Does Apple replace HDD?

[FrankFitz]

I have a 2019 iMac 27" which has a 3Tb drive. Feel that it is starting to feel its age as it's used daily. Does anyone know if my local Apple Store here in the UK would replace the drive with something more modern such as a drive with the same/similar capacity?

They will no doubt try and sell me a new iMac but I prefer the big 27" which I use for photo editing daily. Now that I am retired I don't want to go back into the process of buying new with smaller screen etc.

Anyone have experience of doing this?

Thanks for your help

 

[Apple_Robert]

If the drive is tested and deemed in need of repair, Apple will replace with the same model drive. They don't do part upgrades per customer request.

 

[DeltaMac]

Your 3TB drive is a fusion drive. That means you have two separate devices in your iMac, one 3TB HDD (mechanical hard drive with a spinning platter), and another, much smaller solid-state drive, usually 128GB in size. Those two devices are linked together through software, so your system sees only a single, virtual drive. The 2019 iMac is the last model that offered that fusion drive. There will be a noticeable performance increase by replacing the 3TB mechanical hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD). You would need to find a shop that will do that (as stated above, an Apple store will not normally do that upgrade)

 

[curnalpanic]

Probably easier to get an external Thunderbolt drive.

 

[FrankFitz]

Probably easier to get an external Thunderbolt drive.

Thank you for your response and please excuse my ignorance. How would I do that? I have in the past replaced HDD/power supplies etc on windows PC's and have also upgraded to maximum Ram which was fairly easy on a iMac. If you could point me in the direction of online videos etc I would appreciate that.

Thanks,

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thank you for your response and please excuse my ignorance. How would I do that? I have in the past replaced HDD/power supplies etc on windows PC's and have also upgraded to maximum Ram which was fairly easy on a iMac. If you could point me in the direction of online videos etc I would appreciate that.

Thanks,

I don't suggest you do it yourself, but I suppose it won't hurt much if you just watch how people did it.

 

[curnalpanic]

How would I do that?

I think this tube will give you the gist of it. The the next step is to migrate all your stuff including the OS over to the new drive, using Carbon copy cloner or Apple's Migration assistant.

Of course there are many brands, and you don't need to buy the enclosure and SSD separately, for example Samsung T7 is an all-in-one solution.

I have a Samsung 970 Evo, that is NVMe, in a USB enclosure. It's only USB 3.1 (10 Gbit/s) and not thunderbolt, so not super fast but still better than a fusion drive. For best performance, I'd suppose Thunderbolt is the way to go.

I originally was going to cut my iMac (a 2019 like yours) open to swap the internal SSD blade, but changed my mind because I don't want to risk destroying something during the process.