Imac 27 HDD failure

Question

Before i pay a crazy £400 + for a replacment HDD can some one tell me if this is true?
The HDD has failed on my 27 (late 2009) imac. Took it to alocal shop and they stated with it having heat sensors etc the drive itself would be a minimum of £400.
Speaking to another friend the HDD is only a Sata II and can be changed with out issue, just have to pus the OS on?
Any one know the best soloution?

Answer 1

Replacing anything inside a newer iMac is not easy for even a seasoned computer tech much less for a newbie or novice computer upgrader.
The costs of installing a new HD is, probably, the labor time to install it.
See if you can get a larger HD installed into your iMac, since this is a good opportunity to be able to increase your iMac's internal storage.
Since this is out of warrant and you need to service this to replace the drive, anyway, consider
Instead of replacing the the old HDD with another that may fail, again, in a couple of years, consider replacing the old drive with the newer Solid State Drives.
They are more expensive per GB, but they will make your iMac run faster, they contain no moving parts whatsoever, and they generate no extra heat.
They have have longer longevity/cycle times when compared to the older mechanical spinning HDs.
Consider purchasing, at least, a 240 GB SSD and if you can afford/justify an even higher price, install a 460 GB SSD.
With the smaller capacity SSDs, you maybe forced into having to spend even more money to purchase an external FireWire hard drive to use as your main mass data storage device.
Installing the largest SSD you can justify or afford may keep you from having to purchase that external drive for a while.
My opinion here.
If the HD in my 2009 iMac fails at some point, I am considering either install a larger HD or installing a smaller capacity SSD.
Good Luck!