We have an iMac 27" from 2011 standing on one of our tables. It has a beautiful display with very nice, bright colors and looks very elegant. It was used just rarely as I would prefer Linux laptop and my wife has a MacBook of a more recent time.
A year ago its harddisk failed. We ignored this and since then clicked away all the error dialogs that kept popping up from time to time. That specific model comes with a primary disk which is an SSD of 128GB for the OS, and a second, more legacy spinning HDD of 1TB - that one broke. There was a backup, so data loss did not occur, and the system continued to run on the first disk only - it was reasonable as it was just seldomly used.
There were annoyances, though: the system would occasionally try to get the disk into running again, causing it to make loud, unhealthy noises. Also, since the HDD also carries a now defunct temperature sensor, the associated fan would run high, and this caused a permanent sound from the Mac. This particular problem can be solved with software that downregulated the fan. It was not possible to shut down the disk completely, it would continue to make loud bangs - and the dialog boxes kept appearing from time to time.
Since a few weeks, the computer’s popularity has risen again, because my son discovered it and would use it when allowed. And - more recently, I discovered that the thunderbolt connector cable that Mac users can use to connect another Mac with that iMac in what they call Target display mode fits into my Thinkpad T450S laptop into the Mini-DisplayPort plug and make the Linux I run seemlessly activate the iMac as a secondary monitor! Suprise - I always thought this would be a Mac-only feature (and I also remember reading up on this on the Internet, leaving this assumption confirmed.) So, since this machine got a second life, I finally spent the time and opened it up and repaired the system. Since we decided that the lost hard disk’s space would not really be needed and more, I just disconnected power, data and sensor cables to completely shut the drive off. With the good walkthrough of ifixit.com and the right tools that was not hard, and took an hour but could be done in a half, as well.
