iMac with Accessible Hard Drive

What's the probability of Apple putting out an iMac with an accessible hard drive? I would love to be able to swap out my hard drive without having to remove the screen. While I'm not thrilled by the idea of Apple getting rid of the optical drive, if this area could be used for a replaceable hard drive (not unlike the method used on a PS3, actually), it would be worth the loss of a built in DVD player (in my opinion).

Probably very slim to none chance of that happening.

Not a rumor or report. Thread move here to the Desktops forum.

MarkOlsen said:

What's the probability of Apple putting out an iMac with an accessible hard drive? I would love to be able to swap out my hard drive without having to remove the screen.

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Go back about 5-7 years. Flat panel iMac HD's back then could be swapped without removing the display!

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Go back about 5-7 years. Flat panel iMac HD's back then could be swapped without removing the display!

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I'd think that being able to swap hard drive would now be relevant than ever: we're in that transitional phase between HDD and SSD, so it makes a lot of sense that someone would buy an iMac with just an HDD (because SSDs are still too small and too expensive to make for a good main hard drive), and then replace the HDD with an SSD in a year or two.

I just don't see a 256GB hard drive being worth an extra $500 (which is what I think Apple was charging the last time I looked); best to wait until SSDs offer something more reasonable at a more reasonable price. Also, HDDs do wear out and it would nice to not be forced to completely dissemble a computer just in order to replace a hard drive.

If I had my preference (not that it matters), I'd say put in two drives: one very small SSD for booting which could be buried anywhere in the machine, and an accessible bay for an additional HDD/SSD.