Hi,
Although technically not regarded as a customer installable part - is it possible to replace the HD in the latest imacs with a larger SSD?
Are there any implications with the SSD fusion drive?
I am shocked to see how apple is dealing with its internal storage - anyone working in the creative industries with terrabytes of files cant have anything installed on the internal HD which backs up to time machine.
What size and year model is this iMac?
see > Identify your iMac model - Apple Support
Some models can and some can not. Plus all iMac models after 2011, require a display reseal kit and a lot of experience.
for some upgrade ideas, see > https://eshop.macsales.com/upgrades/imac
I think you may have a misunderstanding of what you own. It appears you own a Mac with a Fusion drive. A Fusion drive is a combination of a very small SSD and a HD that are fused together by software. The advantage of a Fusion drive is they are faster than a sole HD but not as fast as a dedicated SSD solution. The downsides are:
What many do is to not use the Fusion drive and either get an external SSD and use that as their boot drive and primary drive. Others will take their computer in and have the HD removed and have a larger capacity internal SSD installed. When the computer was purchased whoever originally bought it did not research SSDs as they have been an option on iMacs for close to 10 years now.
There are many many external solutions that work and that is what the create industries use. OWC has many solution that will work. While I am not a creative professional I do use a Thunderbay 4 with Thunderbolt 3 to store many terrabytes of movies and photographs. Quick and simple to use too.
Of the current iMacs only the 4K models has a replaceable NVMe SSD blade.
The 2020 5K model added a T2 'security' chip that prevents SSD replacement.
Older models with fusion drives can also be upgraded.
Why, you can upgrade the current iMacs up to 8TB, so I'm not sure why that would be a problem. Consider the expandability (512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB & 8 TB) for reasonable costs you have quite a selection. Not to mention there is a wide variety of external storage selections too.
Per MB of storage, apple is unreasonable in its cost compared to PCs or even the cost of the individual components with a 4tb drive costing £400 from samsung. Charging $2400 for only the 8TB storage is unobtainable and unmanageable for most.
What do you suggest when the soldered on storage becomes full in a couple of years time?
Yes external storage is the only option that is upgradable in the future, however time machine will only back up the drive that has the system files on and so inconvenient to have a internal system drive and your essential files kept else where not backed up.
The question I have for the apple community now after this thread is:
Can a mac run solely of an external drive (system and all personal files) and then have time machine back up to a second external drive?
[Edited by Moderator]
If you need additional storage then external obviously is your best bet. Yes a Mac can run on an external drive, they have had that ability for close to 20 years.
You can either clone the internal drive to an external of your start the computer in the Recovery Partition and install Mac OS onto the external drive. /Then it is a simple matter of setting the external drive as the Startup drive. Of course if you take this route the external drive must be formatted correctly to accept Mac OS. You can connect a Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 or 3.1 SSD if you want or if you don't mind slow performance you can use a traditional spinning HD.
Wow - Just wow.
For me that writes off the internal storage of all the current macs from the outset.
Thanks
You have purchased an iMac with a Fusion Drive configuration - HDD plus SSD? From the Apple Store's iMac page there are no Fusion Drive's anymore. They all come with SSDs, only.
is the internal SSD interchangeable with a larger SSD?
so just to clarify as there seems to be some confusion:
The PCI-E Drive I do not want to change
The main Storage SSD I want to upgrade. - This is possible on all the macs except the 27inch 5K models?
Replacing the SSD's on 2020 27" iMacs is not possible, replacing them on earlier 27" iMacs is possible.
hard drive upgrade
