Hard Drive and Blade Flash Drive upgrade

j_loch32 wrote:

Can I upgrade the 1TB HDD and the 32GB Flash storage in my iMac 21.5" 4K Retina 2017?

Other World Computing sells blade SSDs that will fit that Mac – assuming that it came with a factory-installed SSD or Fusion Drive. (If it only came with a mechanical hard drive, I suspect Apple left off the connector that one would need to install a SSD. They did that with some of the iMacs.)

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/imac-21.5-inch/2013-2019

There are several MAJOR caveats:

• That Mac is not designed to be user-serviceable – and it would be easy to damage it in the process of getting to all of the components you want to replace.
• The Fusion Drive thing adds more complexity. Splitting the existing Fusion Drive will destroy (though not erase) the volume – and creating a new Fusion Drive would require additional steps. If I was installing a new blade SSD and SATA HDD or SSD, or paying a shop to do it, I would keep the drives separate.
• You need to upgrade to High Sierra or later before installing the OWC blade drive, so that the Mac will have the proper firmware to use the drive.
• If you install a third-party SSD inside of your Mac before you upgrade to Monterey (or later), and then later try to install Monterey (or later), the installation will fail. It's been reported that Monterey does a firmware upgrade, on an as-needed basis, but that this firmware upgrade (and the OS upgrade) fails if the SSD is a non-Apple one.
• There's no guarantee that you won't run into similar issues with versions of macOS after Monterey. (Although in your case, the only higher OS that you could install would be Ventura.)
• Be sure to have a bootable external drive / backup before doing anything. I wouldn't want to rely upon Internet Recovery working to restore that Mac after replacing the internal drives.

Since that Mac has USB-A (USB 3.0) ports and USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports, there are a wide variety of external SSDs that you could connect to it, without the risks involved in opening up the case.

Why do you want to use a Fusion Drive with two internal SSDs? SSDs can only be written to so many times before they wear out. If the two SSDs are combined into a Fusion Drive (assuming the macOS utility will allow you to create the Fusion Drive under those conditions), then you will be writing the data to both SSDs causing them both to wear prematurely. A Fusion Drive is a complex setup which is much more prone to breaking than using a single SSD (or two separate SSDs independently).

FYI, memory is probably a waste of money as well unless you know for certain that you were running low on memory for the heaviest workload. You can determine if memory is an issue by using the Mac normally. Then after performing the most memory intense workload, check the Memory tab of Activity Monitor. If the Memory Pressure graph is in the red, then you need more memory for that workload. If the Memory Pressure graph is yellow, then you are borderline on memory. If the graph is green and "Swap" and/or "Compressed" is using GBs of memory, then you may need more memory for that workload if performance was reduced. Otherwise you do not need more memory.

No, but you can add an external SSD and use that. This is much easier and you stand MUCH MUCH less risk. Please refer to How to setup an external SSD as your startup disk and the SSD I recommend is the https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-sx

+1 to the external SSD method.

The memory and storage in your Mac aren't user-upgradable components. Using an external SSD as your startup disk is a great way to easily add high-performance storage to your Mac. To learn how, this user tip should help: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community.

-Jack

j_loch32 wrote:

Can I upgrade the 1TB HDD and the 32GB Flash storage in my iMac 21.5" 4K Retina 2017?

I am opening up the iMac to upgrade the RAM & HDD to SDD and would also like to upgrade the 32GB Flash storage with OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD.

yes, that would work. normally I would not recommend most users trying to complete that particular hardware upgrade on their own. I too would recommend the external SSD option. but if you have confidence in your ability to carry out the upgrade on your own, then I say go for it. just please take your time. opening the iMac to replace components is something you don't want to rush through.

Have you checked the Memory Pressure graph in Activity Monitor to see whether your Mac needs more RAM? The graph is color coded – if you see Green while running your normal workload, that means you have enough RAM. It's when you see Yellow and Red that it would be time to start thinking about an upgrade.