#Solid state drive for imac 2011 how to#

If you've ever peeked inside an iMac (or checked out an iFixit teardown), you'd note that the innards don't vary tremendously from year to year. The kit and instructions are designed specifically for 27-inch 2011 iMacs, but older iMacs will be getting their own kits soon. Follow this video for upgrade instructions on swapp.

#Solid state drive for imac 2011 how to#

The procedure isn't exactly for the faint of heart - a trained professional deftly dismantles the all-in-one, and tucks the new SSD into a gap under the optical drive. In this video we show you how to Upgrade Apple iMac 2011 21' Hard Drive To Solid State Drive HDD To SSD. OWC has posted an instructional video showing off the process (which should take about an hour).

A mere $45 gets everything you need to stuff an SSD (sold separately) into your Apple all-in-one: A pair of bright red suction cups (just like the pros use!) to pull off the front glass panel, tweezers and several screwdrivers to extract the varied array of screws, a SATA 6Gb/s cable to serve up power and data to the SSD, and some mounting tape to stick the drive inside the machine. It costs between 700 to 1,000 to upgrade the 27-inch iMac from its base 1TB or 2TB Fusion Drive (which pairs a standard hard drive with a small SSD. Apple doesnt just use the extra chassis volume in the iMac for heat dissipation, the system also comes equipped with a single 3.5' hard drive rather than the smaller 2.5. As shipped, both the hard drive bay and SSD bay provided support for the 3 Gb/s Serial ATA 2. Other World Computing - purveyor of Apple-friendly software and accessories - has introduced a kit that aims to take much of the guesswork out of adding a solid-state drive to a 27-inch 2011 iMac. And thatвЂ™s all before you upgrade the drive. You asked, what kind of hard drive is in a 2011 iMacThe Mid-2011 iMac models all support a single 3.5 hard drive and a second 2.5 SSD.