My fusion drive setup died on me. I have a late 2014 iMac that I want to take to the Apple store for them to replace/fix it. My current setup is 128GB SSD+3TB HDD. For anyone that has taken theirs back to Apple to get the same thing done, could you tell me roughly how much it would cost? I’ve most likely decided to go with a 1TB HDD instead and get a 4TB external HD for backup/time machine purposes. Keeping most of my stuff on the iMac is too risky and troublesome should I encounter another Fusion drive crash or failure. Plus it would make data recovery much easier if I had most of my important files stored externally instead. Opening the iMac is something that I would never trust myself doing.
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How much to replace failed HDD in my iMac 27?
- Thread starter 212rikanmofo
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It will probably cost "too much to be worth it", unless you plan on keeping the iMac for at least 3-4 more years.
At this point, if you know the SSD is still good, and you cannot "revive" the HDD, I'd just set up the SSD to become the boot drive, and leave the failed HDD "dead in place".
And then... connect and use EXTERNAL USB3 storage for whatever my requirements were.
I would first try to erase the HDD using Disk Utility.
But... from your other posts here... you seem to be having trouble trying to get that done.
You really need "external bootability" to do this right, and you don't have it.
I would suggest this:
- if you have a brick-n-mortar Apple Store nearby, make an appt with the genius bar
- take the iMac in and ask them to test the internal HDD.
- request that they erase it, but also request that they NOT "re-fuse" it with the SSD.
- not sure if they will do this, but if they will, then just run the SSD and HDD as "standalone" drives.
- see if they will do this for you.
At this point, if you know the SSD is still good, and you cannot "revive" the HDD, I'd just set up the SSD to become the boot drive, and leave the failed HDD "dead in place".
And then... connect and use EXTERNAL USB3 storage for whatever my requirements were.
I would first try to erase the HDD using Disk Utility.
But... from your other posts here... you seem to be having trouble trying to get that done.
You really need "external bootability" to do this right, and you don't have it.
I would suggest this:
- if you have a brick-n-mortar Apple Store nearby, make an appt with the genius bar
- take the iMac in and ask them to test the internal HDD.
- request that they erase it, but also request that they NOT "re-fuse" it with the SSD.
- not sure if they will do this, but if they will, then just run the SSD and HDD as "standalone" drives.
- see if they will do this for you.
I live in Thailand where we currently have no Apple stores, but we do have authorized service centers.
I just had my HD replaced with a new 1 TB two weeks ago and I was very surprised at how cheap it was. The drive was about $45 and the labor about $35! I guess that an advantage living in a low labor country.
I just had my HD replaced with a new 1 TB two weeks ago and I was very surprised at how cheap it was. The drive was about $45 and the labor about $35! I guess that an advantage living in a low labor country.
I had a 2013 model i7 iMac, and the 3TB HDD portion of the Fusion Drive died. I got it replaced under AppleCare and all was good until it died again! I discovered that the Seagate HDD's they were using at the time had like a 35%+ failure rate within 2 years. So now, being out of warranty, I was going to get the local Authorized dealer/repair place to throw a highly rated HGST 4TB in it.
But nope, they wouldn't do it. Why? Because my old 2013 was still listed as "Active" by Apple, even though not offered for sale any longer by 2016/17. If your model is still active, any authorized reseller or Apple will only install the factory model of HDD that the iMac came with.
So be prepared for them telling you this. If your HDD is 3TB, that's all they will replace it with.
But nope, they wouldn't do it. Why? Because my old 2013 was still listed as "Active" by Apple, even though not offered for sale any longer by 2016/17. If your model is still active, any authorized reseller or Apple will only install the factory model of HDD that the iMac came with.
So be prepared for them telling you this. If your HDD is 3TB, that's all they will replace it with.
Absolutely. Just ensure to to order the iMac opening tool and Adhesive Strips for replacing the Display. These and links to purchasing them can be found at the beginning of the iFixit tutorial.
Replace with an ssd and have all fast storage you can even refuse it as one drive and have a super fast fusion drive that would be my recommendation
Sigh, so if i take it to the Apple store, they will only replace my HDD with the one it originally came with? I have no flexibility or choice here? I have a few HDD's laying around that I would like to use. I was thinking of bringing it into them and asking if they can swap the failed HDD with one of mines. That's a big disappointment to hear that they're not willing to do that.
OP wrote:
"so if i take it to the Apple store, they will only replace my HDD with the one it originally came with? I have no flexibility or choice here?"
There is no "flexibility".
There is no "choice".
They will ONLY replace it with one that is the equivalent of the failed drive.
That's it.
Don't bother asking otherwise, the answer will be "no".
Before going further, some questions:
What "died" on you?
Wont' boot?
Can you boot to the recovery partition?
Can you boot to INTERNET recovery mode?
Provide more specific information, and we can give better advice.
"so if i take it to the Apple store, they will only replace my HDD with the one it originally came with? I have no flexibility or choice here?"
There is no "flexibility".
There is no "choice".
They will ONLY replace it with one that is the equivalent of the failed drive.
That's it.
Don't bother asking otherwise, the answer will be "no".
Before going further, some questions:
What "died" on you?
Wont' boot?
Can you boot to the recovery partition?
Can you boot to INTERNET recovery mode?
Provide more specific information, and we can give better advice.
I believe my HDD in my Fusion Drive is bad, I have booted into recovery and internet recover mode many times. Attempted to repair volume and it said volume appears to be okay. But everytime I perform a repair I see red messages reporting errors. I have even tried to erase the drive and reinstall the OS several times with it failing on me at the very end. So I believe there's something wrong with my drive. I'm not sure if its my SSD or HDD or both. Can you guys tell from this pic?
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I believe my HDD in my Fusion Drive is bad, I have booted into recovery and internet recover mode many times. Attempted to repair volume and it said volume appears to be okay. But everytime I perform a repair I see red messages reporting errors. I have even tried to erase the drive and reinstall the OS several times with it failing on me at the very end. So I believe there's something wrong with my drive. I'm not sure if its my SSD or HDD or both. Can you guys tell from this pic?
![]()
It's the hard drive
You may want to check what this person did..
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6670260
I don't *think* that shows 100% that the disk is dead.
I would run disk utility and try to do repair/re-install from recovery.
If you can, make sure you have a backup of your important stuff.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6670260
I don't *think* that shows 100% that the disk is dead.
I would run disk utility and try to do repair/re-install from recovery.
If you can, make sure you have a backup of your important stuff.
SketchyClown, that's what I was doing in that screenshot. Everytime I run a verify/repair in recovery mode, it gives me those errors.
@212rikanmofo are you familiar with using the Terminal? Do you know how to delete & recreate a fresh Fusion Drive? Because the Disk Utility will not recreate it for you. The screenshot shows cksum mismatches for both the SSD & HDD portions of the Fusion so it may boil down to a somewhat corrupted coreStorage volume.
If you can delete it, and then recreate it, and it has no errors, then you can rule out a drive issue.
If you can delete it, and then recreate it, and it has no errors, then you can rule out a drive issue.
OP:
What I'd try:
1. Boot from an EXTERNAL drive. (if you don't have an external drive that is bootable, you'll need to create one)
2. BACK UP whatever you wish to save on the internal fusion drive if you can (it -might- be "mountable" IF you boot from an external drive)
3. DE-FUSE the internal fusion drive using Terminal
4. Erase the SSD. Run Disk Utility's "repair disk" on it. Does it test out ok?
5. If so, install a copy of the OS onto it, get an account set up
6. Now, turn your attention to the HDD.
7. I'd try to erase the HDD first. Does it erase ok?
8. If so, I'd run DU's "repair disk" on it. What results do you get?
9. If the results are good, I'd run "repair disk" on it 10 times in succession, looking for a good report each and every time.
10. If it checks out ok, I'd use it as a "standalone drive" for storage and keep it backed up.
I WOULD NOT RE-FUSE THE INTERNAL DRIVES.
IF the HDD will not pass the "repair disk" tests, I'd just leave it "unused in place". It's not worth the trouble of "extracting" or replacing it.
I'd just put together a good USB3 external drive (either HDD or SSD) and use that for additional storage instead.
What I'd try:
1. Boot from an EXTERNAL drive. (if you don't have an external drive that is bootable, you'll need to create one)
2. BACK UP whatever you wish to save on the internal fusion drive if you can (it -might- be "mountable" IF you boot from an external drive)
3. DE-FUSE the internal fusion drive using Terminal
4. Erase the SSD. Run Disk Utility's "repair disk" on it. Does it test out ok?
5. If so, install a copy of the OS onto it, get an account set up
6. Now, turn your attention to the HDD.
7. I'd try to erase the HDD first. Does it erase ok?
8. If so, I'd run DU's "repair disk" on it. What results do you get?
9. If the results are good, I'd run "repair disk" on it 10 times in succession, looking for a good report each and every time.
10. If it checks out ok, I'd use it as a "standalone drive" for storage and keep it backed up.
I WOULD NOT RE-FUSE THE INTERNAL DRIVES.
IF the HDD will not pass the "repair disk" tests, I'd just leave it "unused in place". It's not worth the trouble of "extracting" or replacing it.
I'd just put together a good USB3 external drive (either HDD or SSD) and use that for additional storage instead.
Thanks for the advice guys. I have an external drive but its for my PC and is formatted in NTFS. So I don't think I'll be able to use it on my iMac. I can try the above method and give it one last go to see if I can fix this problem before taking it into Apple.
I am nervous when you mentioned about not re-fusing the internal drives, what exactly does this mean? I want to take precaution when doing any of these steps. Do you mean that you don't suggest i use the setup as a Fusion Drive (SSD+HDD) and but keep them de-fused (2 separate physical drives) instead?
[doublepost=1528752223][/doublepost]
I am familiar with terminal but I don't know what commands to issue in order to properly delete and recreate the fusion drive. Could you show me the proper method to do this?
I am nervous when you mentioned about not re-fusing the internal drives, what exactly does this mean? I want to take precaution when doing any of these steps. Do you mean that you don't suggest i use the setup as a Fusion Drive (SSD+HDD) and but keep them de-fused (2 separate physical drives) instead?
[doublepost=1528752223][/doublepost]
I am familiar with terminal but I don't know what commands to issue in order to properly delete and recreate the fusion drive. Could you show me the proper method to do this?
I replaced a hard drive in my 2013 iMac 27" with an SSD.
It was really easy and took less than an hour
Pictures: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-27-inch-late-2013-hdd-ssd-upgrade.2122595/
It was really easy and took less than an hour
Pictures: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/imac-27-inch-late-2013-hdd-ssd-upgrade.2122595/
@212rikanmofo You can recreate your Fusion Drive with Apple's own instructions.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207584
However, there is no problem leaving things as 2 separate drives. Personally this is how things are in my setup now. My iMac only had the 2TB Fusion, so I have the 128GB SSD formatted in APFS, and that's where the OS runs from, and the 2TB HDD formatted in HFS+ for storage.
Some will argue with me on this, but in my real world usage, I find that things run better this way. The OS is faster, more responsive and less beachballs. Fusion is neat on the surface, but you are still coupling a super fast PCI-Express SSD with a slow rotational HDD, there's bound to be bottlenecks, even when a lot of the time things seem to run smooth.
Just my 2 cents.
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207584
However, there is no problem leaving things as 2 separate drives. Personally this is how things are in my setup now. My iMac only had the 2TB Fusion, so I have the 128GB SSD formatted in APFS, and that's where the OS runs from, and the 2TB HDD formatted in HFS+ for storage.
Some will argue with me on this, but in my real world usage, I find that things run better this way. The OS is faster, more responsive and less beachballs. Fusion is neat on the surface, but you are still coupling a super fast PCI-Express SSD with a slow rotational HDD, there's bound to be bottlenecks, even when a lot of the time things seem to run smooth.
Just my 2 cents.
Okay I was able to un-couple my Fusion drive and then re-fuse it back together. I boot my iMac back into recovery mode (CMD+R) and performed a verify/repair on my drive and everything seems okay, no problems. My drive is in HFS Journaled btw, not sure if that makes a difference or I should format it to AFPS. I then proceed to reinstall Mac OS X Mountain Lion, and at the end where it says 0% I get the same error saying: An error occurred while preparing the installation. Trying running this application again. So I exit out of the installer and open up disk utility again and did a verify/repair, everything showed up okay but when I attempted to erase/format the drive it gave me an error that it couldn't unmount.
So I reboot my computer back but this time i try Internet Recovery Mode (CMD+OPT+R), reran disk utility and it gave me no errors, so I tried to erase/format the drive and then attempted to reinstall MacOS High Sierra. Same thing happened towards the end of the install. Not sure why I can't install Mac OS. The drive is showing no errors.
So I reboot my computer back but this time i try Internet Recovery Mode (CMD+OPT+R), reran disk utility and it gave me no errors, so I tried to erase/format the drive and then attempted to reinstall MacOS High Sierra. Same thing happened towards the end of the install. Not sure why I can't install Mac OS. The drive is showing no errors.
OP wrote:
"My drive is in HFS Journaled btw, not sure if that makes a difference or I should format it to AFPS."
NO.
DO NOT format the drive to APFS.
APFS is not supported with fusion drives until Mac OS 10.14 "Mojave", and that's not even in public beta yet.
If you can't get a High Sierra install "to take", why not try OS 10.12 "Low" Sierra instead?
Go with an OS that works for you, and don't worry about one that doesn't work.
"My drive is in HFS Journaled btw, not sure if that makes a difference or I should format it to AFPS."
NO.
DO NOT format the drive to APFS.
APFS is not supported with fusion drives until Mac OS 10.14 "Mojave", and that's not even in public beta yet.
If you can't get a High Sierra install "to take", why not try OS 10.12 "Low" Sierra instead?
Go with an OS that works for you, and don't worry about one that doesn't work.
I've tried numerous times to install Mac OS X Mountain Lion and High Sierra since those are the 2 OS I can install from Recovery Mode. They all fail at the last and final step. So I'm thinking its a HDD failure.
"They all fail at the last and final step. So I'm thinking its a HDD failure."
Just wondering...
Do you have a USB flashdrive (or USB hard drive) laying around, 16gb or larger?
If so, take the flashdrive and erase it to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.
Then, go back to the OS installer, and this time "aim" the installer at the flashdrive and see if you can install a copy of the OS onto it.
If it works, set up the flashdrive with a simple account.
The idea is to have some other way to "boot the Mac to the finder".
Give it a try.
It won't hurt anything, and may help.
You can always just erase the flashdrive and start over with it.
Just wondering...
Do you have a USB flashdrive (or USB hard drive) laying around, 16gb or larger?
If so, take the flashdrive and erase it to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.
Then, go back to the OS installer, and this time "aim" the installer at the flashdrive and see if you can install a copy of the OS onto it.
If it works, set up the flashdrive with a simple account.
The idea is to have some other way to "boot the Mac to the finder".
Give it a try.
It won't hurt anything, and may help.
You can always just erase the flashdrive and start over with it.
I've tried numerous times to install Mac OS X Mountain Lion and High Sierra since those are the 2 OS I can install from Recovery Mode. They all fail at the last and final step. So I'm thinking its a HDD failure.
No kidding!
I thought this has been established a while ago.
It's time to upgrade to an SSD anyway.
Replace the hard drive with the SSD shouldn't take more than an hour (excluding time installing the OS).
I also advise that you have a second person hold the display while you are removing/reinstalling it.
Yes I have a flash drive, but how can I make a bootable mac OS installer without another mac? If I'm able to successfully install my mac using this method, then what do you guys think the problem could be? A bad recovery partition maybe?