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RenegadeMonster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2018
12
0
The SSD and RAM came yesterday. Should have the upgrade kit tomorrow.

Do I need to format the drive at all before installing?

Also, would there be any benefit to to pulling out my Time Machine Backup HDD from my external HDD Dock and inserting the the new SSD in it and installing Mac OS before inserting the drive in my iMac?
 

tubeexperience

macrumors 68040
Feb 17, 2016
3,192
3,897
The SSD and RAM came yesterday. Should have the upgrade kit tomorrow.

Do I need to format the drive at all before installing?

Also, would there be any benefit to to pulling out my Time Machine Backup HDD from my external HDD Dock and inserting the the new SSD in it and installing Mac OS before inserting the drive in my iMac?

After you boot from the flash drive (or from Internet Recovery), you should be able to use Disk Utility to format it.
 

RenegadeMonster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2018
12
0
Last Sunday I tackled this project, and while it was a pita to get to the ram everything was completed and my iMac is worker better than ever.

One thing I didn't expect was that internet recovery mode downloaded OS X Mountain Lion. I would have expected it to download the latest available OS, not what my iMac shipped with.

The only issue I need to iron out now is after restoring from my Time Machine, my iMac is not working quite right with iCloud drive. It pulls down new files and folders but does not update existing ones. Nor does it push any changes I made to files on my iMac. What is the best way to fix this?
 

Richard1964

macrumors newbie
Jan 25, 2019
1
0
Good day,
I've been having the same problems as the OP. Thank you all for the advice given.
Time machine is taking forever to back up...and I mean days.
Would it be possible to get an external enclosure and clone the existing drive to the new one and then swap them over?
If so how would I format the new drive?
Thank you.
 

stagebuilder

macrumors newbie
Nov 4, 2020
4
0
Also, here's the OWC General Service Kit (without the SSD):

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIYIMACGEN/



Well, you need to look for DDR3/DDR3L 1600 (PC3 12800) SO-DIMM.

I like to buy from Crucial, but other brands would work.
Hello, was checking out your advice for 21.5" iMac late 2013 upgrades for an SSD and memory (if it's open, why not?) and I'm doing just this to iMac that is running very slow for my aunt. Question (opinion?) about the Crucial memory; on Amazon they have the 8gb you mention but I also noticed they had one that was unbuffered. This seems to be a bit cheaper. Any advantage or disadvantage to this one vs. what I presume is buffered? Thanks.
 
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