Case Study — Belfast
The iMac wouldn't boot. The drive was clicking.
A Belfast client's Apple iMac stopped starting up, and the internal Seagate hard drive inside it was clicking — the classic sign of a failed read/write head. Here's how it was recovered.
The case
A familiar fault on a familiar machine.
iMacs from the 2009–2012 generation are a regular sight in this lab — their internal drives are now well past a typical service life.
This particular iMac had stopped booting. On closer inspection, the internal hard drive was making a clicking sound — a strong indicator of a mechanical read/write head fault rather than a simple software issue. The drive fitted was a standard Seagate mechanism, one of the most common drives found inside iMacs of this era.
Clicking is not something to power through. Each additional power-on risks turning a recoverable head fault into permanent damage to the magnetic platters underneath. The iMac was brought in for diagnosis before any further attempts were made to start it.
Diagnosis
A head swap, not a simple repair.
Clicking almost always points to a read/write head problem. Fixing it means a head swap: a matching donor drive is sourced, and the read/write heads are transplanted across in a clean, controlled environment. It only works if the platters underneath are undamaged — the heads are the failure, not the media.
A suitable Seagate donor was already in stock, though sourcing and preparing one is not a small part of the job — the donor component alone typically costs in the region of £250 before any recovery work even begins, reflecting the precision the swap demands.
The process
From failed drive to restored Mac.
- 01
Head swap
The donor drive's read/write heads were transplanted onto the client's Seagate drive under controlled conditions, restoring the ability to read the platters.
- 02
Data recovery
With the heads working again, the drive was imaged and the client's files — including deleted files and photos — were recovered in full.
- 03
iMac repair
A new drive was fitted into the iMac, macOS (OS X) was reinstalled, and the recovered data was copied back onto the machine.
- 04
SSD upgrade
The client chose a solid state drive over a like-for-like replacement, for the faster boot and app-load times an SSD gives an older iMac.
Outcome
Fully recovered, in under 24 hours.
The recovery was 100% successful — every deleted file and photo the client asked for was recovered within 24 hours of the head swap being completed. The iMac itself was then returned to full working order with a new solid state drive fitted, macOS reinstalled, and the recovered data copied back in place.
This is a common pattern with older iMacs: the internal drive fails first, but the Mac itself is usually still worth repairing once the data is safe. See our hard drive data recovery page for how we handle clicking and failed drives more generally.
Power it down and stop using it. Talk to a specialist first — a fixed quote follows diagnosis, before any recovery work begins.