Replacing iMac Hard Drive

My existing hard drive is nearing its maximum capacity, and I want to replace it with a newer, larger hard drive. I have a 450MHz Indigo iMac G3 running OS X Tiger. In all other respects, the system is working beautifully. Anyone have suggestions for a compatible HD that I should buy? The larger the drive the better - I have quite a lot of photos and music to load into the new drive from an external HD as well as my current.
As a second question, what's the best way of going about making this transition? What are the steps involved?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
iMac G3 450MHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

The iMac G3 takes any old standard desktop hard drive however you should get a 3.5", 7,200 rpm drive with at least an 8Mb Cache - this will give you a significant speed boost over the original drive.
As already stated you can install up to a 128Gb drive. This is due to the addressing limit on the IDE bus. You can install a larger drive but only the first 128Gb will be accessible. So it's sensible to buy a 120Gb drive to maximize your investment.
You should also purchase an external Firewire hard disk enclosure. Once you've removed the small internal hard drive you'll screw it in to this and then connect it to your FW port and 'clone' your data across using Carbon Copy Cloner. You can then use the old drive as a back-up device.
Alternatively to avoid that hassle and the risks involved with opening the iMac up just buy an External Firewire Hard drive (There are no limits on the size so you could buy a 1.5 Tetrabyte(!) drive to use). Of course this option involves additional cables and power cables. Any new external drive will be far faster than the internal (if connected via FW not USB) and you can install Mac OS on the external if you wish. Check with the Vendor that the external drive or enclosure has an Oxford or bootable chipset.
HTH
mrtotes

Similar Messages

Exactly how do I go from 10.6.1 to Mountain Lion on an Apple replaced iMac hard drive please?

I am having the hard drive (from the recall) on my 2009 intel iMac in an hour in my home via Apple. I have 2 seperate backups on two different external drives. Both have Mountain Lion which I purchased when it came out. Apple specifies the tech will only put the install dvd that came with the iMac in 2009 which has 10.6.1. so will i have to update to 10.6.8 (can I even do this?) which is a Mountain Lion requirement and then firewire transfer from my backup drive? I'm looking (gratefully) for the exact steps. Thanks. dennis

The easiest way to accomplish this, assuming your hard drive is working and it's being replaced as a precaution, is to make a complete bootable clone of the internal hard drive to one of your external drives using a utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Then once the drive has been replaced, just boot your system from the clone and clone it back to the internal drive.
Regards.

Replacement iMac hard drive not an option for "restore from backup"

Got my iMac back from Apple today with a new hard drive following a hardware failure. Unfortunately, I cannot restore from Time Machine as the internal drive is not listed as a choice for "Destination". My Firewire drives are visible but the internal drive is not. It wasn't visible at the initial attempt to restore when the drive was under factor fresh OS installation, it wasn't visible after partitioning the drive, and it wasn't visible after repartioning into a single partition. Any advice or ideas/explanations?

In your "Applications" -> "Utilities" folder you'll find a utility named "Migration Assistant".
Migration Assistant was originally created for Mac owners who buy a new Mac and want to migrate all their data over to the new machine. But it turns out this is exactly what you do when you do a full restore from a Time Machine backup to a new/empty disk.
As a result, Migration Assistant was updated since they came out with Time Machine so that one of the options is "From a Time Machine Backup or other disk".
Choose that option and it should let you do your backup (it'll ask you what you want to restore... user accounts & folders, apps, etc.) You probably just want to have it restore everything.
When you get a new disk you really don't want to run Time Machine interactively to pick the restore. The interactive mode was really designed to help you search for subsets of files to restore (when you're missing just one or two things). You'll be missing a LOT if you try to do a restore that way.
There are some caveats... since you probably already created a user account without doing a restore first, you probably already created an account with the same name that you had before. Migration Assistant wont let you do a full restore overwriting an existing account. You can get around this by creating a temporary account (and flag it as an 'administrative' account), then delete all other accounts on the fresh hard drive. Now when you do the Migration you will have no conflicting accounts and all will go as expected. You can then delete the temporary admin account when you're done.
Time Machine should figure out that the backup does belong to your current machine BUT that the disk being backed up is NOT the original disk. This will cause it to not trust that it can tell what data has changed since the last backup and forces something called a "deep traversal". A deep traversal means it will do a comparison of every file in the backup with the corresponding file on computer to determine if it's the same -- and this takes about as long as an original Time Machine backup (as if you deleted the whole thing and started a new backup) except you wont lose your backup history. Expect the first backup to take many hours to complete. After that initial "deep traversal" you'll get normal backup performance on all subsequent backups.

Replaced iMac Hard Drive, now having trouble getting TM back working

The drive on my iMac failed and was replaced. I used Migration Assistant to get data from my Time Machine backups (on 1TB Time Capsule) to the new drive--no problems! (Time Capsule is connected to my iMac by Ethernet as the wireless part of TC doesn't work anymore.) Now I'm trying to get Time Machine back working with this new drive and would like to continue from the backups I have. However, for several hours all it has done is cycle through Calculating Changes to Cleaning Up multiple times. When I look at the TM prefs, it knows the oldest backup was on Feb 28 before the drive starting failing, so I know it's seeing the backups on the TC. I believe I read that because of the new drive the first backup would be a full backup. However, for several hours all it has done is cycle through Calculating Changes to Cleaning Up multiple times.
I've been reading through some of the discussions and the tips at top of page, but am still not sure what to do. Is there something I can do to get this working from where I left off, or am I just going to have to reformat the TC and start over?
Thanks for any help/suggestions.

On a Time Capsule, deleting a lot of old backups is an excruciatingly slow process.
TM must delete the oldest backup, dismount the sparse bundle, compact the sparse bundle, then mount it again to see if it's made enough room. This can go on (as you see) for a very long time, even via Ethernet.
Since Time Machine will never delete the last remaining backup, it needs twice the space of the data it's backing-up, plus 20% temporarily for workspace. So if your TC isn't 220% the size of the data on your system, the backup will (eventually) fail, and you'll have no choice but to delete the sparse bundle.
On the other hand, if it's considerably larger than that, you can speed the process up a bit by manually deleting several old backups at a time, then compacting the sparse bundle yourself, per #12 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
Click here to download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. That will show how much space it needs, and how much is currently available, so you can determine how to proceed.

How do I authorise my Imac for Itunes after replacing the hard drive?

Dear All,
Apologies, but I am new to forums and understand that the issue of "Authorisation" of Itunes purchases and rentals has been done to death! However, I have tried everything and have exhausted normal research on the Net, there doesnt seem to be standard sollution to my problem. I have replaced the Hard Drive in my Imac 2008 with an SSD which makes the Imac very fast and effcient and completely clean of the usual trash in an old computer. So before renting my first movie, I did the following:..................................
Formatted the hard drive and downloaded and upgraded to OSX to 10.5.8 (the latest I can go on this Imac (I think) Intel 3.06Ghz 2 core and 4GB SSDRAM)
Upgraded Itunes to the latest available
Upgraded Quicktime to the latest available.
I rented a film which will not play and initially I got the "not authorised on this computer" message which kept repeating despite saying it was "waiting"
So I did the usual apple support search and tried the following:..................................
I checked that my apple User ID and password where up to date and that I was purchasing on the right ID
Tried the standard.....Itunes/Store/Authorise this computer - tried unauthorising and then re-authorising No luck
I tried deleting the (/Users/Shared/SC info) file No luck
I tried the Terminal based solution "sumo chmod -R 777 /Shared/Users" fix It didnt work either
I don't get the authorisation warning any more but just get a black screen with a grey horizontal stripe across the middle
I would be very grateful if somene could give me another sollution to try............................
Thank you very much,
Sfithy

Double & triple check that you installed the hard drive correctly.

It seems like I just missed the interval for the hard disk replacement program. I purchased in March 2009 a 24 inch Intel iMac . How much does it cost to have apple support at an Apple Store replace a hard drive?

It seems like I just missed the interval for the hard disk replacement program. I purchased in March 2009 a 24 inch Intel iMac . How much does it cost to have apple support at an Apple Store replace a hard drive?

My hard drive continually has the floating beach ball and will take massive time to fulfill a request. And then will not boot up...so then I have to do a restore and rebuild hard drive from a past saved time machine version. Works for a little bit...then the floating beachball comes more and more...until it will not boot up again. So then I restore from a previous time machine saved version....and again it works for a day or so ... until it happens again. Now it's happening faster and faster...so I think my hard drive is dying.

HT201250 When getting a replacement Seagate hard drive for my Imac through Apple, will they restore my system to it's current state? Or will I have to do it myself though Time Machine? Will Time machine restore all the programs as well?

Apple has determined that certain Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail. These systems were sold between October 2009 and July 2011.
Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge.
Will this replacement program restore my system to its current state after the new drive is installed? If not, will I have to have all my original disks to re-install all the programs on my current computer, or will Time Machine restore them as well?

Most of them will tell you to backup your data.
Time Machine is nice, but unless you are interested in archival backup, Carbon Copy Cloner is a lot easier to recover from:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-1992

How hard is it to replace the hard drive on a 21.5 inch iMac.

My iMac is telling me the hard drive is failing. After a web search, I discovered that you need suction cups to take off the glass to replace the drive. I'm adjust wondering how hard it is to do? I'm Fairly mechanically inclined, so I think I can do it myself. I'd just like to know how tricky it is.

If this is a new 2011 iMac, you can't replace the hard drive except by Apple as they have proprietary software installed on hard drives to monitor the status.
Very likely it's not, as you would be making a warranty call instead of trying to replace it yourself.
However, the info is out there to keep in mind when you buy a new iMac.

I need to replace my late 2006 20" imac hard drive

here's what i have
VIN,IMAC (20-INCH LATE 2006)
running leopard 10.5.8
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier:    iMac5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 3 GB
Bus Speed:    667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM51.0090.B09
SMC Version (system): 1.9f4
Serial Number (system): W8******VUV
WDC WD2500JS-40TGB0:
Capacity: 232.89 GB
Model:    WDC WD2500JS-40TGB0
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing
Volumes: Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 232.57 GB
Available: 106.04 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name:    disk0s2
disk utility shows this:
my mac is still running like a champ but as the pictures above show it's time
i've found a lot of people with the same question i have on this site with answers but most links that people suggest are broken or 2 of the hard drives they've recommended are discontiued
i've got a frys electronics and best buy near by or internet if that's the best way to go about it
what exactly do i need to look for when i'm at a store or online?
what size hard drive, any? 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB
3.5" SATA
7200RPM
does cache matter?
anything else?
people's responses to: Need to replace my late 2006 imac hard drive - what should i be looking for to replace it?
1. You can use any 3.5" Sata drive, WD or Seagate would be good choices.
2. Do not use "green" drives like the WD Blue series. WD Black are fine as are Seagates.
3. The 2T green will work fine in the Intel iMac's. I always suggest using the quieter and cooler running Blue's or Green's in the iMac's.
4. Personally I have upgraded the Hard Drive in several Early Core Duo's using both 320GB and 500GB WD Cavair Blue's.
5. WD Caviar Blue or WD Caviar Green, they run cooler and quieter than the WD Black or Seagate's.
6. I'm very happy with the WD Caviar Blue that replaced my factory installed 160GB Seagate HD a few months ago.
i've found some good DIY tutorials for install
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShY8zuT-wPg&feature=player_embedded
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+20-Inch+EMC+2105+and+2118+Hard+Drive+Repl acement/1092/1
any help will be appreciated,
sean k
<Edited by Host>

thanks for the quick reply kappy,
i plan to purchase a new imac when they are actually shipped, in stores, and i know all my handicap assisted devises will work on it
you say "Do not buy a drive designed for SATA 3 6 Gb/s interfaces as some may not work on the controller in your iMac"
at frys it breaks the groups like this:
Interface (32)
SATA/300 (17)
SATA/600 (9)
PATA/100 (6)
could you take a look at this link to frys and recommend a hard drive
http://www.frys.com/search?cat=-69564&pType=pDisplay&fq=100413%203.5-100415%2072 00
or bestbuy internal hard drives
like you said it's got a limited life and just need something to get by till the new imacs arrive

I want to replace the hard drive on my IMac but want to know how to transfer from the time machine external hard drive to the replacement drive?

I have reached capacity on my IMac hard drive. It is a 250 GB drive. I have an external drive backing up using the time machine utility. My question is once I replace the HD on the IMac, how do I load the new drive with the back up from the external drive?

So many possibilities.
I am not an expert, but I have learned this much is doable:
Buy an external enclosure to re-use you old drive.
Buy a new external drive at least as large as as your intended new internal drive. Make it self-powered.
Download CarbonCopyClone (free download, relatively small).
Make a CCC clone of the original disk on the new external disk
Install the original disk in the external enclosure.
Install the new disk in the main system.
Boot from that new external drive that has the carbon copy clone. CCC will be installed on it and it will be bootable.
Use CCC on the external to directly clone back to new drive you install in the main system (the "bootable" flag will copy).
NOTE THAT AT NO TIME IS YOUR ORIGINAL DISK BEING OVERWRITTEN IN THIS PROCESS. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK AND REINSTALL IT.
Step 1 makes your old disk resuable as a spare copy for "anything".
Step 2 gives you something to use as CCC for after the recovery process.
Step 3 gets the software needed for cloning
Step 4 makes a bootable saved copy of your current system
Step 5 shifts your old disk to a usable place
Step 6 positions your new disk
Step 7 boots your existing install of OSX (just from a different drive)
Step 8 puts your original install on your new disk.
Now you have a bootable larger hard drive, and a bootable copy on a drive large enough to save all you can store on your new internal drive. And you have your old disk to use for "anything".
Now you have TM backup in one place, and CCC backup in another.
Two backups is better than one, and one of your backups is bootable in case of system failure.

Imac hard drive replacement

Incredibly my rarely used 2011 Imac Hard Drive is toast. I saw they have a replacement program but even though it is way too soon for a hard drive OF QUALITY to be going out so soon as mine - mine is not included in the replacement program.
Which I have a problem with - how odd it is that they had enough trouble with these computers/hard drives to do a replacement program but mine which did the same thing, expired way too soon isn't covered. I've not had use of the computer for 4 months while I tried to fix the problem so it lasted a little over a year.
Anyway I need to know what to do to try to replace it myself as i haven't the funds to take it to Apple for repair. Plus, Apple Computers and me are history I will never buy another after spending over $1200 for a computer that's nothing more than a very large paperweight right now.
How do I know what size and all that?
I may not be able to afford even that so more than likely this is going to be a very nice looking worthless computer going to the landfill.

I Am leaning more toward Kappy's comments, based on your attitude and comments, but I will ask some questions and add some useful comments as I am in a somewhat charitable mood.
Do you still have AppleCare on this iMac?
From your rather blunt comments I assume no, but have to ask anyhow.
This is why I recommend purchasing and registering for 3- year extended AppleCare.
Because of the nature of the newer iMac designs, hardware failure seems more likely or commonplace occurrence. I believe it's more of a excessive heat related issue than anything else despite what Apple has qualified as "normal" operating temps for these iMac models.
Check out the iFixit home site and search for iMac disassembly or tear/take down. Or search for iMac hard drive replacement on the site.
Another option is for you to purchase an external FireWire 400/800 drive as your new boot drive.
Running your iMac from a FW800 drive will be about as fast as running it from the iMac's Internal drive.
If you can afford it get as large a drive as you can afford.
And just for your info, while hard drives can last for years without issue they will go bad, eventually.
Some drives crash and burn faster than others. Especiallly true of the notebook style drives that Apple installs into the newer design iMac. With hard drives, the question is not if they will fail, but when will they fail.
If you had all of your data backed up to an extra, external drive or optical discs to begin with, you wouldn't be so upset about your internal drive dying as your data still would've been intact on another drive or discs in the first place.
I Always advocate for having some sort of backup strategy for your important data in the event of hardware or hard drive storage failure.

I replaced my hard drive and I backed up my files on an external hard drive but when I reloaded my iweb to my imac none of my files were on it so I can't make changes to my Published web site have I lost my files what can I do

I replaced my hard drive and I backed up my files on an external hard drive but when I reloaded my iweb to my imac none of my files were on it so I can't make changes to my Published web site have I lost my files what can I do

By default iWeb keeps its data in (user)/Library/Application Support/iWeb in a file named Domain. Without this file you cannot proceed (other than by recreating the site from scratch using the published version as a reference) so you need to locate it on the original disk.
To confuse matters, Apple have hidden the user’s Library folder in Lion and Mountain Lion to casual viewers, in an attempt to stop new Mac users messing their machines up. To access it, in the Finder go to the ‘Go’ menu and hold down the Option (Alt) key; the Library folder will appear as a choice.

I had to replace my hard drive in my iMac iSight and now I need to load an os all I have is my windows laptop any help?

I just had to replace the hard drive on my iMac iSight G5 and now I have no os and have no idea where my restore discs are i was wondering if I purchased an os from apple if there is a way I can load it onto dvd then load my iMac

You can contact Apple at 800-767-2775, give them your serial number (under the foot of your iMac) and they will, for a small fee, send you the install disc. Then buy a black retail OS from Apple or eBay.

Should I replace failed hard drive in imac 4,1 or run from external or mac mini?

My hard drive failed in my iMac 4,1 (early 2006 intel). I am running from an external drive, but slow. Should I replace the hard drive ($300 at Apple), purchase a better external to run from or a mac mini? I'm trying to determine if it makes sense to invest further in this iMac since its 5 yrs old already. Can any one offer some insight/opinion?

Hi moreenie
Your profile does not indicate your geographic location, but there are Authorize Apple Service Providers that can and will do the work for considerably less than your local Apple Store.
http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service/
Call around, at less than $200 to replace the Hard Drive, it makes a little more sense to fix and use it for another year or two...
I replace the Hard Drive in my Early 2006 a couple of years ago not because it died, but because it became to small.
Sorry I can't honestly help you decide, because I'm torn and can't decide for myself. Not liking the Glossy iMac's, I've also been toying with the idea of either a Mac-Mini or used Mac Pro? My biggest problem with the Mac-Mini is, that by the time you do a few upgrades it cost as much as a base iMac.
Dennis

Is it worthwhile to replace the hard drive in a 24" 2008 dual core intel iMac?

Is it worthwhile to replace the hard drive in a 24" 2008 dual core Intel iMac?

If you still have a use for it it's definately worth it. You can upgrade the ram to a maximum of 6GB and run the current Yosemite OS. Hard drives are cheap and it's not that difficult, here's a step by step guide https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+24-Inch+EMC+2134+and+2211+Hard+Drive+Rep lacement/8968

Replacing iMac Hard Drive

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