eMac Harddrive replacement.... Do-able? Dangerouse? Diagrams?

Hello! Look HERE. Tom

Disassembly of an eMac for replacing the hard drive is tedious at best but is quite doable. I've read mixed messages regarding discharging the CRT; in any case, it pays to be very careful and not to muck around with the back end of the CRT where the high voltages might be. The most difficult part for me was reattaching the wires to the power switch; not very easy with my fat fingers. The switch itself seems a bit fragile so care must be taken with it.

While you've got it apart, you might consider dropping a new optical drive in as well; you can get new DVDRW drives (Pioneer) for around $30-$40. Also, get the biggest hard drive you can afford - you won't be sorry cause you can never have too much hard drive. Oh yeah, get a can of compressed air to blow out the dust bunnies while you're in there.

You can also put the old drive into an external USB or Firewire box and have some additional (external) storage.

Apple eMac Upgrade Guide. It's not necessary to discharge the CRT when replacing the hard drive since you won't need to touch that part of the assembly. Be careful when separating the case not to pull it apart too far before you reach in to disconnect the power button's wiring harness. It also helps to keep track of all the screws you'll be removing by laying them down in order on a large sheet of paper.

hi,

i have an older emac as well and i would like to disassemble it for the sake of the challenge - i'd like to just make it an itunes station essentially.....i am 'deathly' afraid of this whole CRT thing - it's been unplugged now for about a year....do i still need to worry about the voltage?

also, i don't know anything about CRT voltage stuff, other than staying away when necessary....i would love to JUST replace the hard drive....is it true as the previous poster noted, that i don't need to worry about the CRT if i'm replacing the hard drive only?

thank you so much

If it's been unplugged for a year, the charge has likely drained off the CRT by now. It still pays to be careful, though, just in case.

Replacing the eMac hard drive is certainly doable, however the stock drive is usually a different type than most available models. It is a slimline model; i.e. it is slightly thinner than most, so an off the shelf model may not fit. I tried to put a 250Gb in my USB 2.0 eMac and it did not fit, it was too tall for the bay and I could not get things back together correctly. For financial reasons, I opted for a USB 2.0 external enclosure instead. Having said that, I would have rather gone with a Firewire enclosure instead to have a bootable external HD.

Hi,

I just tore down my eMac, to get to the hard drive(dead), not that hard, though it was more effort than I thought to pull the assembly apart. The drive is a Maxtor 4D040H2 40GB Ultra ATA, what drive and size do you suggest I upgrade to with no added fiddling? I only use the old girl to surf and work with some photo retouching. photoshop/Illust./Quark etc. any help would be greatly appreciated.

bred