iMac Early 2008 Broken - Extracting the hard drive

[Jonny Cake]

Hi,

My iMac 24" from early 2008 just died

Apple won't even look at it because it's "vintage", so I took it to another repair shop and they say it's the video card. I found a replacement card on Ebay for about $350, but with installation and shipping I'm not sure it's worth it to repair.

Unfortunately I don't have exported backups from some applications (iPhoto albums, iTunes library, accounting data, ...). But I'd like to know, if I remove the hard drive from the broken machine and mount it in an external enclosure, can I boot from this hard drive on another macbook or iMac? Basically, I want to know if I can use it to run those apps and export my data while running the installed applications from the old machine.

Thanks!

 

[nrubenstein]

Hi,

My iMac 24" from early 2008 just died

Apple won't even look at it because it's "vintage", so I took it to another repair shop and they say it's the video card. I found a replacement card on Ebay for about $350, but with installation and shipping I'm not sure it's worth it to repair.

Unfortunately I don't have exported backups from some applications (iPhoto albums, iTunes library, accounting data, ...). But I'd like to know, if I remove the hard drive from the broken machine and mount it in an external enclosure, can I boot from this hard drive on another macbook or iMac? Basically, I want to know if I can use it to run those apps and export my data while running the installed applications from the old machine.

Thanks!

Yes.

 

[midorix]

OR...if you're somewhat handy and willing to take some risks, you can bake your graphic card to see if that will solve the problem. My 2007 iMac had graphic card issue and baking the card solved it.

http://macman860.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/baking-a-graphics-card/

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+24-Inch+EMC+2267+Graphics+Card+Replacement/13765

 

[Brian Y]

If you're throwing it out anyway, you might as well try baking it. Or, as an alternative, you could try something like this for $100:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/APPLE-IMAC-...067?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ad796d04b