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You think replacing a bad hard disk is easy ...

M

Michael CM1

macrumors 603
Original poster
Feb 4, 2008
5,682
277
... until buy a Western Digital drive, open up your iMac and remember all that stuff you read two years ago about the thermal sensor cable. And then you find the stupid plug is completely different from that port on a Western Digital.

So your only option is to find some replacement cable -- which I couldn't really find when I searched -- or to go back to the original 500GB drive down from 2TB. Then you get to figure out how you're going to restore your Time Machine backup when you have about 800GB of stuff on it.

So in other words my iMac being on the fritz continues. Couldn't really restore everything I needed with the old hard drive in its 2013 state, so I reformatted and will pull off what I can from the Time Machine.

This sucks. Don't ever buy another machine with an internal hard disk, folks -- not that Apple allows that any more!
 
Michael CM1 said:
... until buy a Western Digital drive, open up your iMac and remember all that stuff you read two years ago about the thermal sensor cable. And then you find the stupid plug is completely different from that port on a Western Digital.

So your only option is to find some replacement cable -- which I couldn't really find when I searched -- or to go back to the original 500GB drive down from 2TB. Then you get to figure out how you're going to restore your Time Machine backup when you have about 800GB of stuff on it.

So in other words my iMac being on the fritz continues. Couldn't really restore everything I needed with the old hard drive in its 2013 state, so I reformatted and will pull off what I can from the Time Machine.

This sucks. Don't ever buy another machine with an internal hard disk, folks -- not that Apple allows that any more!
Click to expand...

You mean, next time, just buy an iMac with an SSD built in :)
 
Just put the drive in and manually control the fans till you get the correct cable
 
yjchua95 said:
You mean, next time, just buy an iMac with an SSD built in :)
Click to expand...

See my sig. Last one I bought was a MacBook Air. Even with the lower-power CPU on this thing, quite often processes I run for ripping my BD discs are faster because I'm using an SSD. It's freaking amazing.

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Gav2k said:
Just put the drive in and manually control the fans till you get the correct cable
Click to expand...

I wasn't sure if that was a thing I could do. The info on alternatives was a little wonky for me, so I just went to the original hard drive and have I think figured out how to make the setup work.

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illusionx said:
OWC makes a cable for this upgrade. They wrote a blog about it.

http://blog.macsales.com/27903-owc-...-upgrade-compatible-with-capacities-up-to-6tb
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I saw that. Problem is the cable costs almost as much as the drive. I just put in the original drive, reformatted, migrated as much data as I could. I now have figured out how to move various folders from a TM backup, so I've got a ton of music headed to my new 4TB NAS. That would've worked, but I was tired of dealing with the problem and I'm just hoping I can get a refund since all I did with the drive was take it out of the box/bag, put some screws in it and touch it.
 
I'm assuming you have a 2010/2011? Several options:

- Buy an ODD sensor cable and use that in place of the HDD sensor. Edit: Saw your sig, I believe 922-9624 is the right one for your machine, but double check ($15 at newegg).

- Use a software app to control the fans.

- Short the thermal pins. This will make the iMac think the temps are good. Keep an eye on the temps though.
 
I thought a out taking it to an AASP nearby, but the old drive should work. I don't use it as much now than I have an Air, and I just need it for media serving.
 
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