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3TB inside a 2010 iMac

H

Hexley

Suspended
Original poster
Jun 10, 2009
1,641
505
Planning to do some "surgery" and swap out a preinstalled HDD with a 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT. Does the iMac or OS X Snow Leopard allow full use of drives larger than 2.2GB?

For those curious the 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS goes for $230.
 
It will work:
attachment.php
from 2010 27" iMac 2.93Ghz Core i7 - 3TB HDD Upgrade Success
found via "imac 3tb hdd"
 
I'd be terrified of doing this unless I had a suitable backup solution. That's a hell of a lot of data that could potentially go missing!
 
Hexley said:
How difficult was it to disassemble your iMac and does it void warranty? Did you need to anything extra outside of swapping out the drive and reformatting?
Click to expand...

It does not void warranty unless you damage something while doing it.
 
You challenge may be with the HDD temperature sensor in the iMac. If things aren't right your fans will run too much. IIRC, there are different sensors for different brands of drives used in the iMac. You might want to upgrade to the same brand already in your iMac. See:


I don't know if this issue also applies to the 2010 iMac referred to by the OP.
 
colmaclean said:
I'd be terrified of doing this unless I had a suitable backup solution. That's a hell of a lot of data that could potentially go missing!
Click to expand...

The data does not go missing just because you switch HDDs, it just isn't accessible as it was before, which can be remedied with an enclosure or dock for 3.5" S-ATA HDDs.

I recently switched the HDD on my 2007 Alu iMac and using iFixIt and a video guide made the switch quite simple. It took me less than an hour including breaks and working with a couch table.
 
Just wish Apple would make upgrading the HDD as easy as upping RAM. Thanks for the tip guys! 3TB must be very nice to have in an all-in-one system.

I expect the top-end 2011 iMac to only have 1.5TB as standard for the i7 model.
 
meh.

tack on a $100 2TB USB 2 drive and move all of your iTunes and iPhoto and movie libraries to it.

if you are anything like me thats nearly 300 gigs of crap right there.

then even a small drive is fine.

and of course theres FW800 and Thunderbolt coming.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
The data does not go missing just because you switch HDDs, it just isn't accessible as it was before, which can be remedied with an enclosure or dock for 3.5" S-ATA HDDs.
Click to expand...

My point was that if something goes wrong with the drive and you have no backup, that's potentially 3TB of data gone...

For me, I'd have an external source like a USB drive or a NAS as my main storage repository (with an appropriate backup solution).
 
colmaclean said:
My point was that if something goes wrong with the drive and you have no backup, that's potentially 3TB of data gone...

For me, I'd have an external source like a USB drive or a NAS as my main storage repository (with an appropriate backup solution).
Click to expand...

You should always have a backup, no matter what size your internal HD is. There are multi-bay enclosures that can hold TBs of data.
 
Read up on the firmware issue with late 2009/2010 iMacs as distinct from being distracted by Seagate/WD/Hitatichi temperature cables.

Apple flash their Seagate 1tb hard drives, for instance, with Apple firmware 'AP25'; if you swap out the Seagate for an apparently identical or similar model, having the right Seagate temperature cable won't help you - the hard drive fan will slowly spin up to full speed, meaning you'll have to open your iMac a second time to employ a workaround. The panel's ribbon cables look relatively fragile to me based on seeing pictures from ifixit's detailed strip down; not something you want to be doing often, perhaps. Re the fan issue, though I haven't been there for a few weeks there are workarounds in the OWC blog link above, if you read through the responses there.

Some people reporting success with cables appear to be putting them in the wrong way, apparently causing a short in the same way that the 'staple' short solution appears to work; in other words locking the HD fan at a constant 1100rpm; no matter how hot their HD runs when under stress, the fan doesn't go above 1100rpm. I noticed this on a huge thread on Apple's discussion forum. If the sometimes mentioned 922-9229 optical cable works, I would be curious to hear from anyone who has made their own with parts from Radio Spares, etc; $19 seems like a lot for a couple of wires and a sensor.
 
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