iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2428 Optical Drive Replacement

Written By: Walter Galan

Comments: 10

iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2428 Optical Drive Replacement

Difficulty

Moderate

Steps

Time Required

No estimate

Introduction

Prereq only.

Tools

TR10 Torx Security Screwdriver

Step 1

From here, the repair will be easier if you flip the computer around so the base is facing you.
Remove the following four screws:
One 9.3 mm T10 Torx screw with a large head
Three 9.3 mm T10 Torx screws with a normal sized head

In my case the red screw was on the lower left side near the power-data cable!

sefw4t2efwef - 19/04/15

Same here. There are different versions delivered

Tai - 06/08/16

Same for me.

davidevismara - 02/11/17

Step 2

Pull the optical drive thermal sensor connector straight up from its socket on the logic board. Pull parallel to the board.

No need to remove the thermal sensor connector from the motherboard - refer to Step 17 to remove the sensor from the optical drive instead

osienna - 20/06/17

The thermal sensor connector shown in the red box is the one for the hard drive, not the optical drive. The optical drive sensor attaches to motherboard near bottom left of optical drive fan.

Reiner Friedel - 03/05/20

The guide was correct in my case that this is the Optical Drive sensor. The board has “ODD Temp” written on it. Original HD has it’s own built in temperature sensor without a separate cable to the Motherboard, which is why OWC sells a special “In-line Thermal Sensor” SATA cable with a Temp. sensor that attaches to any new hard drive itself.

amiller770 - 11/05/20

When I was removing the optical drive cable sensor the connector came loose from the board. Is there any way to repair this?

Paula McCaulla - 11/07/20

Step 3

Lift the inner edge of the optical drive and maneuver its connector past the GPU frame attached to the logic board.
Carefully pull the optical drive off its mounting pins on the right side of the outer case to gain clearance for disconnecting the optical drive cable.
Allow the optical drive to hang down as you de-route the optical drive thermal sensor connector from behind the GPU heat sink.

On the reassembly, I found threading the optical drive cable back under the GPU frame trying. Here’s some advice: Take some dental floss, form a loop, and feed that loop under the GPU frame. Put the cable into the loop of floss, tighten the loop, and pull the loop back through. This is much easier, faster, and far less frustrating.

Albert Einsrein - 14/08/20

Step 4

Disconnect the optical drive cable by pulling its connector away from the optical drive.
Remove the optical drive from the iMac.

I have already installed the second SSD drive, but due to the size of the drive I need to change it with another SSHD 1 TB drive. Am I right that I have to follow the instructions up to Step 18? Because The SSD is already behind the optical drive, so what I need to do is remove it and install the new SSHD drive and put everything back again. Please confirm.

Mohamed Kamal - 07/01/16

This was my only error on reassembly. The SATA cable must be under the black plastic prong. I did not want to pull to logic board again. I managed to bend the black plastic bits and get the cable in the right place.

Terry Creasy - 15/12/20