Hard Drive Failure?

Awesome - did you have any trouble taking apart the iMac? The Service Manual makes it look difficult.

It wasn't too bad. There were a few spots I ran into a little trouble. Having someone to help me made a HUGE difference. Disconnecting the power to the LCD was by far the hardest part. If you have never worked on one of these things you will find out very fast that apple didn't want you taking it apart. After I removed the Display it was quite easy. I needed some double sided tape to reattach the heat sensor onto the hard drive. Besides that it was smooth sailing.

Excellent. What worried me was all the talk in the service manual about cleaning the glass panel and proper handling. Pulling that panel would have given me the willies for sure, considering the force I'd imagine you have to exert upon it. Did you have a hard time finding suction cups, or were you able to use something else you had handy?

That scared me the most at the beginning. I took a suction cup from my friend's GPS and I stuck it right below the iSight to test how much force I would need to pull the glass off. What ended up happening was the glass pulled off much easier than I expected it to. You have to be gentle, but it's not as bad as everything has made it out to be.

I may have damaged the glass, not aesthetically, but it has pegs to center it on the casing for the iMac and I think I broke one of the pegs off when I was removing the glass. It's centered in the case so I'm not worried about it and I kept the peg in case I need to take the glass out again.