iMac "black smudges" on screen and changing the HD

[crazycat]

The intro

I have had my iMac for about 4 months, i have been using it as my main desktop since. I have noticed black smudges, kinda like finger prints on the screen that would not go away after cleaning it with a damp cloth. I removed the glass panel and cleaned inside the glass and the problem still remained.

This is not the main issue, i can live it with. I have two iMacs with the same specs, one is in my main home office that i used most of the time while the other is my home that i use not that much. The smudges does annoy me when i watch movies a little bit but its not enough to get me to replace my mac. I was thinking since i used my office iMac more is it possible to switch the hard drives on them so that i get all the info from my office iMac onto my home iMac without complications? Since i dont use the home iMac as much as the office one i can tolerate a few black smudges more and i would have an iMac in the office that looked new.

If i switch the hard drives will it be as if i switch macs and if anyones knows how to fix the black smudges it would be a great help.

Thanks.

 

[GoCubsGo]

In my experience switching the hard drives won't matter but the time machine backups you have won't be seen as "compatible" with your machine. I just know when I was given a new machine I took my old HDD out and put it into the new. the only issue I had was the new machine didn't like the old machine's time machine backup.

Really, you could just try it and see. As for the smudges, I am unsure and that would seriously bug me.

 

[Tyr.]

The black smudges are probably dust buildup between screen and lighting which some users have reported on the early 2009 iMac. One guy has been able to get rid of the effect by dismantling the screen but I wouldn't recommend it.

Switching HD's isn't really practical either. Instead you could use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the HD onto an external and then onto the one you want to keep. Alternatively you could link the 2 with a firewire cable, boot 1 into firewire target mode and then clone the disk that way.