Replacement Hard drive type

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iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display (Late 2014 & 2015)

Model A1419 / EMC 2806 / Late 2014 or Mid 2015. 3.3 or 3.5 GHz Core i5 or 4.0 GHz Core i7 (ID iMac15,1); EMC 2834 late 2015 / 3.3 or 3.5 GHz Core i5 or 4.0 GHz Core i7 (iMac17,1) All with Retina 5K displays

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Robin Gottschalk @rflight

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发帖于: 2021年1月25日

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Replacement Hard drive type

Dear all,

my FusionDrive in my 27” iMac (Late 2015 IIRC) died, it briefly spins up and then down again, then the circle with line icon shows. Any attempt to fix this failed, so I am going to replace the drive. I ordered this kit here:

https://eustore.ifixit.com/products/imac...

without an SSD as I think I’ll go for a conventional HDD such as the WD Red editions I have running without issues in my NAS for years.

1.) Can I use any hard drive, or does the drive need a specific spec like regarding transfer rate?

2.) What is the HDD enclosure with USB in cable in the kit for?

Many thanks & best regards, Robin

Hello Dan

Many thanks for your answer. Let me give some more detail. The 3TB Fusion Drive crashed on me and I do not want to go back to a fusion drive as I think it was a good solution back in the days were SSDs were expensive but today I think it’s a flawed design because there is no longer the need to have two systems (SSD and HDD) working together and sharing blocks of the same file. I do not want to fix my Fusion drive. I first wanted to sell the iMac as I bought a new iMac already. I therefore planned on putting a 500GB SSD in it. But I now have changed my mind and will keep the iMac for my man’s cave. I don’t need the speed of an SSD for that, so I therefore rather put a conventional WD Red CMR enterprise disk in it. So therefore more questions:

1) Can I use any 3.5” drive or is there some spec they need to specifically have? I have this one in mind.

2) Can I use the adapter cable that came with the kit? I suspect yes and stick the temp sensor near the center IIRC as in the manual on this site

3) I still wonder what that iFixit black enclosure with USB cable is for?

Many thanks and best regards, Robin

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@rflight - Please cancel your order as this is not what you want.

由 Dan 完成的 2021年1月25日

@danj The kit is already here :-)

由 Robin Gottschalk 完成的 2021年1月25日

@rflight - Don't open it as you'll want to return it or you've wasted your money ;-{

I would just go with a 2.5" SSD at this point.

由 Dan 完成的 2021年1月25日

@danj Kit already opened lol, I always do that when parcels arrive lol. Ok let me buy an SSD then. Will this one work: https://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product/sam...

由 Robin Gottschalk 完成的 2021年1月25日

@rflight - Thats a good drive!

由 Dan 完成的 2021年1月25日

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@rflight - Please cancel your order as this is not what you want. — Dan
@rflight - Don't open it as you'll want to return it or you've wasted your money ;-{

I would just go with a 2.5" SSD at this point. — Dan
@danj Kit already opened lol, I always do that when parcels arrive lol. Ok let me buy an SSD then. Will this one work: https://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product/sam... — Robin Gottschalk

Dan @danj 声誉积分: 478.9千 Self employed contract worker 35 329 970 · Answer 1 · 2021-01-25T07:12:55-07:00

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Dan @danj

声誉积分: 478.9千

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发帖于: 2021年1月25日

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Hold on here! Why are you jumping to a 2.5” drive Vs sticking with the 3.5” your system uses?

If you are going to go with a HDD then stick with a 3.5” as they run at a faster RPM (faster)

Frankly, I would go with a hybrid SSHD drive which is a even better than a HDD. But we still have the SSD drive mate of your current Fusion Drive to deal with.

How about telling us a bit more on what you use your system for so we aim you to the best option for your needs.

To help clarify a few points you raised in your update…

1 - The WD Red drive don’t offer same caching as the traditional drives as its intended for NAS systems which you don’t want caching as that can screw things up in a RAID set which is what most NAS’s are setup with.

2 - You don’t need an external thermal sensor in your system if you are running the newer firmware (newer macOS release). So the only things you would use here is the tapes and the tools.

3 - The external 2.5 case was so you could connect your new SSD to your system to allow you to use TimeMachine and Migration Assistant to install a fresh OS and copy-off your user accounts, apps and data over.

You do want to reformat your blade SSD fully so it doesn’t get used as a caching drive.

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Thank you for all the detailed answers. What is the blade SSD for? Is the one on the logic board and is it part of the Fusion drive? If yes, how do I know which part of my Fusion drive (SSD or HDD) died as it does not appear at all in disk utility? Or am I mixing things up completely? I would just like to use my new Samsung SSD without any Fusion. Possible?

由 Robin Gottschalk 完成的 2021年1月27日

@rflight - Ah! What is a Fusion drive! It's two physical drives a large HDD and a smaller SSD which is not seen as its just a cache drive to the HDD. These two drives are what your system has the SATA HDD and the blade SSD. What often gets people confused is hybrid drives like Seagate's SSHD's which is a single drive that has a large SSD imbedded within it which is doing the caching. In fact it was the first one to marry the two technologies together to offer something in-between a slow HDD and a fast SSD drive. Apple took the idea and ran with it but instead of managing the caching within the drives firmware they did it at the OS level.

There are pro's and con's to each approach but in a nutshell it was a way to raise performance at a lower the cost! Today things are a bit different SSD costs have dropped while still more expensive there are not as far a reach as in the past.

由 Dan 完成的 2021年1月27日

OK so what to do??

Replacing the HDD for a SSD is not a bad solution! But you do want to remove the Blade SSD or at least make it in active just by formatting it. But you first need to break the fusion drive set (if you have an older macOS release). Thats if I was not doing anything heavy or deep which needed super performance iMac 因特尔 27" Retina 5K 显示屏硬盘更换

Frankly, I prefer a dual drive setup! in this setup you would replace the impish small blade SSD and put in a 500GB or 1TB blade SSD as the blade interface is much faster than the SATA one. I would leave the HDD alone using it to bulk store my content. Using the blade SSD as my boot drive and hold my apps as well as offer the needed elbow room my OS and apps require for caching and scratch space. But this is a more costly solution but gives you the max performance this system can offer 27英寸 5K Retina 显示屏 iMac 固态硬盘SSD 更换 Here's a bit more on the blade SSD's The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs and gets into the different performances of the different drive I/O's

由 Dan 完成的 2021年1月27日

@danj again thanks for all the detail. I knew the Fusion Drive consists of a HDD and separate SSD but I thought they were both in the same encosure. I really didn't want to buy another SSD (blade) since cost is slowly getting out of hand and just use my iMac with the Samsung 860 Evo Basic and disable the Fusion SDD. But I cannot access the blade SSD nor the HDD as it simply does not show in Disk Utility. How do I break it? Or is breaking not necessary when I stick in my new Samsung Evo 860 and remove the blade SDD while the iMac is open?

由 Robin Gottschalk 完成的 2021年1月27日

@rflight - Split Your Fusion Drive Apart

由 Dan 完成的 2021年1月27日

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iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display (Late 2014 & 2015)

Replacement Hard drive type

Update (01/25/2021)

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Update (01/25/2021)

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