iMac Intel 21.5" (Mid 2011) Dual Hard Drive Kit

Mijn probleem

The internal HD had been slow for a while, so I thought I would add an SSD.

Mijn oplossing

The first time I opened it, I was afraid I broke it, because the vertical sync cable didn't look like it was connected to anything and was in fact missing its connector. Also, the video cable popped right out of the motherboard without me first using the tab to unlock it, which made me think I might have broken that cable.

When I put everything back together, I didn't fully heed the advice about making sure cables were taped down before reseating the motherboard, so I took out the motherboard perhaps 2 more times than I needed to.

When it was all put back together, I powered it up and heard the familiar chime, but then there was no video and the fans spun up to full speed. I thought I had killed the computer.

But, just for grins, I decided to re-try attaching the LCD display to the motherboard. To save time, I tried to start it without any RAM in the computer, but that's... a non-starter. No chime, just a tone.

I was totally scared by now, but I put in the RAM, and I got video. And the SSD was there. I initialized it and now I am copying the HD to it so I can just boot off of the SSD.

Mijn advies

1. Don't give up.

2. The vertical sync cable appears to be optional. It did not look like it was attached to anything when I first opened the Mac, and I didn't attach it to anything when I re-assembled everything.

3. The repair guide says which cable goes to which connector of the WiFi antenna, but mine had the cables in a different orientation. So I wrote that down and re-connected it that way instead of going with what the guide said.

4. When you are taping the cables down before re-seating the motherboard, it can be helpful to go backward through the repair guide to check that every cable is where it needs to be. That way, even if they are taped, they will also reach where they need to go before you screw the motherboard down.

Mijn probleem

I wanted to add more space to my iMac so I could use it more so as a media server instead of having everything on external hard drives. Having everything in one spot makes it faster to browse and easier for me.

Mijn oplossing

Everything started out good. Ordered the iMac hard drive kit from iFixit so had all the necessary tools to complete the task and set aside a day to get the work done. I watched the YouTube video as I was doing the work so I could follow it step by step and pause when I needed too.

After I got the new cables plugged in on the back of the logic board I started reseating it and once it was back in started plugging cables back in. In the video, MJ says to "make sure all the cables are out of the way and don't get pinched" or something to that effect. Well I was about to plug the power button back in when I noticed the connector had broken off. The power bottom is welded to the back of the iMac housing so you can't really replace that easily. So I thought I was screwed.

What I ended up doing was purchasing a new housing off eBay with nothing in it for cheap and was going to transfer everything over from the old housing to the new. Sounds simple right? Well, I bought the correct serial number but it wasn't from the same time of year as my iMac. So they didn't match up and I couldn't transfer everything. So again, I thought I was screwed.

So now what do I do? Well, I cut out the wire from the new housing with the connector on it and soldered it to my iMac so now I had a working connector. Used heat shrink tubing to protect the soldered connection and plugged everything back in and closed it all up and thought I was in the clear.

Once everything was put back together I plugged in the power cord and the keyboard and was ready to turn it on. I sat back, stared for 5 seconds and pushed the power button (moment of truth) and, nothing happened. So I thought I was screwed, again. But then I remember I had unplugged the cord from the wall to plug in my laptop earlier that week. So after a smack to the head, a cord plugged back into the wall I hit the power button again and heard that wonderful Mac sound, "boom" (or however it sounds). Since both hard drives were new it took a minute or so to figure out which one had the operating system on it but once it found it it started up with no problems. Both hard drives are recognized and my iMac now has a 480 GB solid state drive and a 3 TB hard drive in it, so I am happy.

Mijn advies

Listen to MJ, watch those cords and take your time with the more difficult repairs/upgrades.

Mijn probleem

Slow performance using the original 1TB 7200 RPM hard disk. Installed a 500 GB WD Blue SSD to work alongside the HDD (custom Fusion Drive).

Mijn oplossing

Process was simple. Remove screen, remove superdrive, remove mainboard, install SSD and necessary cables, and reinstall. No issues whatsoever.

Mijn advies

Take your time, take photos if necessary for reference, and be gentle on all the small plastic connectors. Get a can of compressed air while everything is apart and give it a complete cleaning before you reassemble.

Mijn probleem

My 2011 iMac was booting slowly and needed more disk space. I figured a new SSD would help it to run faster so I could reliably use it for music recording / production again.

Mijn oplossing

Everything went fine! I was scared to take the screen off but it turned out to be much easier than I expected. As long as you sort all the screws you take out of the computer, and keep them from getting lost, reassembly will be a breeze. Overall it took me maybe two hours from when I started to my first boot with the SSD installed.

Mijn advies

I'm still not sure whether I went about installing OS X on my SSD in the best way - transferring all my applications, and especially my music plug-ins, to the new boot drive has been much harder than actually installing it was!

Mijn probleem

I replaced the (long-time broken) Optical Drive with an SSD, using a mounting from a previous upgrade. The total time was not very long, but I had to interrupt progress fron time-to-time. The Repair Guide mentions to tape back the loose cables before re-inserting the logic board -- OH YES! It was frustrating to do it twice, but no harm done.

Mijn oplossing

Followed the Guide (almost) to the letter. Now I boot the iMac from SSD and made a symlink to the HDD /Users node, now I can use the whole hard drive for /Users data.

Mijn advies

When the iMac is opened, it's easy to clean out the dust and cat hairs from the insides.

Mijn probleem

Nothing particularly the matter, I just wanted an SSD for faster load times.

Mijn oplossing

The repair went well. I was a little concerned I was going to mess something up, as I always am, and that my CPU wouldn't boot when I was done. Everything is so tightly packed into a mac, it makes for some pretty intense installations. I laid out a terry cloth towel on my bed and got to it. I didn't feel like clearing my desk off... I turned all the lights on, but still found a way to need the light on my iPhone sometimes. Everything went pretty smoothly, considering the difficulty. The only real issue I had was that, despite my best efforts, the IR sensor cable would not come out of it's socket. I tried with my thumbs, and the edge of the tweezers. Eventually, the wires came out of the connector, and the whole thing was scrap. Part of the IR connector is still in its socket. I'm just thankful it was something I didn't care about. If I need to control anything on my CPU it's done through an app on my iPhone. Getting behind the logic board is definitely tight and awkward. All things considered though, it is really not that bad of an install.

Mijn advies

Make sure you have really good lighting. It was a pain to have to angle my phone flashlight, or just hold it when I could really use two hands. Also, a spudger might have saved my IR connector, and it is not included in the kit. That connector was really stuck in there though. Good luck!

Mijn probleem

My iMac was getting a little long in the tooth, and after using a MacBook Air with an SSD, I got spoiled by the speed of that little computer. So after researching a bit, I decided to take a plunge on creating my own fusion drive using the existing 500 GB hard drive and a 120 GB SSD I picked up on sale at Best Buy.

Mijn oplossing

The total process took me several hours. I had never done this much work inside an iMac before, so I went very slowly and I would watch parts of the video tutorial as well as reading through the documentation (using iFixit's great little iOS app). I would keep double checking what I was doing, as I was worried I'd mess something up. But it basically went smoothly. I then got it back together and followed a tutorial for setting up the fusion drive, and now I'm enjoying faster boot speeds, faster app load times, etc. My computer feels new again! Thanks to iFixit!

Mijn advies

Definitely watch the video a time or two before starting. Then just pay close attention to the instructional guide as you go through it step by step. Also, pay attention to the part where it says to tape the cables back and out of the way that you pull from the logic board. It will make putting the logic board back in much easier. I didn't follow that step, and I had a moment of panic when I couldn't find one of the cables and it was kind of a pain to get the board back in with all the cables out of the way. That was probably my one goof during the process.

Mijn probleem

My iMac was over 3 years old. Has a decent i5 and graphics card but a old school HDD. I use my machine for audio podcast production so I was worried that it wouldn't keep up with my production goals.

Mijn oplossing

Amazing! The guide was perfect. Easy to follow with pictures that we exactly what I needed during the repair. I only replaced the main hard drive so I didn't need to remove the whole logic board. A few tense moments with flex cables but everything booted up after the swap.

Mijn advies

CLEAN EVERYTHING! Once you remove the cover glass it will be covered in dust. Clean, clean, clean. Then continue cleaning. You will notice every little spec. Also boot your machine before attaching the glass to verify everything went ok.

Mijn probleem

IMac 21.5" Mid 2011 running slow due to fullish 500GB original HD. Wanted SSD for speed, big HDD for storage. Apple "Fusion Drive" capability automatically manage this.

Mijn oplossing

iFixit kit and instructions are great. Very clear. Just work slowly. Tape down the wires as you unplug them - especially from the main logic board. Remove the RAM before starting.

Whilst the machine was open, I also upgraded the HD to a larger drive, using these instructions, starting at Step 10, after completing all the steps of the Dual Hard Drive installation guide.

iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2428 Hard Drive Replacement

Mijn advies

FIX NOISY FANS

One main issue - the Mac fans ran very fast after upgrade. Both the CPU fan and HD fan (not the Optical Disk Drive one). Maybe I did something wrong but there are lots of reports online of this being an issue with Yosemite with replacement hard disks and SSDs on iMacs.

If you Google you'll see several Mac "fan control" programs. I tried 4 of them til I found one that actually worked for me --- "Macs Fan Control" by CrystalIdea software.

http://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-cont...

Free and worked for me

iStats Menus is also useful to monitor all the temperatures in the Mac (but its fan control feature did nothing for me):

http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

FRESH INSTALL OF OSX USING USB FLASH DRIVE

This is useful for doing a "clean install" of Yosemite onto your new drive, especially if you use a fast USB3 Flash Drive:

http://danfrakes.com/2014/10/16/how-to-m...

MAKE YOUR OWN FUSION DRIVE

Additionally before you do the OS install, for "extra points", if you have an SSD and an HDD with a recent Mac OS you can make them into your own "Fusion Drive". Apple came up with this a couple of years ago -- "the speed of an SSD and the space of an HDD". They charge ~$500 extra for Fusion Drives on new Macs. Turns out this appears to just be software that's already built into recent OSX version. Very slick. It "fuses" the SSD and HDD together and OSX manages which files should go where and automatically moves files you use often to the SSD for speed and moves ones you use less to the HDD for capacity. I now have a single "Fusion Drive" with 2TB+128GB capacity.

This is very easy to do using instructions below. First backup everything (a completely separate Time Machine backup is good). I then installed the new 128 GB SSD and 2 TB HDD into the iMac using the iFixit instructions and kit. Take the old drive and attach it using a USB drive adapter, e.g.

Universal Drive Adapter

Follow the instructions to create the Fusion Drive here:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?st...

There are other sets of Fusion Drive instructions out there without the Recovery Partition. What I did was to first do an OSX install onto the SSD which creates the recovery partition for you. THEN create the Fusion Drive, using only the "data" partition on the SSD, leaving the Recovery Partition in place.

Once the Fusion Drive is created:

1) Install OSX onto the Fusion Drive (the prior install and the other contents of the SSD, other than the Recovery Partition, get wiped when you create the Fusion Drive)

2) Use Migration Assistant (in Applications/Utilities) and your old drive connected via the external USB adapter to move all your apps, docs, etc back in to place on your new Fusion Drive.

Some of these steps take a while to run (several hours for me) but you can walk away and let them run unattended, e.g. overnight. I'd allow a weekend to do this if this is your work machine.

Very happy with the results