iMac very bad after installing ssd.

[etavares]

Hi!
I took my iMac 21,5 inch Mid 2011 to have a ssd installed.I thought it would come back very fast but instead it came back very slow.Before I sent it to change its hard drive its cooler was working fine.Now once I turn my iMac on the cooler starts spinning and making a lot of noise.I had to install an application to make it stop running. What could have happened? What is wrong with my iMac?was it a bad installation of the ssd drive? is there something that I can do without having to take my iMac back to the store?

thank you very much!

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

I hope you took it to a Mac dealer but not by the sound of things.

Replacing the hard drive on that model requires a way to control the fans which will run at full speed continuously unless there is a software or hardware fix. See this link and I would suggest whoever got into your iMac knows nothing about them.

How is the SSD formatted and was a clean install of whichever OS performed??


https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIDIMACHDD11/

 

[NT1440]

Hi!
I took my iMac 21,5 inch Mid 2011 to have a ssd installed.I thought it would come back very fast but instead it came back very slow.Before I sent it to change its hard drive its cooler was working fine.Now once I turn my iMac on the cooler starts spinning and making a lot of noise.I had to install an application to make it stop running. What could have happened? What is wrong with my iMac?was it a bad installation of the ssd drive? is there something that I can do without having to take my iMac back to the store?

thank you very much!

As noted above, your fans are spinning full tilt because you no longer have a temp sensor for the hard drive installed. I used SMCFancontrol when I did that exact procedure (replacing hard drives with SSDs) for 150+ of that gen iMac at a college. However that was years ago so I'm not entirely sure if that's still the best fan control software to go with.

As for the slowness, if you didn't have your old drive cloned to the new one, I'd just reinstall the OS.

 

[mj_]

If they properly installed an SSD, and didn't use one from the early days when cheap utterly useless China SSDs flooded the market your Mac should've felt much faster the second you turned it on for the first time. Click the Apple logo at the top left corner, go to About this Mac, then System Report, then SATA/SATA Express to find out what exact SSD they provided you with.

 

[mikehalloran]

Software “solutions” will let the fans run at full speed till the extension loads. The OWC temp sensor harness will fix that—takes about 15 minutes for an experienced tech to install on a 2011. While in there, that 8 year old NV RAM battery should be replaced—a CR2032 is fine—adds 5 minutes to the job. Unless...

If the screen was pulled during the installation (unnecessary despite the iFixIt instructions) there are a couple of small inline connectors that can be difficult to reconnect properly. Any of those will cause the fans to roar even if the temp sensor is installed. An experienced tech knows how to install an SSD without removing the screen and disturbing any of those.

Don’t have enough info to know why it’s not booting much faster. Cheapo SSD? Improper installation? Bad NV RAM battery?

Reinstall the OS. You can do that through the App Store (unless Sierra but that can be found online) or boot into the Repair Partition and reinstall there. That will likely solve the issue—if it doesn’t, you have a hardware problem.

 

[mbosse]

Hi!
I took my iMac 21,5 inch Mid 2011 to have a ssd installed.I thought it would come back very fast but instead it came back very slow.Before I sent it to change its hard drive its cooler was working fine.Now once I turn my iMac on the cooler starts spinning and making a lot of noise.I had to install an application to make it stop running. What could have happened? What is wrong with my iMac?was it a bad installation of the ssd drive? is there something that I can do without having to take my iMac back to the store?

thank you very much!

Others have addressed the fan issue already. Could you be more precise in what this means: "I thought it would come back very fast but instead it came back very slow." Does it take more time to boot? Is it slow during operation? How much RAM do you have installed?

Best,
Magnus

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Hi!
I took my iMac 21,5 inch Mid 2011 to have a ssd installed.I thought it would come back very fast but instead it came back very slow.Before I sent it to change its hard drive its cooler was working fine.Now once I turn my iMac on the cooler starts spinning and making a lot of noise.I had to install an application to make it stop running. What could have happened? What is wrong with my iMac?was it a bad installation of the ssd drive? is there something that I can do without having to take my iMac back to the store?

thank you very much!

I replaced the internal HD with a 1TB "OWC" SSD (mid 2011 21' iMac), but before opening the iMac I did the following:

a. I read and read the step-by-step instructions provided by some of the posters in this forum. Removed some unused files, photos, documents, and so on from the hard drive, and ran Disk Utility's "First Aid" to clean and organize the drive. Installed an app to control the cooling fans speed.

b. Connected the new SSD to the iMac via USB, and then formatted it. Using Carbon Copy Cloner I created a bootable clone (on the SSD), and then set the SSD as the start-up drive, and restarted the iMac. A few seconds later the external SSD had booted without any problems. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and everything else worked exactly as before replacing the hard drive. The cooling fans were running at full speed but once I set the app to control fan speed, things quieted down.

c. Now I proceeded to open the iMac (remove the screen, replace the hard drive with the SSD, and so on). For controlling the cooling fans I used an app, but I had already ordered a temperature monitor (link below) and was waiting for it to arrive. At the moment I needed to test the new SSD to see how it worked, then open up the iMac to install the temperature sensor, and this I accomplished later. The new SSD should boot-up within 4-5 seconds.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC...n=cj&cjevent=6c5a708b1c3511e982ee00830a1c0e0c

 

[etavares]

Others have addressed the fan issue already. Could you be more precise in what this means: "I thought it would come back very fast but instead it came back very slow." Does it take more time to boot? Is it slow during operation? How much RAM do you have installed?

Best,
Magnus

Hi Magnus..I have 16GB memory and OS takes almost 3 minutes to load up Thank you

 

[mbosse]

Hi Magnus..I have 16GB memory and OS takes almost 3 minutes to load up Thank you

That sounds ok (16GB), but is the SSD set as default boot volume? Could you check that in system preferences?

If not, the iMac would search for the old drive, and only if it does not find it would boot from another, in this car you SSD.

Best,
Magnus

 

[WesCole]

That sounds ok (16GB), but is the SSD set as default boot volume? Could you check that in system preferences?

If not, the iMac would search for the old drive, and only if it does not find it would boot from another, in this car you SSD.

Best,
Magnus

I bet they didn’t enable TRIM and that is why it is slow.

Open the terminal and type “sudo trimforce enable”, without the quotes. Restart and see if it is faster.

 

[mbosse]

I bet they didn’t enable TRIM and that is why it is slow.

Open the terminal and type “sudo trimforce enable”, without the quotes. Restart and see if it is faster.

That might be, but I doubt it shows immediately.