[mcsolas]

My 3 month old iMac has failed. It started when the aperture library hit 300 gb and it started hanging a lot (even though there was 100 gb free disk space). Some were unrecoverable. I tried to fix aperture, it hung when trying to rebuild the library. After a few times when I couldn't bring up the force quit menu I had to hold down the power button to shut it down. It was shortly afterwards that things got worse and when going to try and repair permissions in the disk util, I saw it reported the drive to be failing.

I was hoping to try and format it and reinstall the os. I know I would lose data, but willing to do so to try and recover operations. The thing is that when I boot from the disk, the installer doesn't give you any location where to install. I used the command prompt to try disk util from the command line and nothing is there.

I downloaded the pdf off apple's site which instructs you on how to take off the back of the imac cover, remove the fan and get the drive out. What I am concerned about is finding the right spec's for the replacement drive. From my reading in various other threads, it seems that I am looking for SATA drives. WD, hitachi, samsung or seagate

Is there any more info you can provide as to preferred models or which ones to look for. I am eager to get this computer back online.

[Andrew Stephens]

On a 3 month old iMac the responsibility for replacing the drive is Apples. Don't waste time doing it yourself as it's not a user replaceable part and will invalidate the rest of your Apple warranty.

The drive is not accessed from the rear anyway. On the current iMacs you need to remove the glass covering the screen, take the aluminum cover off and remove the lcd screen to get at the hard drive underneath. It's not super hard but it can be daunting.

Get Apple to do it.