I finally got around to fixing that massive paperweight I bought last year. it only needed a new HDD. Thinking of selling it though as I don’t really have a need for it (originally was going to be some kind of back up machine but I don’t really have the space here)
Mid 2010 model
Specs currently (might salvage RAM):
21.5inch screen
3.2 GHz Intel Core i3
8GB Ram
Seagate 500GB HDD
ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB graphics
MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (Can potentiality install El Captain, 10.11.6 which may run better)
Disk drive/SuperDrive- working
This was my first time doing this and my main reference was a guide on YouTube. I had to remove the glass and screen to access the HDD behind. The glass, being a 2012 model just simply pulled off but the screen was screwed in behind, held by 8 screws, some ear magnetic points which made it difficult. To get to the HDD I had to disconnect a few cables (vertical sync, backlight power, display port and temperature sensor) so I could access where I needed safely without damaging any components or stressing any of these cables. Once I had removed the screen I set it to one side, out of the way where it wouldn't get damaged and started to disconnect the HDD.
For those interested, the new HDD I was replacing the old one with was a Seagate 500GB capacity. Think it was some model from 2015, I don't know much more about it and I brought it second-hand from Cex for £8. The original drive was also manufactured by Seagate - apple licensed, certain to be the original from its release in 2010, which is why I went with it.
A few more cables to note here the HDD sensor cable and bother the power and date cables. I unplugged these before removing the screws holding the bracket the HDD was secured into, once this was loose I could then tease the HDD out of it's slot and remove the bracket completely from the drive. Once the drive was free, the Bracket then needed to be fixed onto the new HDD and the support feet needed moving over too - the support feet just slot into the little holes at the bottom of the space for the drive once attached. This was probably the easiest part of the job. Once the bracket and feet were in place on the new HDD it was time to physically install it into the original slot. Feet in first comfortably, then I made sure the sensor cable wasn't trapped before screwing it securely back in place. From this point onwards it became a series of back tracking anything connection that had been unplugged to get the screen ready to be fixed back into place but giving it a good dust before hand - I don't think this Mac had ever been serviced in it's life. I had the most trouble with the display port ribbon cable but otherwise it was easy enough.
It's important to make sure all are fitted back in securely before closing up. When closing up, we aware of keeping the screen level and not grind screws against the metalwork. The best way to do this is to find an angle to lift the screen slightly, comfortable to get the first few screws in place but do not tighten them all the way, best to start with the ones not near any magnets to avoid any frustration.
It became problematic for me when I realised the new drive I had brought was in Windows format so when I tried to boot up the iMac for the first time after closing up I got the error message "BOOTMGR MISSING" which bricks the keyboard. I looked up various ways around this, thinking at first I'd hit another dead end. Most of the search results I came across were about Macs running Windows, which wasn't really what I was looking for advice on. I stumbled upon a command from a forum tread, CMD+R. This when held at the start-up chime boots up Internet recovery. At first I tried via WiFi but this gave me a time est. of 24hrs and eventually failed anyway. This model iMac has an Ethernet port on the rear so I decided to dig out an Ethernet cable and that's where I found success.
Originally, my plan was to simply format the new HDD but for some reason it would not let me from disk utilities after Internet recovery. I had a time capsule prepared of a backup from another Mac. Again, this was not my original intention to have to use this but it was what worked for me. The New HDD was still a problem so the time capsule had to be stored in a new partition on the external hard drive that it was originally from. It seems like a long loop but bear with me. The size of my time capsule was around 280GB so it took around 6 hours to complete the recovery. When this had complete, everything was as normal (compared with my other 2009 iMac) except it was running off my external HDD still. It was at this point that I was able to format the new internal HDD (still not 100% why I couldn't before this point but it wouldn't let me mount it at all before) I then decided to shut down the system once the internal drive was formatted, unplug my external drive and power the iMac back up again using internet recovery (CMD+R) and this then allowed me to install a fresh copy of High Sierra 10.13.6 - none of my data had ever been on the iMac just the external drive
Please not that if you use my short guide, my aim was to fresh install not to back up or recover any data. I hope this helps someone. It's a good feeling to be able to fix something like this by yourself and I'm quite proud. There probably was a better way around this regarding installing a fresh OS but this worked for me, it took a day or two but it worked!
Plus, either way it’s been a good project that’s kept me busy over my “holiday.”
Any questions, ask away! I may be able to help :)
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