iMac Intel 27" EMC 2390 Hard Drive Replacement

You can easily lift the glass panel off the magnets with only your fingernails (or something thin like a credit card or a guitar pick). No need to buy suction cups you will only use once.

Yes, you don't need the specific suction cups to remove the display cover - it's held on by magnets, and if you start at the center by the iSight you can work out to the edges and remove it. I had an iPhone screen suction cup around and it helped with balancing the screen when you pull it out fully, but by no ways is it required.

Great guide and pretty straight forward the only thing that took me ages and I didn't manage to undo were the power btn cable (step 28) and the thermal sensor (step 25) Seemed like they were glued on! Very difficult to remove and obviously conscious so I didn't break anything!

My display data cable forks, with a smaller section going up near the camera board. Where it forks, it is attached to the aluminum plate that attaches around the cpu board. I haven't seen any images that look similar, and I'm stumped at how to remove this second section of the cable. 2010 i7 build to order

Reassembly: After powering on and running for a few minutes, found a large whitish patch on the screen. Persists after powerdown.

Turned out to be condensation, though it didn't look like it - more like fine white powder rubbed in. Humidity is very high this time of the year. Fix: start airconditioner in a room, leave it running a while, take iMac in, prise open the glass again. Condensation vanishes instantly. Keep it out for a ~15 minutes running infinite loops to get iMac nicely heated up and fans running. Snap glass back.

I used a Swiffer dry cloth to get all the dust off the screen while just blowing with my mouth at a steep angle. I know I didn't get every speck, but the screen looks perfect once assembled and lit again. Removing the glass from the screen is pretty easy if you need to re-clean it.

I strongly recomment to detach the suction cups while working at the rest of the steps. In my case after half an our i heart a crack noise behind me on the table... The vacuum of one of the suction cups braked the glass! maybe there should be a warning in the Repair guide

I didn't crack the screen, but it popped out of the shims and then popped back in, as if the glass edge is magnetic or has steel in it to connect to magnets. Be careful with this step — it is pretty nerve-wracking, but doable!

The replacement display I received did not have a bracket around the edges so I can reinstall it. On the old display, it seems the bracket is screwed in, but even with all screws removed, I cannot get it to budge. Is there a trick? Is this even possible?

Be careful with any tool while lifting the edge of the display. Under the top left edge of the display sits the bluetooth-antenna-connector. I pulled it out while lifting. It was not such a great problem, cause i could just plug it in again. But maybe you could cut the small cable depending on the tool you use to lift.

The display is quite heavy, an is fitted with a tight tolerance. I found it very difficult and dangerous, lifting it with any tool in one corner while the iMac was lying down. Instead, after removing the T10 screws, it was quite easy pulling the display out of the iMac with my fingers on both sides, while the iMac was in the upright position. By doing that, you can easily hold the display with one hand and reach for the connecting cables with the other

I broke the short ribbon cable that attaches to the inner top of the display but all the pics show the display completely removed after all cables are disconnected without the short ribbon cable intact. Does this short ribbon cable have a purpose and does it need to be reconnected? If so, how? Or is it just some worthless control put in by Apple to show its been messed with when brought back for repair? Thanks

This cable is very small and fiddley to remove if you don't have much in the way of finger nails. The cables are very thin and fragile.

When the cable comes out, make note of which side has the gold contacts visible. On my cable, you could only see them from the "top" side (aka, as you look down on it). From the "bottom" or back side of the cable, you could NOT see any gold contacts. This will help to orient the cable when reconnecting it.

In my case, all the cable connectors were oriented having the golden contacts, as seen from the wide side of the connectors, oriented facing away from the board

This connection is very fragile, and many people have broken the display connector on the logic board. You need to carefully pull the connector out, and when putting it back together, you need to carefully push the connector back in.

i did break mine. do you know where to buy that component?

You need to squeeze the connector top to unlatch, then pull it parallel to the LED backlight board.

Before you take/remove the LCD thermal sensor cable connector from its socket, make a note of which color cable is on the left, and which is on the right. When I removed the cable, the black cable was leftmost, and the grey cable was rightmost.

I replaced hard drive and added a second SSD on a 2010 27" iMac. Everything seemed fine for about a year, and now the fans run continuously. I think it's this cable in Step 8; I'll get around to opening it up to check.

And if the panel has no frame? How you unattach the frame from the old panel to place it on the new one?

I put a 1.5 TB seagate barracuda in (before that there was a 1 TB seagate barracuda). but my fans stay on 4000 rpm. the connector in my machine can only go in one way, so i can't change connections like Philomathius wrote. the connection on the drive is the same: 4 pins, the cable has only 2.

This step is somewhat important if you want to use the thermal sensory with a multiple pin style drive. My comment is to just read the instructions a few times before and make sure you use the two pins that are in the top row on the side of the SATA cable.

The best solution for the Thermal Sensor issue is to use a 2N3904 transistor as explained here: replace the hard drive, how do I connect Hard Drive thermal sensor?

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I used that exact solution yesterday and it's working like a charm: replace the hard drive, how do I connect Hard Drive thermal sensor?

For solve reving HDD fan issues with SSD install, I removed the fan and a plastic barrier...

See here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252...

I just added a 3TB Seagate Barracuda Drive (ST3000DM001) and an 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD Drive, and haven't had any fan issues. You have to know, that every HDD seems to have a different connector for the temperature. The original HDD was a 2 TB Hitachi drive, the temp. connector wouldn't physically fit in the Seagate Drive. I ordered another cable at AppleComponents.com. There was only one way it would fit and has worked like a charm.

Thank you for the guide. I did it! new SSD installed :)

I purchased my SMC cable through OWC. Worked perfectly. Didn't like the idea of downloading a "patch".

OWC HDD Compatibility for all Apple 2009-2010 iMac 21.5" and 27" Models with SMC Compatibility.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20W...

Excellent guide! I just replaced the Seagate Barracuda disk in a 2010 27" iMac and didn't have any problems at all - certainly no issues with the HDD temp sensor. It definitely pays to research what model of disk you buy. The hardest part for me was reconnecting the incredibly short vertical sync cable. Thanks guys!

Hi everybody,

after the 4th try of changing the position of the connector, because the original didn´t work.

I just turned the connector of the fan control 180 degrees, because over 30$ for HDDFan Control is very expensive and I liked to have heat adjust. It was a WD500 Caviar with 6 pins. Now it works.

Hi..

I'm sorry to say that you all staring blindly down the wrong path.. :/

When you jump the two pins that the thermal sensor cables are connect to in the HDD's *JUMPER BLOCK*, the HDD limits it’s transfer rate to 1.5 Gbits/sek.. -This is a kind of safe mode, reducing heat generated from the HDD when your iMac is running hot. -And in the same breath, the reason your fans are running haywire if the terminals aren’t connected to the right pins..

All you need to do is:

1# Read the datasheet on your “to be installed” HDD.

2# Connect the thermal sensor wires, to the pins that limits your new HDD’s transfer rate.

(One way to do it if the connectors don’t match, is by separating the terminals from the connector and heat shrinking some heatshink around the individual terminals before connecting them to the pins.. -It’s a fiddly task but not impossible. Just use a needle to pry up the little hooks that holds the terminals in place in the connector)..

That’s all folks, best of luck to you all..

My 27" 2374 iMac required a torx T9 to replace the hard drive bracket.

Shout out to a great guide! I managed to put the sensor in step 8 in upside down and the fan did indeed whirl. Got it right the second time and everything is great!

Many thanks for this excellent guide.

The vertical sync cable took a bit of looking at but it really does just pull out tho had to use pliers to get enough purchase. From there just propped the display up with a DVD case at each end which gave enough clearance to remove the drive. All sweet from there on in. Reinserted the sync cable ok but need to use tweezers to hold some of the case screws in place to overcome the magnets.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones with an original Seagate drive. I upgraded to the 2t HDSS, also from Seagate. The install was painless and the thermal sensor fit exactly as it did on the old drive. From start to finish, the entire process took about an hour. Very quiet iMac now.

Thanks so much. Really useful guide especially when read in conjunction with http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/... . I swapped over a replacement HDD reasonably easily. The HDD formatting stage was straightforward using the Imac as a Target (hold T at startup) using Disc Utility on my MacPro as the host via Firewire. The problem came when I tried to use the original installation disc. Usually pressing C or even option (alt) at startup should find the optical drive but it kept spitting out the disc and a folder with a question mark flashed at me. My workaround was to use Disc utility to create a copy of the installation disc on an 8 GB flash drive (presumably a USB would have done as well) and boot from that by holding C at startup. Worked right away. Thanks again

Wow! Start to finish was about 45 minutes! Excellent guide, thank you so much. Just restoring from TM now. Replaced a WD 1TB with a WD 2TB Red. Two thumbs up!!

Just did this replacement on a 2009 27" iMac. Went great, except that the fan ran @ max speed -- even after buying the same model drive and replacing the temp cable exactly according to a photo I took during disassembly. Bummer, but $35 for the HDD Fan control software at http://www.hddfancontrol.com/ solved the problem in 10 secs, so well worth it. Thanks so much for this guide!