putting a new hard drive in a imac

nikkigreg1974

I have a early 2009 imac with a 320gb hard drive in it right now. I was thinking of upgrading the drive to a 2tb drive. Does anybody know if this imac can handle a hard drive that high? Biggest hard drive that came with it was 1tb hard drive. If 2tb drive won't work i get 1tb drive for it. Does it have to be the same manufacture as the hard drive now? I mac's are picky about what is use in them. I use my imac mostly for storing music and playing a few games. It's running mac os 10.11.6. I have mac os 10.9 to reinstall back on it and then i going to upgrade it back to mac os 10.11.6. Thanks for the help.

jamie1130

I don't see why it wouldn't support a 2TB drive. I would try it, and exchange it if it didn't work, unless you already own the drive.

PCAT

nikkigreg1974 wrote:

I have a early 2009 imac with a 320gb hard drive in it right now. I was thinking of upgrading the drive to a 2tb drive. Does anybody know if this imac can handle a hard drive that high? Biggest hard drive that came with it was 1tb hard drive. If 2tb drive won't work i get 1tb drive for it. Does it have to be the same manufacture as the hard drive now? I mac's are picky about what is use in them. I use my imac mostly for storing music and playing a few games. It's running mac os 10.11.6. I have mac os 10.9 to reinstall back on it and then i going to upgrade it back to mac os 10.11.6. Thanks for the help.

I believe that so long as you can reinstall Mac OS X, a 2009 iMac can handle a drive capacity of some 8TB at maximum, but don't quote me on that. Something tells me that the way OS X manages disks will slow you down a bit, though.

WalkingContradiction

It should work, however I have heard of issues with some drives (a good example is almost any SSD in a PowerMacG5). It's worth a try, as the size of the drive wouldn't be what would cause you issues (most modern SATA controllers don't have size limitations that are currently being exceeded by consumer products). If you run into any problems, my guess would be that the proprietary UEFI apple uses might restrict use to certain chipsets which is why only a handful of SSDs work in the PowerMacG5.

Hopefully this helps,
TheWalkingContradiction

PS: I swapped out the IDE harddrive in my PowerMacG4 (PCI Graphics) and didn't have any issues so it should work.

1607

It's very likely it should work. OSX is GPT so drive size limits won't be an issue - my 8 year old Shuttle detects a 3TB drive fine so i wouldn't expect this to differ.

ANY SATA HDD will work. Brand is not an issue. Reinstall OSX via internet recovery or USB and you're good to go. I'd personally buy an SSD but they're not for everyone.

nikkigreg1974

I was looking at those green hard drives and i was also looking at hybrid hard drives too. what i was reading that the hybrid hard drives startup quicker but i may just get a regular hard drive so i know that it will work. Well thanks for help.

1607

nikkigreg1974 wrote:

I was looking at those green hard drives and i was also looking at hybrid hard drives too. what i was reading that the hybrid hard drives startup quicker but i may just get a regular hard drive so i know that it will work. Well thanks for help.

SSDs will make everything near instant and are a huge increase in performance. I'd strongly suggest getting one if it's in your budget - I know on Black Friday the prices had come so cheap it was only double the price of an equivilant-sized HDD.

Either way it should work, good luck :-)

nikkigreg1974

Thanks for the help. I going with a regular 2tb hard drive that so i know it will work.

wingzeroismine

Have you ever opened the imac before?

nikkigreg1974

Yes i have. I open my imac today to oil the superdrive fan. It was making noise so i took the sticker off the back of the fan and put a few drops of oil in it and let it run into the bearing. I watch a video online that show you how to take apart a early 2009 imac and what tools you need. It's pretty cool how apple makes it's computers.