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The Apple Support Community will permanently close on November 20, 2026. Starting today, the site will no longer accept new posts and is available in a read-only state.
You can continue to find trusted guidance and support on the official Apple Support site.
We want to thank the community members who have contributed their time and expertise to help others with their Apple products.
Can I take the Samsung SSD 850 Evo drive out of my late 2009 iMac 27" and put it in a newer iMac?
That iMac was running on Snow Leopard with an El Capitan partition.
Thanks
iMac 27″, OS X 10.11
What newer iMac are you wanting to put it into?
FWIW
1) newer iMac are sealed units and not as ease to work on.
2) many of the newer iMac's can not take a 2.5" SATA SSD.
3) it might do better to put the SSD into an external box.
OK
Best bet is to just get a 2.5” external drive enclosure to put the SSD into.
With an older Mac 2012 - 2015 iMac, an enclosure with USB 3.0 is your best bet.
If you end up with a 2017 or newer iMac, an enclosure with USB-C is a good option.
Depends on the year model. A later iMac can not boot from Snow Leopard, but you can access all of the user data on the SSD and/or upgrade to a macOS that runs on the later Mac.
If I were going to replace the drive in my Mac, which I actually did, I'd never even consider an old, used drive.
If you're going to the trouble of opening it up, which may be more difficult than you know, use a new component and put the old brive in a USB enclosure to be a dedicated backup drive maybe.
Thanks for replying.
My late 2009's graphic card died - and after pricing to replace the card, it may be cheaper to buy a newer (used) iMac and transfer the SSD drive into it (which I'd just put into the iMac before the graphics card died).
Cool. Would it be possible to boot off the enclosed SSD drive? (to have access to some programs that ran on Snow Leopard)
Samsung SSD 850 Evo drive
