increase Hard Drive life?

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Level 1

10 points

increase Hard Drive life?

So I got a 27" iMac a couple months ago, which i love, but what i can't stand is the inability replace the HD, should it fail. we all know hard drives can really go at any time. Sure i've had some last 5-6+ years, but other quit after 2-3 years. As I can't swap out the hard drive down the road, I'm thinking about attempting to extend the life of my HD. If i run an external drive and put all my libraries on there, would you guys think that may increase the life of my internal drive? Thanks in advance for any comments or opinions.

these are well built machine which is why i don't mind the premium, but i think the lack of servicability limits the longevity of the machine to the weakest product (which is obviously not an apple product).

Posted on Sep 25, 2013 12:56 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

141,460 points

Sep 25, 2013 1:21 PM in response to jmf007

jmf007 wrote:

So I got a 27" iMac a couple months ago, which i love, but what i can't stand is the inability replace the HD, should it fail.

Whatever led you to believe it is not replaceable is not correct.

It is replaceable, though not without some difficulty. Using an external HD in an effort to extend the life of an internal component responsible for much of the iMac's performance doesn't make a lot of sense.

A major cause of drive failure is intrusion of environmental contaminants that is guaranteed to eventually occur due to thermal cycling or atmospheric pressure changes, even if you were to never use the drive. Unless you're going to use an iMac in a clean room, nothing will prevent a tiny smoke particle from eventually penetrating its case, finding its way between a platter and head, and permanently ruining it.

Use your Mac the way it's designed to be used. Hard disk failures occur, but it should be expected to last for the economic life of your Mac, which historically has been several years.

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