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Bringing in my IMac for upgrades

Bradley Street

Bradley Street

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 21, 2020
18
3
So I’m taking my Mac to a shop to get the slow 5400 RPM hard drive and ram swapped out. It’s the slowest brand new Apple product I’ve ever owned.

I don’t want to pay for the data transfer, my only concern is, if I have a time machine backup and the Harddrive is blank the keyboard won’t work on boot since it’s not linked and it’s a totally blank hard drive. Am I thinking about this all wrong? How would I avoid paying the data transfer fee and just restore my time machine backup to my Mac with a blank Harddrive?
 
Avoid labour fees altogether and get a USB 3 external SSD - if your Mac has usb 3 - and use that as the boot drive. Excellent, affordable way of doing it.
 
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That’s exactly what I have with a time machine backup on it. The repair place said it would be the exact same as setting up a new Mac once repairs were done. If that’s the case I’ll just set it up and choose the option for import from a time machine backup.
I’m so used to working with Windows I automatically assume a new Harddrive means no drivers, no OS, no nothing. And I’ve never dealt with anything like that on a Mac.
 
I’m currently booting off the stock 1TB 5400 RPM drive. I have an external Samsung SSD that I use for my time machine backups that I would be using to restore all of my data.

if you’ve ever used one of the 2019 stock macs you’ll see how incredibly slow they are. Literally takes about 5 minutes for a boot and that’s all stock configurations and apps. I was amazed at how slow the machine was out of the box after setup. It’s terrible. I’m upgrading from 8 to 16 GB RAM and replacing the internal 1 TB drive with an internal 256 SSD for faster performance.
 
I don't know if installing / copying directly off your latest good known Time Machine backup will work.

Before doing anything, before sending the iMac in for upgrades; see if you have any 16 GB USB empty drive laying around that you can format and use for a macOS installation of your choosing, whether it's macOS Mojave or macOS Catalina.. This will ensure that if you run into downloading/installing problems then you have the USB drive for installing macOS darn quickly. It could be macOS High Sierra too that you download. That will fit on a 8 GB USB drive AFAIK

I don't think macOS Catalina fits on a 8 GB USB key - macOS used to fit on one of these, but my experience is that the size is around 10 GB instead.

Personally, I would, and I think I always have, install a clean macOS from a USB with an installer downloaded from Apple and then pick and choose from your latest Time Machine backup.
 
I think that’s what the repair shop is doing. I thought they were leaving me with a clean Harddrive and I’d be stuck in a situation like that. They’re giving me back my Mac with a fresh copy of Mac on it so it’s a new Mac setup. I can work with that a lot easier. I was concerned with no OS on it that my wireless keyboard wouldn’t automatically connect. Then I’d have to go buy some wired usb keyboard for the Mac and do a lotta work to get the OS on it.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m gonna make sure it has a clean OS on it before I pick it up.
 
I can feel what @Bradley Street says - even though I have a faster 1 TB 7200 RPM internal disk drive there's no way I wouldn't have that changed if my situation allowed that on purchase. I boot off of a LaCie SSD Rugged Thunderbolt drive where I replaced the internal 128 GB SanDisk SSD with a 250 GB WD SSD - I think I will continue upgrading this SSD to 1 TB and forget about the internal drive that currently houses all my music. I have set up symlinks to the home folder so that macOS can continue working on what it thinks are the SSD Home folders when infact some reside on the HDD.

An SSD in an USB 3 enclosure will certainly speed macOS up - but getting a RAM upgrade as well. That's nice. I wish that I could just have a newer gfx card with more RAM on it than the 2 GB that it currently has.. almost every piece of RAM is taken up by the screen resolution - so I scale from 5120x2800 down to 2304x1296 or lower to get work done.. I think I may have to replace this agin iMac for a newer model with more gfxcard ram and an i7 possibly.

And yup, have that HDD taken out of there - I hope the company responsible does the right thing because I believe I read that if an iMac hasn't been built for Fusion Drive that contains even just a small SSD and the internal HDD - that the SSD controller for fan control doesn't exist in that iMac..

Could be wrong -- but, I'm certain that I've read this. I hope that you get your iMac back and isn't held back anymore by that internal drive spinning at 5400 RPM.
 
I didn't register the part about the RAM upgrade, but that will likely add to the labor cost. Once you have the screen off, the hard drive is quick to replace, but the RAM requires complete board removal.
I still recommend trying a bootable external SSD before sending it in for repair.
 
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allan.nyholm said:
I can feel what @Bradley Street says - even though I have a faster 1 TB 7200 RPM internal disk drive there's no way I wouldn't have that changed if my situation allowed that on purchase. I boot off of a LaCie SSD Rugged Thunderbolt drive where I replaced the internal 128 GB SanDisk SSD with a 250 GB WD SSD - I think I will continue upgrading this SSD to 1 TB and forget about the internal drive that currently houses all my music. I have set up symlinks to the home folder so that macOS can continue working on what it thinks are the SSD Home folders when infact some reside on the HDD.

An SSD in an USB 3 enclosure will certainly speed macOS up - but getting a RAM upgrade as well. That's nice. I wish that I could just have a newer gfx card with more RAM on it than the 2 GB that it currently has.. almost every piece of RAM is taken up by the screen resolution - so I scale from 5120x2800 down to 2304x1296 or lower to get work done.. I think I may have to replace this agin iMac for a newer model with more gfxcard ram and an i7 possibly.

And yup, have that HDD taken out of there - I hope the company responsible does the right thing because I believe I read that if an iMac hasn't been built for Fusion Drive that contains even just a small SSD and the internal HDD - that the SSD controller for fan control doesn't exist in that iMac..

Could be wrong -- but, I'm certain that I've read this. I hope that you get your iMac back and isn't held back anymore by that internal drive spinning at 5400 RPM.
Click to expand...
They’ll only be replacing the current drive with an internal SSD so there won’t be multiple drives in the Mac. I have heard that before too. I’ll be inquiring about it tomorrow before I drop it off. They seem reputable and like they know what they’re doing.
 
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