Fusion and hard drive replacement on late 2012 imac
Hi,
I’ve got a late-2012 27” iMac, and the internal hard drive is failing. I’m planning to replace it but would appreciate advice on something.
The original hard drive in this computer is a “fusion” drive. I’m under the impression that this means it has both a larger mechanical drive plus a smaller solid state drive, but I read conflicting answers as to whether both devices are in a single 3.5” bay or if the mechanical drive is in the 3.5” bay and the solid state storage is actually a chip buried elsewhere in the computer. (The replacement instructions for the drive itself sound tough but manageable, but the instructions to remove the chip sound prohibitively difficult.)
My questions are:
- Any way for me to tell which configuration I have?
- If do in fact have the “separate chip” configuration, what would happen if I replace the mechanical drive in the 3.5” bay with an SSD but leave the chip buried and untouched? Will the system continue to “fusion” (but with limited benefit as the SSD is probably nearly as fast as the flash(?) chip)? Or is there a way to tell the computer to just ignore the chip?
Thanks!
iMac 27″, macOS 10.14