replacing imac 24" mid 2007 hard drive

http://www.macsales.com/ can make sure you get the right kind of drive. 2009 SATA drive buses increased in speed, so make sure to get a drive that can downstep to your speed, and any jumpers are preset for the right speed.

Check out Amazon there. For any WD drive, jumper pins 5 & 6. You might have a look at this one (1TB single platter) and Newegg's reviews for other drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339

From someone on another board.

My guidelines for picking a drive, in order of importance:

1) It's not cutting edge in any terms

2) It is not a "green" drive

3) It should have at least 200 reviews on Newegg, five star rating at least in the mid-60% range, and one star ratings not to exceed a percentage in the mid-teens.

4) The most recent few dozen reviews shouldn't all be trashing it

5) Cheaper is usually better than faster

If this is yours, the transfer rate to the Mac will be halved, from 6 to 3 Gb/s. The drive itself will operate at the same speed. I'm in the same boat with a late '09.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-2-duo-2.4-24-inch-alu minum-specs.html

You may or may not need to set jumpers for the drive I linked. Almost any drive you find now will be SATA 3, 6.0 Gb/s, and may be automatically backwards compatible, or not. You'll have to look into that.

EDIT: The WD5000AAKX is also an excellent drive. But it's 500 GB.

http://www.macsales.com/ does deliver to the UK. .

Contact Western Digital to enquire before you buy if any jumper setting is needed.

Whether or not it will auto-negotiate down to 3.0 Gb/s, I would just recommend installing the jumpers on 5/6. It can't hurt and may save you the trouble of opening the Mac up again a second time. Almost any computer store, PC or Mac, will give away the jumpers for free or almost nothing.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1409/~/specifications-for-the-50 0-gb-caviar-blue-and-caviar-se16-serial-ata-drive

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2003/05/01/sata_hard_drive_with_a_kick/raptor-3.j pg shows an image of a hard drive with a jumper. Reading from right to left, the first four prongs are power prongs. Next you'll see a white plastic item covering two pins (that's known as a jumper). On some SATA drives, they cover the prongs circled in red on this image:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b13/CRazY_GAmEr_07/SATA2.jpg

Either style of pinout on SATA drive, if you don't have the jumpers covered by the right plastic item, it will not work backward compatible, or will confuse the computer as to what speed it actually is. This is why you need to ask Western Digital if any jumper needs to be on the jumper pins of the drive in question to work as the master drive on your computer given your computer's data bandwidth for hard drives.

An external hard drive is always an option. Be careful, some come with their own backup software which is not compatible with Mac OS X 10.9. Make sure to remove it before attempting to run their backup software.

I don't think WD will be able, or want, to say if it will work with your Mac. But I see no reason it won't work with your Mac. Just be sure it's formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled/GUID Partition Scheme. I have both of these drives and plan to install the 1TB, most likely jumpered down, in mine. Before I got the 1TB, I was planning on installing the 500GB, also most likely jumpered down.

They both may auto-negotitate, but regardless, installing the jumpers, needed or not, shouldn't cause a problem. The jumpers are just telling the drive to go down to 3.0 Gb/s, so auto negotiating the transfer rate becomes moot. I don't think it will, but if you have anything to ask WD (and make sure it's not a first level rep--get at least a second level tech or higher on the phone), it should be whether using the jumpers will interefere with anything, if auto negotiating the rate would happen without them installed.