on a late 2009 iMac, can i live with a broken internal hard drive by just attaching an external hard drive?
Yes. You can also buy and install a new internal drive. Visit OWC for disk drive options and for installation tutorials.
Yes. You can also buy and install a new internal drive. Visit OWC for disk drive options and for installation tutorials.
sounds too easy but i like the answer! thanx
I've done this on two 2009 MBP models - one 15" and one 17". OWC even has the toolkit needed for the job. You can even install a larger HDD than the one you had, should you want. If you want to spend more money, then you can think about replacing the optical drive using their DataDoubler. Put an SSD where the HDD is now, and move the HDD to the optical drive bay. Just depends on how much you want to spend upgrading an old MBP.
Oh, and you can think about upgrading the RAM, as well. BTW, I have no connection to OWC, but have used their products for years.
any problems if i attach an external hard drive to run my iMac?
Booting into it will be a bit slower, but once there, it should be fine as long as you make sure you buy a 7200 RPM drive (or an SSD of course); some externals are 5400 rpm and that is definitely about 30%+ slower read/write speeds.
broken hard drive
