Diagnosing what's wrong with "vintage" iMac I have a "vintage" iMac with the following spec:



I've been told by an official Apple store that they won't touch it and neither will any Apple resellers so it's left me with two options:


Buy a new iMac!
Fix it myself!


The problem I'm having is that when I turn the iMac on after it's warmed up it starts to make clicking/scratching noises. The screen flickers slightly and things struggle to load. I managed to run disk utility on it before these problems start and it coming up with lots of failures.

This all suggest to me it's the hard drive.

Is there anything else I can use to diagnose the specific problem? Would the above description point to a hard drive failure for you?

If that's the case I'm willing to spend £100 or so on a new hard drive (would this one be ok?) and attempt to fit it myself (following online guides!!).

Before I had problems, the iMac was running completely fine and not struggling with anything - even high spec games so you can see why I'm very reluctant to buy a new iMac... especially at £1500!

I feel like I'm being completely screwed over by Apple for not supporting a perfectly good machine, so much appreciated in advance for any help given!!
From the sound of things it is likely the hard drive. An "easy" way to find out would be to attach an external HD and install the OS on that.

Be aware that depending on what is going on with the old HD it could eventually just prevent the Mac from booting as the Mac tries to access it even if it is NOT the boot drive.

Note that a USB drive would be SLOW, Firewire would be preferable and, while it is not as fast as SATA, would provide you with a generally usable/bootable Mac while you work up the courage to open it up and replace the drive ;-).