The hard drive in my iMac died several months ago. Replacing a hard drive normally wouldn’t be much of a task, but the iMac is a single well-crafted unit with no obvious way to take it apart. I wasn’t really sure where to start, so I just switched to using my laptop as my primary machine and put off making a decision about what to do with it.

About a week ago, I finally decided I wanted to sell it to help pay for the next gadget. Selling a dead iMac would be more difficult and significantly less lucrative than selling a working one with a big new hard drive, so I decided I’d bite the bullet and try the repair myself. I found a guide online for a 20″ iMac and figured it was close enough to get me through it. After picking up some additional tools and a new 1.5TB drive, I got started.

As it turns out, a 24″ iMac (at least this one) was fairly different from the 20″ but not so much so that I couldn’t’ figure things out.

• It was tricky to tell if the front bezel latch was actually released; I’m starting to think this model doesn’t really have any latches like the guide shows. It wasn’t really clear to me if the latches are connected to the front bezel or the rest of the case. If it’s the front bezel, there were no latches.
• Mine doesn’t seem to have an EMI shield, at least not a big one covering the lower components. Individual components seem to have their own shielding.
• The display screws were T9 instead of T10.
• I realized I don’t have any small magnetic screwdrivers. I had to use a magnetic screwdriver bit and a paper clip to retrieve the display screws.
• The inverter cable was not under the display as I expected; it was completely visible once the bezel came off. It could have been disconnected before attempting to lift the screen.
• The placement of the components inside the case was quite a bit different than the guide pics. The hard drive was horizontal across the middle instead of vertically on the left.
• The drive itself is held in place with pins on one side and a compression bracket on the other. It was a really easy transition to the new drive.

Taking everything apart took about 3 hours. I wanted to take my time so I wouldn’t do something stupid. I also made sure to separate each set of screws into a labeled envelope so I wouldn’t’ get anything mixed up. It was probably took another 30 minutes to put it back together once I got the new hard drive inside. Now I’m working on installing OS X so I can make sure I got everything reconnected correctly. Anybody want to buy an iMac?

Update: Everything seems to have gone well except that the iSight camera was not connected correctly on the first try. Luckily it didn’t take much effort to get to it and fix the issue.