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Has anyone tried to ADD SSD to 2011 imac for HDD+SSD?
- Thread starter Crwoo
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For realz, i check for it everyday.
1) cause i want it and 2) cause it will force the prices of lesser storage options down a bit.
I don't understand how Apple doesn't give their "Pro" users (who blow holes in their bank accounts for the top of the line models), dual ssd options... or at least two working sata III ports so we can have a 2TB raid0 mobile workstation that outmuscles, outspeeds, and outstorages everything.
Woah! a true mobile workstation!
think of the possibilities.
Quad 2.5Ghz 17" + apple care + tax = 3,336.88
Add two 8gb sticks of ram - $570
2x OCZ 1TB - $2600
I would pay just to see such a $6500 beast in a discreet MBP case.
All you need to remember is Apple's slavish devotion to insanely thin stuff and you'll know why we don't get dual HDD slots. All the comparable Windows systems are much thicker. I'd personally take a slightly thick chassis to get a few extra features.
Cheers,
wutttt??
2.5" drives are significantly smaller than a stupid optical drive that doesn't have blu-ray and burns dvds slower than i can build them by hand. And the optical drives fail like there's no tomorrow...which for them, there isn't.
Remove the optical drive and you can probably fit 3x 1.8" SSDs in the MBP, and 4x 2.5" SSDs in the 27" imac. I want blu-ray for playback/burning movies/backup disks. It's retarded to have a big clunky superdrive in an imac/MBP AND a big clunky external blu-ray writer.
You have only 3 sata connections in 2011 iMac: 2 sata III and 1 sata II (optical drive).
What you can do is remove optical drive and use its sata II data cable on factory HDD and still using its own (HDD's) power cable to avoid fan issues. Factory HDD is now on sata II what is more than enough for this drive.
You have now two sata III data ports available for 2 SSDs.
EFI 1.7 update bricked my iMac with SSD RAID 0
I have a 2011 i7 iMac with a 2TB HDD and two 120GB OWC SSDs (installed by OWC) that I run under Software RAID 0. I installed Lion onto the RAID 0 drives by booting from the recovery partition that came on the HDD. It was blazingly fast and I was really pleased with it until...
Two weeks ago Software Update popped up with the EFI 1.7 firmware update. I blithely/stupidly clicked install and it bricked my machine. It got into an endless loop of rebooting followed by the grey install bar. Every time it rebooted it did the nine-beep SOS thing. I attached a wired Apple USB keyboard but it wouldn't recognize any key presses. I disassembled the machine and removed the SSDs (both still fine) but nothing fixed it. Seems like the BootROM got screwed up.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Apple was totally unhelpful. I realize that adding the two SSDs voided the warranty, but I still blame them for writing a crappy firmware update. The 1.7 firmware updated the Lion recovery partition and also some Thunderbolt driver. The fact that a) there was no Lion recovery partition on the RAID 0 or b) that I had an LED Cinema display plugged into the Thunderbolt port could have both caused problems that are not specific to the SSD mods. Either way a well-designed firmware update should have checked for incompatible conditions before installing and bricking my machine.
I tried both the Genius Bar and telephone support. Apple refused to take responsibiity for fixing it (which they think means replacing the logic board -- at my expense for $750). Fortunately, the nice guys at OWC have agreed to fix it under their warranty, though it means being without my iMac for two weeks and $80 shipping costs…
Anyway, beware the 1.7 update if you have this configuration!
I have a 2011 i7 iMac with a 2TB HDD and two 120GB OWC SSDs (installed by OWC) that I run under Software RAID 0. I installed Lion onto the RAID 0 drives by booting from the recovery partition that came on the HDD. It was blazingly fast and I was really pleased with it until...
Two weeks ago Software Update popped up with the EFI 1.7 firmware update. I blithely/stupidly clicked install and it bricked my machine. It got into an endless loop of rebooting followed by the grey install bar. Every time it rebooted it did the nine-beep SOS thing. I attached a wired Apple USB keyboard but it wouldn't recognize any key presses. I disassembled the machine and removed the SSDs (both still fine) but nothing fixed it. Seems like the BootROM got screwed up.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Apple was totally unhelpful. I realize that adding the two SSDs voided the warranty, but I still blame them for writing a crappy firmware update. The 1.7 firmware updated the Lion recovery partition and also some Thunderbolt driver. The fact that a) there was no Lion recovery partition on the RAID 0 or b) that I had an LED Cinema display plugged into the Thunderbolt port could have both caused problems that are not specific to the SSD mods. Either way a well-designed firmware update should have checked for incompatible conditions before installing and bricking my machine.
I tried both the Genius Bar and telephone support. Apple refused to take responsibiity for fixing it (which they think means replacing the logic board -- at my expense for $750). Fortunately, the nice guys at OWC have agreed to fix it under their warranty, though it means being without my iMac for two weeks and $80 shipping costs…
Anyway, beware the 1.7 update if you have this configuration!
Wow, that's bad.
Do you think there's any risk of something like that happening to a machine with just one SSD (and HDD), if I add the SSD myself? Or since that's an official Apple configuration, it should be ok?
Do you think there's any risk of something like that happening to a machine with just one SSD (and HDD), if I add the SSD myself? Or since that's an official Apple configuration, it should be ok?
Hard to say, but I would think it is less likely.
However, if you ever do need a repair from Apple, you're likely to be out of luck given you've mod'ed your machine.
I couldn't believe how uninformed the Genius in the Palo Alto Apple Store was about this whole issue. First he said that the reason the Apple firmware bricked my machine was because that OWC had modified the Boot ROM when they installed the SSDs -- and said that the fact that the fans didn't run on high speed proved it. This is total nonsense. (He might have been thinking about the firmware that OWC released last year, but even that was an SSD firmware update, not a Boot ROM firmware update.)
Second, he said that SSD RAID 0 is actually slower than non-RAIDed SSD drives. When I said that the benchmarks suggested otherwise he said that the benchmarks were wrong.
There was no arguing with him. He was clearly convinced he was the genius...
The industrial design mavens at Apple don't like easy to open bays that would allow simple drive upgrades and swaps. Might ruin the lines on the system. Not saying I agree with this mentality it just is. Perhaps we'll see some slight changes as new models are released.
Cheers,
Oh i know, it's kind of a bummer. I woulda bought the i7 27" imac in a second if it was 3 sata III ports - i'd love to have raid 0 ssds and the spare sata port OWC will drill into the imac.
I was just talking space wise those options could possibly fit - if they were to make slight internal modifications in the future =)
----------
I would be ecstatic if the thin 15" has two hard drive slots 1.8" or 2.5", whatever fits!
Hey all,
did anything happen in the last releases of Lion for you?
I still have regular beach balls for a few seconds. Furthermore I am annoyed too much by the iMac apparently waking up from Hibernate multiple times in the night (without switching on the screen, I can hear the stupid HDD booting up).
It would be awesome to deactivate the HDD by software (I really do not dare to open the iMac up again). Or should I do a fresh re-install? The beach ball is just so annoying, for like 20 sec nothing works until it is as if nothing happened.
Many thanks for any advice!!
Th
did anything happen in the last releases of Lion for you?
I still have regular beach balls for a few seconds. Furthermore I am annoyed too much by the iMac apparently waking up from Hibernate multiple times in the night (without switching on the screen, I can hear the stupid HDD booting up).
It would be awesome to deactivate the HDD by software (I really do not dare to open the iMac up again). Or should I do a fresh re-install? The beach ball is just so annoying, for like 20 sec nothing works until it is as if nothing happened.
Many thanks for any advice!!
Th
Check out: http://www.maintain.se/cocktail
I used this on my MBP that had an HDD and SSD. I haven't used it on my iMac because I haven't had a reason to disable the disk - but it worked pretty well with my laptop.
If I recall correctly, you have to disable indexing of the HDD, as well. I think that's what gets it up and spinning randomly.
I still have the issues. The "Cocktail" app could not disable the journaling:
"HDD" is not accessible, read-only or diskutil (/usr/sbin/diskutil) is not working properly.
Do not really know what to do.
Honestly I would so much love to rip out the HDD from my iMac and only leave the installed SSD in (but only unplugging the HDD because never ever will I take out the mainboard again).
What if I called Apple Care and they need to take it in and realize that I installed an SSD myself?
"HDD" is not accessible, read-only or diskutil (/usr/sbin/diskutil) is not working properly.
Do not really know what to do.
Honestly I would so much love to rip out the HDD from my iMac and only leave the installed SSD in (but only unplugging the HDD because never ever will I take out the mainboard again).
What if I called Apple Care and they need to take it in and realize that I installed an SSD myself?
Hi guys, I have added a 120gb vertex 3 to iMac recently and to me it's blazingly quick, however when I run disk speed checks, I am only getting about 140MB/s write and 400MB/s read. Is that normal because I'm sure I've seen people talking about 400+ read and write. Thanks
I have had two similar spinning beach-ball experiences.
The first one was caused by the HDD putting itself to sleep. I went into the Energy Saver control panel and unchecked "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible". This helped a lot.
The second one was weirder. I would often get a spinning beach ball for about four or five seconds whenever I opened an app. Not every time, but quite often, and no particular set of apps. I installed Little Snitch and discovered that a process called appleidauthagent was trying to connect to some server at apple and was causing a significant delay. I couldn't find much about it on the web, but I decided to go into Keychain Access and deleted some instances of Apple ID Authentication. I've no idea why, but this did the trick.
Hope these might help.
muski
Hi Folks - Newbie
Hi guys,
Great thread and I'm pretty glad I found it. I really need some advice about what to do with my 27" i7 imac 2011.
I've never replaced the hard drive in the system and yet I'm getting the very annoying fan noise that literally everyone seems to get from replacing the hd drives.
I have no idea why i get the fan noise considering i've not touched my HD!?
My question is - How do i make it stop!!??
I think a solution would be to try shorting out the 2 pins (2, 11) as this would stop the fans from going turbo. Although my thinking is if i'm doing this why not go a head and install an SSD along with my stock HD.
If i go for the full monty, does anyone have a list of the parts i will need (online links would be great), and do you need to short the 2 pins if i go this route?
I need answers as when you are trying to code the jet engine sound coming from my iMac is giving me the worst headaches ever!
I've tried the software solutions - all of which do not work (smc, hdd fan control etc). i need a permanent fix please?!
Hi guys,
Great thread and I'm pretty glad I found it. I really need some advice about what to do with my 27" i7 imac 2011.
I've never replaced the hard drive in the system and yet I'm getting the very annoying fan noise that literally everyone seems to get from replacing the hd drives.
I have no idea why i get the fan noise considering i've not touched my HD!?
My question is - How do i make it stop!!??
I think a solution would be to try shorting out the 2 pins (2, 11) as this would stop the fans from going turbo. Although my thinking is if i'm doing this why not go a head and install an SSD along with my stock HD.
If i go for the full monty, does anyone have a list of the parts i will need (online links would be great), and do you need to short the 2 pins if i go this route?
I need answers as when you are trying to code the jet engine sound coming from my iMac is giving me the worst headaches ever!
I've tried the software solutions - all of which do not work (smc, hdd fan control etc). i need a permanent fix please?!
Received my 27" iMac a couple days ago. Ordered it with the standard 1tb drive and bought a 240gb SSD elsewhere. I installed the SSD as a second drive but made it the boot drive. I bought the OWC kit and followed their installation video. The process may seem daunting, but the only thing you really need to worry about is damaging the wires as you unplug all the tiny cables. It also helped very much to have a buddy there to assist.
Hi guys,
Great thread and I'm pretty glad I found it. I really need some advice about what to do with my 27" i7 imac 2011.
I've never replaced the hard drive in the system and yet I'm getting the very annoying fan noise that literally everyone seems to get from replacing the hd drives.
I have no idea why i get the fan noise considering i've not touched my HD!?
My question is - How do i make it stop!!??
I think a solution would be to try shorting out the 2 pins (2, 11) as this would stop the fans from going turbo. Although my thinking is if i'm doing this why not go a head and install an SSD along with my stock HD.
If i go for the full monty, does anyone have a list of the parts i will need (online links would be great), and do you need to short the 2 pins if i go this route?
I need answers as when you are trying to code the jet engine sound coming from my iMac is giving me the worst headaches ever!
I've tried the software solutions - all of which do not work (smc, hdd fan control etc). i need a permanent fix please?!
If it is still under warranty, take it to an Apple store and let them fix it.
Extremely awkward...
Hey
after I have my Vertex 3 in for almost a year suddenly the SSD seemed to suspend working.
Trying to boot my iMac it just wouldn't find the SSD.
Now it gets awkward: When I boot with "ALT" key to select drive to boot from, it takes many many minutes. Then when I can select for instance the Recover partition it takes another 5-10 minutes until I can actually CLICK the button.
Now I managed to install Lion on the HDD drive. When booting I see the white beach ball for many minutes and when Lion is booted completely it again takes 5 minutes or so until I can click anywhere ... But I can move the curser.
Is it because the "broken down" SSD is still in the iMac and causing some disturbance????
many thanks for a tip!
P.S.: I got apple care a while ago but I presume I need to take the SSD out before handing in to Apple???
Hey
after I have my Vertex 3 in for almost a year suddenly the SSD seemed to suspend working.
Trying to boot my iMac it just wouldn't find the SSD.
Now it gets awkward: When I boot with "ALT" key to select drive to boot from, it takes many many minutes. Then when I can select for instance the Recover partition it takes another 5-10 minutes until I can actually CLICK the button.
Now I managed to install Lion on the HDD drive. When booting I see the white beach ball for many minutes and when Lion is booted completely it again takes 5 minutes or so until I can click anywhere ... But I can move the curser.
Is it because the "broken down" SSD is still in the iMac and causing some disturbance????
many thanks for a tip!
P.S.: I got apple care a while ago but I presume I need to take the SSD out before handing in to Apple???
My 2010 iMac had been working fine for over a year with a OWC SSD added in addition to the oem 2TB HD and SuperDrive. I switched it on one day and nothing but a beep and a grey screen ... no Apple logo, no rotating load icon, no alternate boot options with the "option key" ... nothing.
I tried everything I could think of including SMC and PRAM processor resets, but nothing including the optical drive would boot. I therefor came to the conclusion that either the main board or power supply had probably failed and hopefully Apple Care would cover it (even though I had installed the SSD) without me having to again disassemble the iMac myself.
I was amazed when the repair tech informed me that it was the SSD that was causing the problem. Unplugging it allowed the original HD to boot and the optical disk to boot with a restore disk. I still don't understand how a failure on one SATA port could cause ALL of the SATA ports to become unresponsive, I was sure they would be isolated within the chip-set. Obviously that wasn't an Apple Care problem since it was something I added causing the problem, so I paid the tech for identifying the problem and removing the SSD for me.
I received a replacement SSD and re-installed it in the iMac, and so far everything is working smoothly again. The only thing I can think of is that the defective SSD may have been generating a continuous stream of garbage data which may have saturated the SATA chip such that it couldn't respond to the other channels.
Hope my experience might help you with your problem...
-howard
I tried everything I could think of including SMC and PRAM processor resets, but nothing including the optical drive would boot. I therefor came to the conclusion that either the main board or power supply had probably failed and hopefully Apple Care would cover it (even though I had installed the SSD) without me having to again disassemble the iMac myself.
I was amazed when the repair tech informed me that it was the SSD that was causing the problem. Unplugging it allowed the original HD to boot and the optical disk to boot with a restore disk. I still don't understand how a failure on one SATA port could cause ALL of the SATA ports to become unresponsive, I was sure they would be isolated within the chip-set. Obviously that wasn't an Apple Care problem since it was something I added causing the problem, so I paid the tech for identifying the problem and removing the SSD for me.
I received a replacement SSD and re-installed it in the iMac, and so far everything is working smoothly again. The only thing I can think of is that the defective SSD may have been generating a continuous stream of garbage data which may have saturated the SATA chip such that it couldn't respond to the other channels.
Hope my experience might help you with your problem...
-howard
I currently have a SSD in my 2011 iMac, but i want to add a 3.5mm harddive to it. I understand that since I only have one hdd, there is one available sata cable inside the machine. Aslo, that sata cable supports sata III.
Does this require a custom disk with the proprietary fan control? Or could I install a Seagate Barracuda 3 GB without any issue? Is there a bracked for the disk in the iMac? Thanks for the help. I currently have another thread going as well. Here's a link to the other thread
Does this require a custom disk with the proprietary fan control? Or could I install a Seagate Barracuda 3 GB without any issue? Is there a bracked for the disk in the iMac? Thanks for the help. I currently have another thread going as well. Here's a link to the other thread