Maximum Internal SSD Size for iMac 21.5?

[maclogon789]

Hi,

I have read some internal SATA SSD upgrade guides on the iMac 21.5 (2015 and newer). Some list 2TB as the maximum possible SSD size, but I have seen 4TB listed as suitable upgrades.

What is the largest size that can utilized, and is there any difference between the 2015/2017/2019 models?

Thanks

 

[DarkPremiumCho]

I believe the limit for storage capacity is determined by the maximum capacity offered by the seller, rather than a hardware specification limit? Your options could go up to 8EB, the maximum capacity supported by APFS.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

27" model can be installed with 50TGB, or 100TB (built to order) if you have the money to pay for it.
These drives have 3.5" form factor.

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21.5In only have spaces for 2.5" drive => maximum size of SATA SSD drives are 30.72TB. But it might not available anymore.

This 31TB Samsung super SSD is now almost affordable

Samsung PM1643 SSD offers a lot of storage at a pretty fair price

www.techradar.com

More common size is 7.68TB.

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[zarmanto]

I think there is a reasonable chance that some older spec sheets were simply written when 2.5" drives larger than that didn't exist, and those docs have never been rewritten. I know from personal experience that this was the case for select pancake PowerMacs which required low-profile RAM DIMMs; the motherboard itself supported higher capacity DIMMs, but the low-profile DIMMs at the highest supported capacity simply didn't exist until well after the release of those Macs.

That said: it may be worth noting that at some point, Boot Camp stopped supporting drives larger than 2TB. Back in 2012 I had purchased a 27" iMac with a 3TB drive, and I noticed early on that Boot Camp did weird things when partitioning: apparently the Windows partition had to be second, but it also had to be entirely within the first 2TB of disk space in order to be bootable. Thus, the MacOS volume spanned across two partitions, with that Windows partition sitting in the middle. (I imagine that was a nightmare for some poor Apple software engineer.) But at some point after that, when I upgraded MacOS, Boot Camp stopped permitting me to manage that disk. That's when I researched and found out about the newly implemented 2TB limit.

So it's possible that it's just out-of-date documentation -- but it's also possible that it's related to Boot Camp.

 

[maclogon789]

I think there is a reasonable chance that some older spec sheets were simply written when 2.5" drives larger than that didn't exist, and those docs have never been rewritten. I know from personal experience that this was the case for select pancake PowerMacs which required low-profile RAM DIMMs; the motherboard itself supported higher capacity DIMMs, but the low-profile DIMMs at the highest supported capacity simply didn't exist until well after the release of those Macs.

That said: it may be worth noting that at some point, Boot Camp stopped supporting drives larger than 2TB. Back in 2012 I had purchased a 27" iMac with a 3TB drive, and I noticed early on that Boot Camp did weird things when partitioning: apparently the Windows partition had to be second, but it also had to be entirely within the first 2TB of disk space in order to be bootable. Thus, the MacOS volume spanned across two partitions, with that Windows partition sitting in the middle. (I imagine that was a nightmare for some poor Apple software engineer.) But at some point after that, when I upgraded MacOS, Boot Camp stopped permitting me to manage that disk. That's when I researched and found out about the newly implemented 2TB limit.

So it's possible that it's just out-of-date documentation -- but it's also possible that it's related to Boot Camp.

Thank you for your response and for the additional info on Boot Camp.

I wasn't sure if the controller could support a drive size greater than 2TB given that was the largest factory drive size available.