HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 HOW TO
HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 INSTALL
HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 FREE
HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 MAC

HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 MAC

I used the instructions in this Cult of Mac post to do so. Otherwise you may end up with two recovery partitions when you’re done. Use an 8GB or 16GB stick for this, it will allow you to reformat everything on the computer, just to clean things up. Create a Mountain Lion (10.8.2) bootup disk.

HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 FREE

I’ll reproduce the steps I used here feel free to also consult the original articles.ġ. There are other articles that describe the same method, and the first man to realize this was doable and blog about it was Patrick Stein, so he definitely deserves a hat tip. Once I had backed up everything thoroughly through Time Machine, I used the instructions in this Macworld article to proceed. You can opt to do the same, or you can send your computer into OWC for their Turnkey Program, where you can elect to soup it up even more. When I got my iMac back home, all I had to do was to format both the original hard drive and the SSD and proceed with enabling the Fusion Drive ( make sure to back up thoroughly first).

HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 INSTALL

In my case, it just so happened that my iMac needed to go in for service (the video card, SuperDrive and display went bad) and while I had it in there, I asked the technicians to install the SSD behind the optical drive for me.

HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC 2011 HOW TO

Here are a couple of videos that show you how to do this: You can choose to do the installation yourself if you are so inclined, but realize that you may void the warranty on the original hard drive if something goes wrong, and this is according to Apple Tech Support, with whom I checked prior to ordering the kit. The kit includes the suction cups used to remove the screen (held into place with magnets) and a screwdriver set. You will also need a special SATA wire, which is sold as a kit from both OWC and iFixit. The hardware installation is somewhat involved, as you will need to not only open the iMac but also remove most of the connections and also unseat the motherboard so you can get at the SATA III connector on its back. It’s a SATA III (6 Gbps) drive and when I look in System Info, my iMac sees it as such and is able to communicate with it at 6 Gbps, which is really nice. I purchased a 128GB Vertex4 SSD from OCZ. I bought it with a 1TB hard drive, which I recently considered upgrading to a 3TB hard drive but decided against, given the fan control issues with the temperature sensor and the special connector used on the factory drive. My machine is a 27″ mid-2011 iMac with a 3.4 GHz processor and 16GB of RAM. This results in a big performance increase without having to fiddle with bash commands too much. Fusion Drive works automatically once you set it up, moving the files that are used more often onto the SSD and keeping the ones that are accessed less often on the hard drive. Some geekier Mac users will likely prefer to install an SSD and manually separate the system and app files from the user files which take up the most space, which is something that gives them more control over what works faster and what doesn’t, but that’s a more involved process. I like Fusion Drive because it’s simple and automated, like Time Machine.

I’m not sure how this method will work with Macs older than 2011, but I know for sure that it works on mid-2011 iMacs, and quite possibly on other Macs made since then. I have just completed this process for my iMac and I thought it would help you if I detailed it here.

Yes, you can enable Fusion Drive on older Macs.

Hard drive for imac 2011