Late 2015 iMac HDD brand swap out

[Nat501]

Can I directly swap out the internal Seagate HDD ST2000DM001 with a 4TB internal WD Black edition? Without any modifying connection cabling? iMac late 2015 5k 27inch, serial number C02QJPPZGG7N.

 

[rc3105]

Short answer: sure


However, IMHO...

First of all check to make sure that western digital drive is NOT an SMR drive. (shingled magnetic recording) SMR performance sucks.

Second of all, forget it and go with an internal SSD for speed, it makes a world of difference. 480GB are only about $50

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Third, connect your large drive(s) externally via usb or thunderbolt. An SMR drive would be fine here unless you're doing video editing.

Fourth, usb cases are cheap, might as well keep the original 2 gig around. Great for Time Machine if nothing else.

Fifth, the machine will run cooler and last longer w/o an internal spinning disk.

 

[Juicy Box]

You should be able to do a simple swap without any mods. If you are currently using a Fusion Drive, I would look into defusing them first before making the swap.

Personally, I wouldn't open the iMac and replace the HDD with another HDD. I would replace it with a SSD, and if I needed a lot of storage for cheap, I would just use external storage.

That is just me though.

 

[Roxy.music]

You should be able to do a simple swap without any mods. If you are currently using a Fusion Drive, I would look into defusing them first before making the swap.

Personally, I wouldn't open the iMac and replace the HDD with another HDD. I would replace it with a SSD, and if I needed a lot of storage for cheap, I would just use external storage.

That is just me though.

Definitely a bad idea to replace an HDD with another HDD.