I thought that the Hard Drive in my iMac died I was using it and it just froze up one day, so I had to hold the power button to a manual shutdown. (I'm sure all my Windows user friends are saying "see told you...") And to my dismay when I pressed the power button again it sat there for the longest time. It finally read the boot sector off my USB backup drive this is the one I use. When it booted my internal hard drive was missing so I thought great it's dead. So I took my iMac to the Apple Store in Tulsa and they said it would be $279 for the replacement drive & $85 labor. +tax = $395, so I freaked out a little & decided not to part with my life savings. We went around the mall a bit & let the kids play at the little playground thing they have. I text Brent Albert & told him that it was going to be almost $400 & he told me about ifixit.com, I had never heard of them before. (Their amazing by the way) So I decided i'd give it a shot try to fix it myself, which I have now successfully done. I got a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green drive from Newegg. I got the tools I needed from ifixit so this whole process only cost me about $120 (and the Apple drive was going to be 640GB not 1TB) I pretty much followed the ifixit "iMac Hard Drive Replacement Guide" to the letter and they were right on. It is definitely not for a novice but to the average tech-ie it's a nice challenge.
Here's my proof (along with the fact that my iMac still works)
prepped & ready to go.
remove the RAM door first. (it's just 1 Phillips screw)
It's not as hard to pull off with the suction cups as I thought
There are 12 of these Torx T8 screws the 4 on the bottom are longer than the rest.
I flipped the bezel straight up it's still connected to the mic.
you have to remove some tape to take it apart.
with the bezel off there are 8 Torx T8 screws 4 each side of the LCD.
next disconnect the LCD temp plug.
next remove the 2 Torx T6 screws on the LCD data cable
then disconnect the LCD data cable
pickup the Left side of the LCD fist.
there are 4 cables on the rigth you have to disconnect first 2 bottom 2 top
I labeled mine A,B,C,D
There is a tiny black dot on the front so you can reconnect them properly
next disconnect the HD temp sensor cable
the handle is not too hard but it takes a firm grip
remove the handle & move it to the new drive
move the HD temp sensor bracket to the new drive
also move the posts on the other side of the drive
then place the HD temp senor back in the bracket
the SATA power & data cables are standard
then just reassemble and VOILA!! your done.
For me it was fun & a little nerve racking especially when I dropped a tiny screw down into the rest of the innards, luckily I only had to move a fan to get it out. If you have an iMac and want to give it a storage boost this is definitely the way to go. If you want some help or some pointers let me know. Have fun & don't be scared, but do watch for dust when putting the glass back over the LCD.
Matt
