iMac late 2012 Blade SSD Upgrade

[jasongoldworthy]

hi guys I have a late 2012 iMac 27 inch version

it has a blade SSD in there now but in a fusion drive of 2.25TB

im wondering if splitting it from the mechanical disk that is 2tb and replacing the blade with a bigger one will be better than the fusion drive itself ?

don't get me wrong the iMac isn't slow in any form

it has an i7 cpu 32gb ram

I know its getting older now but its more than capable for my needs.

any ideas of the best drive to replace the apple blade with ?

thanks

 

[MacInWin]

Don't mean to be rude, but you do understand the SSD is in fusion with the other drive, right? They are merged by software to look like one drive to you. Remove either and you lose everything on both. So if your current setup is working, don't mess with it.

Now, if what you want to do is get a larger SSD to replace the entire fusion drive, that can be done, but first make a full backup of the fusion drive, then remove both the SSD and the rotational drive and replace them with one SSD. I don't know if you can put just a blade in and be done with it or or not, but you can check with Apple Mac Upgrades - RAM, SSD Flash, External Drives and More to see what they say. I know you are in UK, but OWC can still be your source for what to do, if not the drive itself.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

Hi jake

Thanks for the reply yeah I totally understand that they are both fused together to make one,

Originally it didn’t come with a fusion drive I got an official Apple drive of 250GB in the blade format and installed it in the iMac

Then repaired the fusion drive via the command line (not sure of the correct name)

And made the fusion drive whole.


Would you say get a blade one ?

Or a standard SSD ?

Thanks

 

[MacInWin]

I personally do not like fusion drives. They double your exposure to hardware problems. SSDs are, IMHO, a better option but very pricy for the same size. SSDs also don't usually give any warning before they fail, so backup are more critical. But, oh, the speed!

On the other hand, that iMac is now 8 years old. How much money do you want to put into an 8 year old system? if it's doing what you need, why not just let it be, save your pennies for a newer machine and get both a speedy drive and upgrades of CPU/Graphics?

 

[ferrarr]

Would you say get a blade one ?

Or a standard SSD ?

Regular SSD and blade SSD are separated by a lot of money for the same GB.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

I personally do not like fusion drives. They double your exposure to hardware problems. SSDs are, IMHO, a better option but very pricy for the same size. SSDs also don't usually give any warning before they fail, so backup are more critical. But, oh, the speed!

On the other hand, that iMac is now 8 years old. How much money do you want to put into an 8 year old system? if it's doing what you need, why not just let it be, save your pennies for a newer machine and get both a speedy drive and upgrades of CPU/Graphics?

hi Jake thanks for the reply your right the storage isn't an issue as I don't use 10% of it really all my files and data is saved to my home server,

but maybe Its time to save the extra and get a newer machine

as I know the generations have moved on massive amounts since this iMac,

thanks for the reply

- - - Updated - - -

Regular SSD and blade SSD are separated by a lot of money for the same GB.

hi bob thanks for the reply also yes your right its mad how much different the prices are between both especially as this one uses apple's proprietary drive slot for the blade drive,

as I made the mistake once of getting a MacBook Pro 2013 blade drive that was 512gb and discovered it wouldn't fit,

thinking they was using the same as the 2012 blade drives lol (idiot mistake on my part)