Adding hard drive space to an older iMac

November 8, 2005 3:19 PM

What is the best way to add HDD space to an older iMac?

My mother is the owner of a second generation iMac with 2 occupied USB 1 ports and 1 Firewire port which has never been used. (Does it work after 8 years? Who knows?!) She is down to about 1GB of space remaining on her 20GB HDD and has already economized her files to the extent of her ability, so it's time to think about additional HDD space. I've suggested that she purchase a 60GB external Firewire drive which should eliminate any further upgrade need before she replaces the computer, as well as providing adequate backup space and an easy means of file transfer when the inevitable computer replacement does happen. Mom, on the other hand, is of the opinion that it would be better to replace the 20GB internal drive with a 40GB internal drive, installing the OS and restoring her files from CD.

Having never been in this particular conundrum, I can't rationally come up with pros and cons to either position. Thoughts? Suggestions? Persuasive arguments? Pepsi Blue Viral Advertising for the HDD solution of your choice?

posted by Dreama to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

That generation of iMac can be difficult to get into. If you're not fully comfortable with popping the case and working around a potentially deadly device (the CRT), I'd go for the external Firewire drive.
posted by nathan_teske at 3:40 PM on November 8, 2005

Mom may not be aware of how many personal preferences her OS and applications have stored. If she takes her preferred route, either all those will be lost or she'll have to locate and manually transfer over those preference files by hand.

As someone who's tried this, I've found that apps and the System store preferences in all kinds of unauthorized places and it's unfortunately not as easy as it sounds - particularly on Mac OS 9, which she may be using. It usually took me 4-6 weeks to "get back to normal" after I did this, and I'd be periodicially annoyed by mis-set prefs for months. If she's not a power user it'll be less of an issue.

Also, the backing up and restoring from 30 CDs will take a large amount of time.

Short answer: both ways work; I'd do it your way.
posted by ikkyu2 at 3:44 PM on November 8, 2005

And oh, if you want to pay someone to replace the internal drive, you're looking at more than the cost of a larger external drive.

Me... I'd just upgrade mom to a Mac Mini for Christmas.
posted by nathan_teske at 3:45 PM on November 8, 2005

Not sure about the various iMacs, but some of them are a complete beat to get open and access the harddrive to swap out. Food for thought.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:46 PM on November 8, 2005

You've mentioned the pros of firewire. The cons are that you'll still need to move stuff from the 20Gb, and will that free up enough space? Also it's another box on the desktop.

I'm with your m(u/o)m on this one. The pros of keeping it internal are: neatness; ease of operation (don't have to think about where the files should be) and the drive could be faster, making certain computing operations a bit quicker. The cons are it's a huge hassle. Don't restore her files from CD - get a FW enclosure anyway, bung the 20GB disk in, and copy from that - then if you need something that's not on CD, like large/preferences files, you can get it (besides you'll need it again when the new computer arrives, plus it might be good for backups).
posted by cogat at 3:48 PM on November 8, 2005

On preview, what nathan_teske said!
posted by cogat at 3:49 PM on November 8, 2005

Ah yes - as to taking the thing to bits, the take-apart manuals here might help. Imac_summer01 is the one I think.
posted by cogat at 3:52 PM on November 8, 2005

Buy a 60GB (or 250GB, given today's prices) FireWire drive, copy everything across, lever the thing open, swap the mechanism over with the one in the iMac. Done.
posted by cillit bang at 4:06 PM on November 8, 2005

I did a few iMac HDD upgrades when I worked in an Apple store. There's a ton of screws to undo, a plastic bottom to take off without snapping some annoyingly persisten and easily snappable catches, a metal interference field to squeeze out, and a flyback transformer to avoid. Oh, that's part of the potentially deadly CRT. There's no room for an extra internal hard disk, so you'd have to take out the one that's in there to upgrade.

So, get an external firewire disk. It's just a million times less hassle.
posted by armoured-ant at 4:08 PM on November 8, 2005

After replacing HDs in iMacs, I'll agree with the Firewire crowd. Less blood, bruises, voltage burns and tears.
posted by Rothko at 4:43 PM on November 8, 2005

I vote for getting an external firewire drive. I did something similar with an old(ish) iBook. I have all of my photographs and Photoshop/InDesign/Illustrator (in other words, large) files on the external drive.

This seemed to be the better choice for me because: 1) it was less complicated than opening up the computer to install a larger internal drive 2) I'm planning on upgrading my laptop relatively soon and it seems easier to have all these files on an external drive. 3) I'll be able to use the external drive for for backup purposes anyway with a new computer. and 4) No CD burning required.
posted by Uncle Glendinning at 4:47 PM on November 8, 2005

For simplicity's sake, I'd recommend an external FW drive; this should tide her over until she decides to upgrade the entire Mac, and then it'll provide a decent backup device afterwards. But if you decide to go with an internal one, there's a drive compatibility database and very useful directions at xlr8yourmac.com. I've upgraded hard drives on both an iMac DV and a flat panel iMac (I'm not sure which one you're referring to as an 8 year old second generation iMac) using the various directions there; in each case, it was the first time I'd taken such a beastie apart, so I gotta say they make it relatively painless. (Oh, and if you're talking about the flat panel iMac, don't forget the thermal paste!)
posted by kimota at 4:47 PM on November 8, 2005

The way I would go, depending on how much cost is an issue, would be to get a smaller FW drive that can run on bus power, and just velcro it to the side of the iMac. As lunatic as the following sounds, you could even use Carbon Copy Cloner to make the FW drive the boot drive, and boot to the FW drive exclusively. This would be the easiest way to get the preferences and so forth onto a drive with more free space. Then if the machine gets upgraded you can clone the FW drive to the new machine. cillit bang's suggestion in combination with using CCCloner would also get you to your mom's idea with the least hassle.
posted by mzurer at 5:21 PM on November 8, 2005

I also recommend an external FW drive. Just had to replace a HDD in a 1st generation eMac (everything packed in with the CRT) and this worked perfectly.
Copy her 20GB HDD using Carbon Copy Cloner.

When she does backups and/or adds new programs or saves new data, set the external clone as the destination drive. In case the iMac dies/the 20GB drive dies/ her house catches fire and she has to grab something she can carry,etc absolutely everything 'on her computer' will be on the external clone! If she wants to work at your house as if she were on her own machine, she can boot up from the external and it's as if your mac was hers, because her main drive is now in that little box. When/if she upgrades her machine, just put a clone of the external onto her new machine, and there's no transition hassles.

On preview, mzurer got most of this. Darn.
posted by bartleby at 5:30 PM on November 8, 2005

On that model of imac (I assume by 2nd gen, you mean slot-loading CRT) it is fairly easy to upgrade the HD. You dont have to worry about the CRT at all because you will only be opening the bottom of the case. there is a good guide here

However i agree that a external firewire drive would be the simplest choice. Whatever you decide, for the amount of time it would take to backup and restore 19GB of data on cds, I think it would be worth investing in a cheap external HD enclosure and simply copying everthing over to a new drive.
posted by harrigton at 8:09 PM on November 8, 2005

Count me in with the firewire crowd; get the biggest drive you can afford and plug it in. I had the same problem with my G4 a couple of years ago when I started to get heavily into digital photography and now use an external drive for all my photographs and other large files. It works fine and served as a handy backup when I had to reformat my internal HDD earlier this year. Also like your mother, I anticipate needing to upgrade at some point and having a plug-and-play HDD to move files from one computer to the next will make things a lot easier.
posted by TedW at 5:45 AM on November 9, 2005

I've taken apart and reassembled a half dozen iMacs. The last time was to do a motherboard swap from between two original Bondi Blue iMacs. It took me 20 minutes. Getting at the hard drive is not that hard. The worst part is getting the bottom of the case off. The rest is a matter of removing screws and a few connectors.

I don't know what the big deal is about working around the CRT - it's not exposed near the mobo, so no biggie.

Here's what I would do:
1. get an external HD (firewire).
2. Plug it in and partition it into two pieces: 1 that exactly matches her existing drive and 1 for all the rest. Use DriveSetup from the system CD to do that (you'll probably need to boot into it)
3. Copy her entire internal HD to that partition. You can use silverkeeper (at least earlier versions of it).
4. Take her system apart and install the drive from the external box into the internal box and vice versa.
5. If all is well, either wipe the old drive and keep it around for her to back up her important files.
posted by plinth at 5:50 AM on November 9, 2005