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Hello,
I'm planning to remove the Fusion Drive from the iMac 5K and replace it with a Samsung 512GB SSD + upgrading the Apple PCIE SSD to 512GB.
Is that possible?
Thanks in advance :)
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I would think long and hard here before attempting this. First these systems are a bear to open! Many people have damaged their displays in the process in these newer 'Thin Series' iMacs. If you do attempt this make sure you have the right tools and have a few sets of adhesive strips (in case you need to reopen).
OK, lets hit the different things you have here:
Larger SSD's are not presently available from Apple and so far no 3rd parties that offer upgrades are offering SSD upgrades for the newer 'Thin Series' iMac's. I should also point out you need to completely remove the logic board to even gain access to the SSD socket. Here's the IFIXIT guide as a reference: iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display SSD Replacement.
Before you do this you need to break the Fusion Drive set first as if you replace the HD the blade SSD it was mated to will re-establish a Fusion set with your new drive (which you don't want to do here). You also want to make an external bootable USB thumb drive with the OS installer so you can reformat and install a fresh OS on your SSD.
Follow this IFIXIT guide on replacing your HD: iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Hard Drive Replacement. In this case you'll need an adapter cable to replace the thermal sensor the HD has as the SSD doesn't have one that is accessible to the system heat management system (SMC). OWC offers the needed part: OWC In-line Digital Thermal Sensor for Hard Drive Upgrade for 27" iMacs 2012 and Later.
To be honest here. You may want to think about selling your iMac and jumping up to a Mac Pro system if you want this level of power and more! It's a lot more serviceable and expandable both internally and externally.
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I don't think that iMac 2013 later requires a thermal sensor cable if it is not using Seagate HDD because other brand HDDs are using S.M.A.R.T to communicate heat info. If you want to use SSD to replace HDD, the thermal sensor cable does not even exist in iMac 2013 and later. OWC is absolutely scamming.
@sheenbling - Sorry Evan, you do need it. It's not that simple. Apple is able to access S.M.A.R.T. services of the drive (HD or SSD). But thermal reporting within S.M.A.R.T. requires a hardware IRQ so it is not very timely. This is were Apple contracted the drive makers to make available the diagnostic sensor they had within the drive for burn-in during manufacturing. So, if you get a real Apple OEM drive you could do a swap-out without needing the sensor. But if you get a standard off the shelf drive you'll need the OWC in-line sensor for either HD or SSD.
Yes Dan, what you said is true for the system like Yosemite and older. If you are running El Capitan and Sierra on iMac 2012 later, you don't need the OWC cable because El Capitan's fan control works without checking the HDD temp. If you don't think so, you could install an SSD like Samsung 850 EVO on iMac 2012 and later running Sierra. The cooling fan should work as usual.
@sheenbling - SMC services is hardware based not OS based. You need to either off-set the lack of the sensor or you need to fake out SMC via a software over-ride. I recommend the hardware solution as over time we have learned it is the better solution.
I have a system which needs a new drive I'll double check to see if Apple altered things.
Cool. I understand that SMC is hardware based, however, the fan won't go crazy once you enter El Capitan or Sierra probably because the OS will not need the thermal sensor to collect the temp info in this case. Please try this on your iMac if it is possible. Thank you so much for discussing it with me. Let me know the result on your iMac. Very appreciate for make things clear.
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My iMac was sluggish with the fusion drive so I ended up replacing the HD part for a 2Tb SSD and it is like I have a brand new computer
My only regret is that I didn’t find a way to make the original SSD from the fusion drive functional. It would be neat to have 120 Gb of even faster SSD to run the system and my apps from.
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There are online instructions on splitting the fusion drive. I was able to use bootcamp to install Windows 10 on the unfused 128 GB internal SSD. Works great. This was a 2014 iMac 27" retina. I understand that some of the newer iMacs have smaller SSDs in the fusion drives which would not be useful.
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Does anyone know if it’s possible to install boot camp on the original 128 gb blade?
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To small to be useful!
...but yes, you can once you break apart the fusion drive set
I successfully installed boot camp onto the 128 GB drive and it works great. Both Windows 7 & 10. Replaced the spinning drive with an SSD and installed High Sierra. This was a late 2014 iMac retina.
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Is it possible to upgrad the mechanichal Hd with an ssd and then re-fuse the new ssd with the blade ssd? Will it work as a Fusion drive?
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I suppose it might be possible but not sure why you would want to do it. The purpose of fusion drives is to speed up the spinning drive.
Not worth it! You loose the NVMe's performance. A dual dive config is the better than a Fusion Drive set with dual SSD's.
You still will need to replace the small NVMe blade SSD to something bigger 500GB or 1TB is what I would go with.
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4 opmerkingen
I did this and it was fairly simple. I first cloned from the Fusion drive to the SSD, externally. Then I simply swapped them out.
door clearw
Make sure you don't try to reuse the old HD as your blade SSD in the system will try to recover the Fusion Drive set with your HD is it sees it. You should have broken the drive set before removing the old drive.
door Dan
How do you break the drive set? I didn't know to do that and now I'm having drive issues after replacing the Fusion HDD with a Samsung 860 Pro SSD.
door eric_hartmann
I tried following instructions to split a fusion drive without success. Ended up using terminal commands to reformat both drive. After multiple backups of course.
door mmaloney