Early 2009 iMac 24" Hard Drive is Dying!

[archangel5]

My hard drive on my March 2009 Intel iMac 24" is dying! I do not fall into the replacement period....so I was wondering....

What does an Apple Store charge to replace??
(major task to lug into Manhattan so need to know before)

Saw on iFixit the steps to do it yourself...is that worth the risk? is it do-able and a big savings to do so?

Should I just run my iMac through an external Hard Drive...until i have money to buy new iMac?

Advice and Answers ....pleeeeease.

Thanks

 

[justperry]

It's not that hard but you need patience, take it slow and preferably do it with two persons.
Apple will probably charge you several 100's for it, if you buy the HD yourself it will cost you under $100 with suction caps, if you don't have tools you need to purchase these as well, still most likely not more than $100.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Should I just run my iMac through an external Hard Drive...until i have money to buy new iMac?"

This is a very workable solution.

The hard drive may be dying, or perhaps it just needs a re-initialization and re-installation of software.

In any case, you need to get some kind of external drive setup and YOU NEED TO GET IT NOW -- before you lose any data.

Since you don't have USB3 on a 2009 iMac, but DO have firewire 800, I'd suggest you look for either an external drive that has firewire 800. It could be either 3.5" or 2.5".

You might consider a 2.5" external enclosure with BOTH USB3 and firewire 800, and then find an SSD (solid state drive) to go into it. The firewire 800 will serve you now, and the USB3 will be there for the time when you eventually move to another Mac.

Once you have your external drive ready, use CarbonCopyCloner to "clone" the contents of your internal drive to the external one. You can now boot from the external and it will be exactly as was your internal.

A possible repair strategy for the internal (assuming software corruption, not hardware failure):
- Create an external cloned backup
- Boot from the external backup
- Use Disk Utility to re-initialize and test the internal drive
- Use CarbonCopyCloner to "re-clone" from the backup BACK TO the internal drive.

You didn't say what version of the system you're using.
If it's Lion or earlier, you can still use the FREE version of CarbonCopyCloner (3.4.7), which is available here:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html