapped out...

 

[DeltaMac]

What is a "Macbook air update", and how does that apply to your iMac?

Yes, a 2010 iMac is limited to High Sierra. Apple, at some point, drops OS support for older hardware.
I wouldn't say Apple classes older machines as "junk", but simply drops support for older hardware. Apple has always done this at more or less 7 years from first release of Mac models.
Keep in mind that they don't suddenly stop working, just no updates for the system, and the 7 year point is usually also beyond the time that Apple stops supplying security updates for older systems.

I have seen a couple of drives that start showing that SMART failure during installs. I think I can say that the SMART system maps out bad sectors, etc, and the SMART error that YOU see, disallowing the install, probably means that there's no more mapping out of bad blocks - there's no spares when that error appears. That's one of the tasks that SMART tool does.
I think all you can try is to reformat that hard drive, and see if that clears the SMART error, allowing a reinstall of High Sierra.

 

[Jogon]

I didn't have any time machine backups for the iMac, all I could find was a Macbook Air backup on a drive that the iMac would see and so enable me to install the macbook air update that was on, onto the partitioned drive.

Formatting I think I tried 'erase' via Disk Utility...which it allows me to do, doesn't report any errors...but then Im guessing as the 2010 iMac doesn't see 'S.M.A.R.T drives then it can't see it.

 

[DeltaMac]

The iMac will scan the SMART.
Older systems, such as the Snow Leopard that your iMac originally shipped with, probably won't offer results for SMART, unless it is a failure.
Newer systems, like your High Sierra, will scan for SMART errors, and not only report the errors, will prevent using the drive until you make some kind of corrective action, either a reformat/erase (assuming that clears the error, which would be doubtful), or swapping out that storage device.