hey, so my iMac crapped out on me after a glorious 4 years together. the hard drive is physically shot. Now, they want to charge me ~$300 for replacing it ($233 part/$40 labour), but I was talking to my brother and he says it's possible to find a replacement drive for ~$100 and replace it myself.
does anyone have any experience with this or know a good place to find mac hard drives?
my other option is try to kijiji this shit for $500 and take the money, spend it on building a PC.
in that case, can anyone recommend some good parts? my budget looks like $800-1000.
Okaaaaaay, So it's a 2010? any idea what the processor speed was?
It's just a SATA drive any SATA drive however................... the iMac models in 2009, 2010 and 2011 have a thermal senor on them which means you need to by-pass that sensor unless you want the iMac sounding like a jet airplane.
Try any local computer store.
Canadacomputers, Tiger usually have sales on. I bought a new 1Tb last week for $80 but better to go with Western Digital if you have to pick a brand.
Might also suggest buying a SSD drive 120Gb or 240GB.
If your current hard drive is still semi functional, you can try cloning it so you don't have to reinstall the OS,program etc.
here's the stats i got from apple: IMAC (21.5-INCH, MID 2010) Serial No: QP0371E1DNN Hard Drive, 1 TB, SATA, 3.5", 7200 item number: 661-5517 Issue: Hard drive fails smart status test Steps to Reproduce: MRI diagnostics shows failed smart status Proposed Resolution: Replace hard drive, ordering in part for customer
Once you get the drive, you'll have to make a clone of the current hard drive so you won't have to reinstall the OS.
Cloning the drive is a little difficult with your Imac because it only has one drive slot.
So you'll need to buy a usb-sata connector to attach your new drive to the Imac.
Here is one that is Mac compatible & you can use it for an external back up for the existing drive instead of throwing it away.
So connect the new drive to the dock and usb cable to your Imac and follow this guide
Download CarbonCopyCloner -- you can use it free for 30 days.
Once you have the dock, and the new drive, do this:
Put the bare drive into the dock, connect it to the iMac, power-up.
Launch Disk Utility and initialize the new drive. It should now mount on the desktop.
Launch CCC.
On the left, choose your source drive (iMac internal).
On the right, choose your target drive (WD).
Choose to backup everything.
(NOTE: if you use a version of the OS that has a "recovery partition", go to CCC's preferences to choose whether or not to clone the recovery partition first).
Let CCC do it's thing.
When finished, TEST YOUR CLONE by doing this:
- Restart
- As soon as you hear the startup sound, hold down the option key and KEEP HOLDING IT DOWN
- In a few moments, the startup manager will appear
- Use the pointer to select your external drive, then hit return
- The iMac should boot from the external cloned drive
- When you get to the finder, VERIFY that you are booted from the clone by checking "About this Mac" under the Apple menu.
If all looks good, you have created a fully-bootable clone -- an exact copy of your internal drive. That's what you need.
Once the cloning is finished, you will want to remove the old drive and install the new one.
Follow this guide.
that is good stuff, however you should know that my mac is toast already, won't get past the boot up screen. so most of that seems impossible at this time. good to know for future reference, though.
that is good stuff, however you should know that my mac is toast already, won't get past the boot up screen. so most of that seems impossible at this time. good to know for future reference, though.
Kidding aside, just order the hard drive and follow the guide to install it and reinstall your OS with the install disks.
Too bad you couldn't clone though.
This. Without the tool, it's a cunt to get that screen off...
Also, there's many ways you could get data off that drive. Your iMac is worth way more than $500, dead-drive or not. You could put a new drive in there and sell it for $800 at least.
You are dead to me!!