Replacing the HDD with an SSD in a 2012 Imac

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Replacing the HDD with an SSD in a 2012 Imac

Hi there,

I recently bought a used iMac (late 2012 21.5''). As it came already half opened (the glue that holds the display in place got removed) I thought I'd take the opportunity and replace the Hard Drive with a much faster Solid State Drive. However, I heard that in order to do that properly, an adaptor is needed to interface with some kind of thermal sensor. As this thing is pretty expensive, almost as expensive as the SSD itself, is it possible to skip it and if yes, what would that entail?

Thanks in advance,

Simon

iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jul 28, 2021 7:50 AM

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Answer 1

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Allan Jones

Level 9

69,332 points

Jul 28, 2021 8:20 AM in response to Silly_Simon

2011 iMacs definitely needed the thermal cable; not sure about the 2012s. I would ask the people who supply those thermal sensor cables to upgraders:

https://eshop.macsales.com/Service/support

Their upgrade page for that model iMac does not show the "kit" having a thermal cable as does the kit for the 2011 models.

👉🏻 BUT what drive does your iMac have now? There are numerous cautions on that page that those SSDs only work if the computer was built with an SSD or a Fusion drive. Check the fine print:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/imac-21.5-inch/2012

The cheaper option would be an external USB3 drive containing a 6GB/sec SSD set as the boot volume. Transfer speeds would be about 400MB/sec compared to under 80MB/sec for most entry-level iMac 21.5-inchers from 2012 to 2019 that came with a slow, laptop-class drive.

OWC is very good with before the sale help. Talk to them.

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Answer 2

Silly_Simon Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 29, 2021 5:50 AM in response to Allan Jones

Thanks for the insight. I eventually settled on an external ssd I had lying around. It's not perfect but good enough

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Replacing the HDD with an SSD in a 2012 Imac

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