Hi Can I replace the 2TB hdd of fusion drive with an ssd (which is slower than the 128GB pci ssd) to good effect? Some say the result of refusing the fusion drive could make things much slower. 2019 iMac. 3.7GHZ.
iMac, OS X 10.11
I would not return to a fusion drive architecture. Fusion drive reliability has been problematic. I would replace the original drive with a new 2 TB SSD, OWC/Macsales offers several low cost options with speeds like 2500 MB/s write and 3500 MB/s read (I obtained one of these, the blade version, for our 2013 MacBook Air in fact, when its internal original SSD failed). If there is a way to retain the HDD perhaps you could do that as well, but that's a minor consideration (in my view). A 5-year old HDD has probably limited useful life left anyway.
I also replaced the original HDD that came in our 2015 iMac with an SSD and it works great. I had an Apple Authorized Service Provider handle this because I wasn't comfortable working in the tight confines of the iMac myself.
I would not return to a fusion drive architecture. Fusion drive reliability has been problematic. I would replace the original drive with a new 2 TB SSD, OWC/Macsales offers several low cost options with speeds like 2500 MB/s write and 3500 MB/s read (I obtained one of these, the blade version, for our 2013 MacBook Air in fact, when its internal original SSD failed). If there is a way to retain the HDD perhaps you could do that as well, but that's a minor consideration (in my view). A 5-year old HDD has probably limited useful life left anyway.
I also replaced the original HDD that came in our 2015 iMac with an SSD and it works great. I had an Apple Authorized Service Provider handle this because I wasn't comfortable working in the tight confines of the iMac myself.
I think what was meant is using it fused would be slower than using it without fusing. I don’t believe it would be slower than the HDD Fusion Drive.
How large is the SSD in the iMac? If small, you might be better off just using the new SSD as the startup and ignoring the original SSD.
If you replace the fusion drive with a high quality SSD the SSD will be much faster.
Hi Barney-15E
Thanks for that. I found out yesterday that as I’m using OSX 13.3, firmware would be upgraded with future system upgrades if I installed a much larger non-apple blade ssd to a minimum of 1TB, perhaps 2TB, and then use the HDD separately. The Aura X2Pro looks good. I don’t want to use external nvme drive if possible. I wonder in this case using a 2TB blade if heat might be a problem. Heat sink needed?
Thanks Steve626,
i was wondering that. I’m also exploring the upgrade of the blade ssd and not fusing the hdd at all. I don’t want to use external drive if poss
I don’t know the answers to those questions.
Replacing fusion drive hdd with ssd
