Use Mid-2012 mbp HDD in a 2009 iMac?

[STC1709]

As the title states, i have a 2009 early iMac 24in that I'm going to be selling soon. I also have a mid 2012 non rentina macbook pro. Few months ago I got the mbp and i swapped out the HDD for an SSD. I plan to sell the iMac that i have but i dont want to sell it with the HDD that is in there currently. Theres 8 years of use on it with so much stuff that has been saved and deleted and what not. I'm looking to take the HDD that i took out of my mbp and swap it with the HDD that is in my iMac before selling it.

My question is, is the HDD from the mid 2012 mbp compatible with a early 2009 iMac?

Standard HDD:

2009 iMac - 640GB HDD 7200rpm
2012 mid 2012 mbp - 500GB HDD 5400rpm

That was pulled from everymac.com but I'm not sure on connections if it will work with the motherboard or not.

Thanks!

 

[chrfr]

As the title states, i have a 2009 early iMac 24in that I'm going to be selling soon. I also have a mid 2012 non rentina macbook pro. Few months ago I got the mbp and i swapped out the HDD for an SSD. I plan to sell the iMac that i have but i dont want to sell it with the HDD that is in there currently. Theres 8 years of use on it with so much stuff that has been saved and deleted and what not. I'm looking to take the HDD that i took out of my mbp and swap it with the HDD that is in my iMac before selling it.

My question is, is the HDD from the mid 2012 mbp compatible with a early 2009 iMac?

Standard HDD:

2009 iMac - 640GB HDD 7200rpm
2012 mid 2012 mbp - 500GB HDD 5400rpm

That was pulled from everymac.com but I'm not sure on connections if it will work with the motherboard or not.

Thanks!

iMacs use 3.5" disks while Mac portables use 2.5" disks. Changing the disk in the iMac is complex enough that I wouldn't bother. Just zero out the drive using Disk Utility and there is no need to worry about what you might have once saved on it.

 

[ZapNZs]

You would need one of these
https://www.amazon.com/NewerTech-Ad...35226&sr=1-1&keywords=imac+2.5+to+3.5+adapter

And a good bit of time

 

[chipchen]

Yea, you can technically do it... but you'd be making a 2009 iMac even slower, not to mention the time and complexities of doing the physical swap. You're better off getting an enclosure for your MacBook Pro hard drive, cloning the iMac drive to it, then wiping the iMac drive clean to do a fresh install.

 

[STC1709]

iMacs use 3.5" disks while Mac portables use 2.5" disks. Changing the disk in the iMac is complex enough that I wouldn't bother. Just zero out the drive using Disk Utility and there is no need to worry about what you might have once saved on it.

Gotcha makes sense. Are you sure just wiping the drive clean and doing a clean install will be alright? I thought people can still get deleted data off of a drive even if its been wiped.

You would need one of these
https://www.amazon.com/NewerTech-Ad...35226&sr=1-1&keywords=imac+2.5+to+3.5+adapter

And a good bit of time

Thanks! Time is right haha

Yea, you can technically do it... but you'd be making a 2009 iMac even slower, not to mention the time and complexities of doing the physical swap. You're better off getting an enclosure for your MacBook Pro hard drive, cloning the iMac drive to it, then wiping the iMac drive clean to do a fresh install.

good points here too

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Gotcha makes sense. Are you sure just wiping the drive clean and doing a clean install will be alright? I thought people can still get deleted data off of a drive even if its been wiped.

Use disk utility and use secure erase with the maximum number of passes it should make it impossible to piece together what was on there and unless you are some high level government or business official illegally using your own computer for work information no one would ever bother trying its that simple. Their are far easier, quicker and cheaper ways to get peoples information trying to rebuild a securely erased disk is not one of them.

 

[chrfr]

Gotcha makes sense. Are you sure just wiping the drive clean and doing a clean install will be alright? I thought people can still get deleted data off of a drive even if its been wiped.

It's effectively impossible to retrieve data once you've written zeroes to the disk. There's no reason to use the "maximum" setting in Disk Utility- it will take an extremely long time and doesn't significantly improve security over just writing zeroes once to the disk.