It's my understanding that electrostatic discharge (ESD) can quietly zap electronic components. I'm looking for advice on...

iMac, 17", Intel 2 GHz Core 2 Duo Internal hard drive sometimes has difficulty mounting. I can hear it start to spin up,...

Well, the troublesome drive finally bit the dust. By setting the Energy Saver prefs to not allow the computer or drives to sleep, I was able to continue using it for several more months. But in December, it finally conked out with the same symptoms and couldn't be coaxed back. Fortunately, as a result of this episode, I had a solid back-up strategy in place - a cloned boot drive plus daily file backup. The clone was quite handy since I could boot from it on an external drive and still temporarily run my iMac more or less normally. Using the excellent guide here, I replaced the original 160 GB Western Digital drive with a 500 GB Hitachi and it's working fine. Probably better than before - quieter and cooler. I also found a decent YouTube video showing how to replace the internal drive, which was nice to watch before doing it myself. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShY8zuT-wPg Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsIU1XEk... Thanks for all the advice. This is a great site.

OK, full disclosure here. I intentionally phrased my question in a somewhat naive manner, hoping to generate some discussion. Only one answer so far, so I guess I'll answer my own question to throw in my .02. :) In a professional capacity, I have occasionally worked at ESD-controlled work-stations and have had some ESD training. However, the training explained how to use such a work-station, but not how to actually set one up. Most hobbyists seem to be fairly casual about ESD, so I was interested to find out how applicable, or necessary, industrial practices are for the home tinkerer. In the past, I've been fairly casual about ESD myself when fiddling around in my computer. But I figured I should perhaps be more rigorous, so I was interested in how others worked. And I thought this sort of information might be quite pertinent for the casual tinkerer. mayer, thanks for your answer. It confirmed that I should have a properly grounded work space. I also did some searching around on the internet for more infor...

Very handy guide. I just replaced the internal drive on my iMac and it's working well. Here also is a pretty good video of the procedure:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShY8zuT-w...

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsIU1XEk...