Is this SSD compatible with an iMac '27 2017?

Are you wanting to replace your internal drive? If so you might think about getting and external SSD and cloning your boot drive to it with Carbon Copy Cloner. That way you avoid the cost of opening the iMac, replacing the drive and closing again. It can get expensive. Then boot and run from the external drive.

I recommend drives from OWC (MacSales.com) as they have proven reliability, excellent customer support and warranties. Many consider them to be the primer 3rd party supplier for Mac hardware.

For your particular model contact OWC's customer support and get their recommendation for the SSD model that would best suit your iMac model, work requirements and budget.  They may have additional models other than those I've shown above.

As just a satisfied user I have 6 external SSDs on two iMacs, one a 2017 model.

If I look to replacement instructions I see that the 2017 27in iMac does not use a PCI ssd but an 2.5in SATA SSD so you want to look for those.

As a side note: replacing the harddisk can give issues and is generally not supported by Apple

Does your iMac have Apple's Fusion (hybrid) drive? If so, and it is working properly, an SATA SSD could slow your response times. Fusions in that model routinely did over 600MB/sec writes and up to 2000MB/sec reads. An SATA 6GB drive on that iMac's internal SATA bus is going out max at about 500MB/sec.

If you have a Fusion drive that is slow, there are ways to fix that without opening a computer Apple did not want opened.

I fully agree with VikingOSX: the external T-bolt option means great performance with no take apart, a total win-win.

...and give it to a certified lab to install.

Give the number of incidents reported here of so-called "certified labs" trashing a sealed-case iMac like yours, I have doubts. Some have returned iMacs after charging a big repair bill only for the owner to have the US$500+ display assembly fall out and break because the "professional" used Duct-Tape to reseal the case.

Since that mid-2017 iMac has two Thunderbolt-3 ports (aka USB-C), I recommend you save yourself the risk and cost of replacing an internal drive by using a fast external SSD connected via USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Mbps) to one of your Thunderbolt 3 ports.

I suggest that you acquire a Crucial X8 external SSD in your choice of 1, 2, or 4 TB. These are rated at 1050 MB/s and ship with a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 cable that just plugs right into the iMac Thunderbolt-3 port. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to place the internal operating system onto the external SSD, change the startup disk to the Crucial drive, and reboot.

I trust these Crucial X8 drives for Time Machine backups on all of my Macs and have been using them for two years without issue.

Hi,

You need to get 2.5inch SATA SSD, though it's QUITE HARD to replace it by yourself.

You don't mention what version of macOS. I would boot that iMac into Recovery (with the external SSD mounted). You might be able to just select Restore from Time Machine backup and select the external drive to pave it with a bootable operating system and your own data from the Time Machine drive. You may also need to pre-format that external SSD as APFS before the Time Machine restore. Then change your startup disk in System Preferences and you should be good to go.

For a 2015 21.5" iMac retina, I replaced the internal HDD with an SSD and it's been running beautifully for almost three years. Before that I was booting from and external SSD connected via a USB-A port. Honestly, the performance gain by going from an external SSD to an internal SSD wasn't worth the effort. Currently the OS is Monterey; that's the end of the line for OS versions.

The internal SSD is about 60 MBps faster than the external, but operationally the difference is hardly noticeable.

The internal HDD typically ran at 90 MBps read speeds. The external about SSD 480 MBps and the internal SSD 540 MBps

orr971 wrote:

How do I do that if it's literally not working anymore?

That was not clear from your earlier postings. "Wiped" does not necessarily mean "not working."

But now we know and can move on from here.