The situation is not helped by ingress of dust into the extensive cooling system so a top tip is to have your iMac stripped and cleaned once a year. This heat is a big enemy of hard drives and will cause earlier failure than is normal. Having done it once though now, I could breeze through it a second time in a fraction of the time.A really common problem on iMacs unfortunately as a large amount of heat is generated inside that nice sleek aluminium housing. Once you have it off it's just a ton of screws and cables to unhook, nothing too crazy. The hardest and most risky part is taking the display off and then putting it back on, mainly because it was new to me. Though I would only recommend doing it if your Mac has a dead part and isn't worth enough to pay Apple to repair it, and not just to upgrade the RAM or Disk to a larger size, because no matter how careful you are, accidents can happen and when dealing with such delicate parts it would be pretty easy to wreck your Mac. It's a lot of steps and takes a good amount of time, but if you follow the iFixit guide precisely, which is excellent BTW, and are very careful, anyone with decent repair skills and a careful hand should be able to do it. Additionally I was able to clean out a TON of dust that accumulated inside over the years, which likely was affecting the iMac's outflow of air and ability to keep it cool, because I was also having issues with the fan coming on way too frequently before.įor those who want to try this, it's very doable.

Cost was under $100 for the SSD, the 3 special screwdrivers you need, and the adhesive strips, vs the $500 Apple wanted to charge. The computer works 100% now! I also went for a larger capacity 512GB drive, so it turned out to be an upgrade too. I ended up replacing the hard drive myself and it was a success. what is it that leads you to believe the internal SSD has failed? $400 is too much to put into a 7-year-old iMac at this point.įinally. Even the base model comes very-well equipped. Get yourself a 'base model' refurbished Mac Studio. Run this way until the Apple Refurbished Store gets some Mac Studios Get an external SSD for booting (don't spend more than $100 or so)

Then, just leave the internal blade SSD 'dead, but in place'.īE AWARE that a new Mini probably won't arrive until towards the end of the year or next year.īE AWARE that we're not likely to see a 'new' 27' iMac for a good while. This is easy to do (even I could do it, and if I can do it, you can). You might consider buying an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD (such as the Samsung t5), plugging that in, and setting it up to become your new boot SSD. Having said that, it's probably not worth $400 to have Apple do it.

Did this iMac come with just the blade SSD, or is it part of a 'fusion drive'?

Replace hard drive imac 2015