Dead HDD

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I've been asked to repair a friends imac, my first mac repair, the hdd a WD caviar 250gb is dead, can I just buy another WD hdd or does it need to be mac specific? I see there are locating pins on one side of the drive can these be used in a new drive & how can the heat sensor be attached, any advice appreciated.
 

bobtomay

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15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
iFixit.com should become one of your best friends for Mac teardowns.

Never owned or tore down an iMac myself so can't help much.
 
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Thanks for that HarryB, I removed the hdd to put some power thro it and it ran, but was noisy, in my experience that's not good when I replaced it and booted the system the fan was ok, so I guess I got away with it. any idea about the type of drive, or the pins?
 
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15in i7 MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, 500GB HD
What year and model iMac is it? New iMacs what identical drives, older iMacs are OK with pretty much any drive.
 

chscag

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I believe the proprietary sensor cable was first used in the iMac 2010 models on up and not the 2009. I remember reading that with the older iMacs all that had to be done was attach the heat sensor to the new hard drive. No special cable or drive required. The later model iMacs do need special consideration.
 
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Model No on foot is A1224
Description is IMAC20"/2ghz/1gb/250gb/sd/ap/bt
Serial no W8733HFCX85
 

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