I have an iMac that is going to be junked. It will not boot so I can not re-format. How can I remove the drive to protect my personal information. Do not want to throw it away with the Hard drive still installed.

You could also ask an independent authorized Apple service provider the fee or minimum

shop rate for them to remove the hard drive, so you could deal with it separately; then if

they want the computer, you could gift it to them for parts or perhaps repair. It would be

most likely to be re-used or in part, directly recycled as a computer that way...

Or use the iFixit.com guide to remove the hard drive from the failed computer.

Given the iMac G5 series were among some products that had issue with power supplies

and capacitor failures, it may be something that an experienced hobbyist could repair/use.

You could attach a universal USB wire kit to the bare hard disk drive and connect it to a

healthy computer, to then see about erasing the hard drive by use of disk utility in an OS.

An example of such a universal drive adapter for USB to connect a bare drive to a computer,

is this model; there are others and should be available at most quality computer stores:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/

In any event... Good luck! 🙂

If you tell us what model iMac, we can refer you to illustrated instructions that show how to physicaly remove the hard drive. If you do not know your model, find the serial number somewhere on the outside of the case and enter it into this Apple support page:

https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

That page may not work from really old Macs. If you fail to get a result from that source, enter the serial number into this web page:

http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

It covers much older Macs than the Apple site.

Good day.

When you try and reboot, what happens and where does it stuck.

Dewald

Great site:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+G5+20-Inch+Model+A1145+Hard+Drive+Replacement/ 1147