Replace Harddisk

[Jakobnorris]

Hey guys, I have an iMac 21 inch 2010 model, the recently stopped working, when I turn it on i can hear the welcoming sound but theres a total black screen, I figured it could be the LogicBoard or the Graphic card thats the issue here, but repalcing those things would be extremely complicated and also a bit exspensive.

So i had another idea, which I know sound crazy, but i was thinking about buying the same model from someone on Ebay I got one in sight for only 200 dollars. Then take the Harddisk and replace it on the ''new'' iMac, now my qestion is: would it be possible to repalce it, and then have all the stuff on the new iMac, including all the users etc? thats what im worried about, so if thats not possible i have to go to a specialist, who can move all my stuff down to a USB?

Thanks.

 

[czacha]

With iFixit and youtube videos it is easy to disassemble an iMac .. I did it few times with my old 2011 27''.

 

[Jakobnorris]

Yeah I know. Thats not going to be the problem. But I was just wondering if taking the harddisk from my current iMac that has all the stuff on it and the different users etc. Replace that into the ''new'' iMac im gonna get, would the new imac get all my stuff plus the different users?

 

[einbahnstrasse]

All your stuff and accounts should work fine. There are a few possible problems but if you are using fairly modern OS (old drive) it should not be a problem

 

[Jakobnorris]

Thanks mate. Im not ready to get a new iMac yet, im looking at the iMac Pro for my work, a bit overkill maybe, but its really good looking. So go out and buy an old imac and use my current harddisk in the meantime seems like a good solution for now.

 

[jlseattle]

The concern I would have is trying to understand if it isn't the hard drive that is the problem in the first place. Do you have the restore disk or can you try booting into restore and seeing if that is the problem. It might be a moot point to tear out the hard drive (risk ruining something) and then be down two computers. My vote is this. Buy the $200 imac. Buy and external hard drive case with connection cables and then before tearing down the second computer verify that the computer works with the hard drive.

The other option is admitting that at some point you invest so much time and money resurrecting a computer that is just really dead. What I did is go down the route of buying a second mac pro to part out to my first but in the end it wasn't worth it (things were failing on my 2008 mac pro). So I bought a cheap macbook air to serve while I waited to get my iMac.

 

[b06tmm]

Do you have another Mac in the house? If so, you can boot into target disk mode and check the hard drives in the problem machine. This is how I determined I had a video card issue in my mid-2011 iMac. I was was able to view and copy the contents of both drives in the iMac before I attempted to revive the video card.