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- Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement upgrade#
- Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement full#
- Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement pro#
Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement full#
Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement upgrade#
Thankfully, OWC's SSD Upgrade DIY Kits now overcome all of these obstacles for each line and taking the computer apart and putting it back together again is the remaining challenge.Īs noted in the last line, OWC does now offer a kit that will supposedly over come the issue. Needless to say, the obstacles to upgrade the hard drive in these models was quite disappointing. In short, the Apple-branded main hard drive cannot be moved, removed or replaced.
Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement pro#
We've installed our Mercury Pro 6G SSD in that bay, it too results in ludicrous speed engaged fans and an AHT failure. From our testing, we've found that removing this drive from the system, or even from that bay itself, causes the machines hard drive fans to spin at maximum speed and replacing the drive with any non-Apple original drive will result in the iMac failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT). Hard drive temperature control is regulated by a combination of this cable and Apple proprietary firmware on the hard drive itself. Here it is:įor the "Mid-2011" models, OWC once more touched off a firestorm across the blogosphere by reporting that Apple had gone even further in the company's effort to restrict hard drive upgrade options:įor the main 3.5" SATA hard drive bay in the new 2011 machines, Apple has altered the SATA power connector itself from a standard 4-wire power configuration to a 7-wire configuration. The specifically relevant part is down further on the page just above some videos for the process. Here is a page on that gives lots of information: Apple engaged in practice of "we do not want to upgrade or replace the drives" in the Late 2009 through Late 2011 iMac models and thus did things to make that process difficult (beyond the physically difficult process of actually replacing a drive). Now, there is one more VERY important thing to note. The exact process will depend on whether you have the 21.5" Mid 2011 model or the 27" Mid 2011 model. You have to be willing to do fairly heavy deconstruction on your iMac. It is now where near as easy as opening up a Windows tower (or even many laptops) to swap a drive. They use a 3.5" standard desktop hard drive, although you can also use a 2.5" hard drive form factor that SSDs use if you wanted an SSD, but I believe you will need an adapter as shown in this link:ĭoing the upgrade yourself is not really for the faint of heart. Does the iMac take a special hard drive, or will any hard drive do. It freezes up on me, and I have to restart it using command+r, and reinstalling the OS.
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My 2011 iMac is acting like the hard drive is going bad.