Changing an iMac's HDD

Hey everybody and welcome to my very first instructable for you to enjoy! I hope it is of good value to you my dear fellows!

Recently I got me an old iMac 20" (version 7.1) for a reasonable price on eBay and was delighted about how well in shape it was. Alas, the hard disk was a little small for my needs (video editing & color grading) so I decided to exchange the internal 500 GB disk with a new 2000 GB drive.

I am really not that good with (dis)assembling electronics but I didn't find it really hard, you just need to take some time and everything works out just swell :)

WARNING: Changing the hard drive of your iMac will most certainly terminate any warranties you might have on your iMac, so only do this if you already have no warranty anymore or you're such a badass that you just don't care -- hell yeah!

Step 1 What you need

Not much, in fact. When I was examining the case I thought I needed an awful lot of different screwdriver-bits and went to the nearest hardware store to get me a big set. But as was I was working on it I only needed one.

ESSENTIALLY you need
* A new 3.5-inch S-ATA hard drive. I chose the largest one at the time of writing, a Western Digital Caviar Green with 2000 GB capacity.
* A torx 8 (T8) screwdriver you will use A LOT.
* (Something with) a suction cap, the bigger the better.
* A standard screwdriver (slot or Phillips, both will work) to use once or twice.
* A clean table, ideally with a soft pad to work on.
* About 40 minutes of time. It took me 90 mins with talking all the photos and probably would take me 15 to 20 minutes without.

OPTIONALLY have handy
* a marker to mark some connectors.
* cleaning utilities such as a compressed gas duster, Windex & paper towels.
* Thermal compound if you have some around. I had some left from my CPU cooler.
* some music to keep you entertained


Got everything ready? Then let's go!

Comments

[rch]

Excellent instructable, very well done. You sir, are a credit to the community!

I can only imagine how apprehensive you must have been at opening up this remarkable computer.

[strahl]

thank you very much! yes, i was quite shaky the first time i opened up my imac. that's why i photographed every step to be sure on how to put it back together. once i got it back together, i thought i might put the photos to good use and share my instructable with the community. so i hope it helped you and thanks again for your nice comment :)

[DIY Dave]

When I first saw this instructable I thought it said you were trading a 500 GB HDD for a 200 GB HDD.

[strahl]

hehe, i guess i should have put "2 TB" on the pic instead of "2000 GB" then ;)

[dude300]

you were close with the "translation" 2 TB is 2048 GB, but manufactures never give you the exact bits that is said to be there, sorry if you already knew this.

[strahl]

exactly. that's why i chose to write 2000 GB instead of 2 TB. i am really sick of these marketing gigabytes. in the end you have just 1.86 TB or so. nevertheless: good point :)