Resolved iMac (late 2009) as monitor and hard drive.

[Pecator]

I finally caved and got a newer iMac. I know I can use it as a monitor. Wondering if I can use the 3T hard drive in it as well. Or should I just gut my beloved old pooter? I would be risking it to open the old thing as the connectors were pretty feeble and one broke six years back when I put in the hard drive. So, use it as a monitor and leave the hard drive? Take my pull the hard drive and use it as external?

Thanks!

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I finally caved and got a newer iMac. I know I can use it as a monitor. Wondering if I can use the 3T hard drive in it as well. Or should I just gut my beloved old pooter? I would be risking it to open the old thing as the connectors were pretty feeble and one broke six years back when I put in the hard drive. So, use it as a monitor and leave the hard drive? Take my pull the hard drive and use it as external?

Thanks!

If you can still boot into it, you can use it as:
1. External Monitor (Target Display Mode) => require miniDisplayPort cable or adapter
2. External Disk (Target Disk Mode) => Require Firewire cable
3. Network Attached Storage (Just share the drive) => require LAN cable.

1&3 works simustaneously. Don't know about 2.

 

[r6mile]

Target disk mode doesn't work at the same time as target display mode.

I like @Nguyen Duc Hieu 's idea of 1+3. Connect the two iMacs via both Ethernet and a USB-C/minidisplayport cable (Startech makes one), and you'll be able to share both the screen and the 3TB drive. Over gigabit ethernet transfer speeds will be pretty good too.

 

[Pecator]

Hey Thanks for that. I didn't know about Startech. I will be using that place quite a bit. So, I figured out what you were talking about with my friends iMac. My computer isn't coming till later this week.

Of course, once I jumped on Youtube to figure out upgrades, my fickle self discovered the fun of upgrading an old Mac Pro. I canceled the iMac and picked up a 5,1 with dual processors.

I have different questions about using this as a monitor, but I will put them in the proper forum.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Hey Thanks for that. I didn't know about Startech. I will be using that place quite a bit. So, I figured out what you were talking about with my friends iMac. My computer isn't coming till later this week.

Of course, once I jumped on Youtube to figure out upgrades, my fickle self discovered the fun of upgrading an old Mac Pro. I canceled the iMac and picked up a 5,1 with dual processors.

I have different questions about using this as a monitor, but I will put them in the proper forum.

I am using my iMac 2010 as the monitor for my Mac Pro 2,1.
It's a no brainer. Nothing to struggle about.
Just plug-in the DisplayPort to MiniDisplayPort cable, and the image will show up.
No brightness control and no sounds on the iMac, though. The problem is with my video card, I guess.
As the sound was delivered well through the displayport cable when I used a Windows machine.