Replacing hard drive in G4 iMac

[Clark Nova]

At the college that I work at we have a G4 iMac that has a dead hard drive. It clicks when you turn it on and after a while you get a folder with a flashing question mark which I am told means that the computer cannot read the drive properly. Lucky me, I have been tasked with replacing the hard drive and afterwards installing OS X 10.4 as we seem to have lost our original OS disc and have ordered the latest and I am told greatest version so far.

I've never dismantled a Mac before, does anybody have a good guide? If I put a hard drive in that has a different OS on there currently will the discs allow me to format the drive if it has something else on it already in a different file system such as reiserFS or NTFS? Any other things I need to know before I dive in with the screwdriver?

Thanks.

 

[Doug]

I've used iFixit's guides, but they don't have any for the iMac. This looks like the next best thing.

As for the hard drive, Disk Utility, which you can run from the OS X installation DVD, will let you format the drive and set it up however you'd like.

 

[Clark Nova]

Great stuff, thanks. Do you know if Macs are fussy about the RAM that you install? Can I install whatever we have lying around as an upgrade (may as well seeing as it's going to be opened up) or is it better to user a particular brand and speed?

Thanks again

 

[slinxy]

If you PM the serial number of the machine I can get you the service manual - I have access to apple gsx system; that we (apple service repairers) use to service/upgrade and check history of macs.

 

[Clark Nova]

I think PMs are disabled on this forum, can I email it to you?

 

[slinxy]

there you go
email: edited out...

please be quick as I going to edit out my email.

 

[Clark Nova]

Ok, sending it now....


**edit**

Sent, thanks again.

 

[slinxy]

Check your inbox as I've sent it now.

 

[Clark Nova]

Received and understood.

Muchos gracias

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Be sure to have some Arctic Silver handy when you go to put it back together. The weird CPU cooler design requires new TIM if you take the case apart. Half the time I work on one of those I forget the TIM and I end up having to stop halfway through the job to go get it.

 

[slinxy]

Received and understood.

Muchos gracias

np! better than the bloke selling them on fleabay

if you fans are running like mad; theres a fan reconfiguration util to run - usally available on the engineers cd, but drop us a line and I see what I can do. you shouldn't need it as it only needed if a mobo, cpu, hs&fan but it know to happend that the mobo gets shorted or lose the settings if you mess around in side the mac.