We have done quite a few SSD upgrades on older iMacs since SSDs became ‘mainstream’ – gradually taking over from a long era of slow mechanical hard disk drives, dreadful ‘Hybrid’ drives and ‘Fusion’ drives.
This desktop Mac exhibited the classic symptoms of a failing hard drive; very slow to start-up, taking almost 5 full minutes to fully boot into the operating system. Clicking menu items would cause the cursor to turn to the spinning ‘beach ball’, as the computer struggled to access data from the spinning platters of the old hard drive.
Unlike the first aluminium iMacs that used a system of magnets and screws to hold the protective glass and screen onto the chassis, in a case like this where it’s a 2012 or later iMac, the only way to open the computer is to cut through the adhesive foam tape that holds the screen assembly to the aluminium body. For this task we use a special ‘pizza cutter’ tool that will cut through the foam tape without damaging any delicate cables including those for the webcam and light sensor. Once we’ve done that, we can then get access to the hard drive after carefully disconnecting the cables connecting the screen to the motherboard and power supply.
This unit needed data recovery which we did on a separate computer. After Mac OS was installed on the new SSD, we were then able to copy the recovered data over to the new drive. A few final tests later, we cleaned off the old adhesive from the chassis and screen before sealing it back up with a special iMac screen adhesive tape kit from iFixit. Our client was blown away at the difference in speed – faster than when it was new!
Do you have an older iMac that is running slower than usual? Having to wait for the iMac’s ‘beach ball’ cursor to stop spinning before anything happens? Why not consider the best upgrade for your iMac; a brand new SSD? An SSD is much faster than a traditional old mechanical hard drive, and the difference in the speed of your iMac can be very noticeable. If you’re in the area, we’d be happy to do the SSD upgrade for you at our Sittingbourne workshop. Please contact us.
