The 500 GB hard disk in my friend’s circa 2008 24″ iMac started making ominous clicking noises last week.  Anticipating its near future death, we took a full backup and ordered a bigger 1 TB drive from Amazon.

Apple never ceases to amaze me with the variety of ways they find to hide fasteners (and make upgrades and repairs to their equipment nightmarishly difficult).  In the case of this iMac, one needs to remove a glass panel held on with magnets to gain access to the internals.  The panel can be removed with a couple of these fancy suction cup tools but I prefer to do it ghetto style with a couple of sink plungers.

After pulling off the glass panel, removing around three dozen screws of at least eight varieties, and unplugging several needlessly fragile connectors, the display panel can be removed and the iMac’s guts are exposed.

The actual hard disk swap is a walk in the park.  Reassembly brings one extra reward.  The combined effect of the glossy LCD display behind the glossy glass cover is a fingerprint magnifier that exceeds the capabilities of the world’s finest CSI labs.  It took six [expletive deleted] install/test/remove/clean cycles to get a smudge free display.  Thanks Apple.