When the internal hard disk fails, you will need to purchase a new one. There is no way to prevent the disk from failing, but the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder can warn you when the disk is about to fail if you look at the drive's SMART status on a regular basis.
And if you don't have one already, it might be a good time to invest in an external Firewire drive to back up all your important files in case your internal does crash. Patrick
They don't cost a lot and putting them together yourself is extremely easy. Typically you only have to know how to use a philips screwdriver and that's about it. Do you have simply important stuff on your computer or do you have completely IRREPLACEBLE stuff on your computer? Important would be a term paper, a report for work, etc. Irreplaceble would be your entire collection of digital photography or the novel you have spent the last two years writting. As an example, I just bought this enclosure recently... http://tinyurl.com/ncgbg This is a combo enclosure supporting both USB2 and Firewire ports and is only $32 with free shipping. Now all you need is the drive to put into it. How about this one... http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4596277 A huge 300GB drive for only $90 and again, shipping is free. So out of pocket you are looking at only $122 you get a very large 300GB external drive. you can often find smaller drives for even less so it would be very easy to put one together for under $100. Now to put it together you take the enclosure, slide the tray out. Take your drive and plug the ribbon cable and the power cable on the enclosure tray into the drive. You then use four screws to secure the drive to the tray. Slide the tray back into the enlosure and there are two more small screws that secure the tray in place. That is it. All done. Now plug in the power supply to the wall and the end to the drive, then plug in the Firewire cable from the drive to your Mac. Turn on the drive and when prompted by your Mac, simply format the drive and you are ready to roll. Patrick
You don't need photos for the eMac because this is an EXTERNAL drive, not internal. The only involvement the eMac has is after you put the external drive together, you plug it into the side of your eMac just like you do your keyboard (except you will use the Firewire port instead of the USB port). If you really needed photos on how to put the external drive together, buy the enclosure I pointed to, get the drive and then let me know and I will be happy to put together a serious of photos for you showing how it goes together. Patrick
Ya that is why I was saying you might looking into an EXTERNAL drive to use as a place to back up all your files. You original question was what you do if your internal fails about if you have to replace it. My post was in reference to what about all your important files and such? Do you have those backed up? If not, you may want to consider an external hard drive to hold copies of all your important data. One great thigna bout external FW hard drives is that most of them are bootable. Meaning, if you have an OS installed on them, you can boot directly off the external drive. So if you put together an external FW drive then used a problem like SuperDuper, you can literally CLONE your internal drive to the external drive as a backup. If you made a point of doing this on a regular basis, your external drive would always be within a week or two of your internal. Now if your internal drive crashes, you can always start the Mac and tell it to boot off the external drive instead and keep on working. Long term you will want to either replace the drive in the eMac, or it might be the right time to buy a new Mac. In either case, after the new drive or new Mac, your external drive would still be going allowing you to keep going, and you could then easily transfer your important stuff back to your new internal drive or your new Mac from the external. Dig? Patrick
Replacing the internal drive on an eMac is not for the faint of heart. It involves specialized equipment (CRT discharge tool, anti-static mat and grounding wrist strap) and nearly complete disassembly (removal of logic board, etc.) If you don't know what you are doing you can even get a lethal electric shock from the CRT. To take it to the pros is an expensive repair once the drive eventually dies, which it will. It might even be more cost-effective to buy a whole new Mac.
In either case, you'll be glad you had a complete backup of everything on an external drive that you can simply restore onto the new one. You
are planning on backing up regularly now, right?
