Replacing Fusion Drive advice

[brockhill]

I want to replace the 1 TB fusion drive on my 27 inch iMac 2017.

Reason for the replacement is the performance of the drive has deteriorated.

My question is which of the drives should I replace? the Blade Drive or the HD itself or both?

I'm looking for the fastest performance and I'm happy with 1TB of total storage.

Looking at the OWC website, they offer Aura Pro X2 for the blade and Mercury Electra or Extreme for the HD in various storage configurations.

Any advice would be much appreciated

 

[NC_Bulldog]

I want to replace the 1 TB fusion drive on my 27 inch iMac 2017.

Reason for the replacement is the performance of the drive has deteriorated.

My question is which of the drives should I replace? the Blade Drive or the HD itself or both?

I'm looking for the fastest performance and I'm happy with 1TB of total storage.

Looking at the OWC website, they offer Aura Pro X2 for the blade and Mercury Electra or Extreme for the HD in various storage configurations.

Any advice would be much appreciated

@brockhill

I have updated a couple older iMacs with OWC's Aura Pro X2 blades. Sometimes 500GB and sometimes 1TB. I have also used their Mercury Electra 6G drive in one case and 7200 RPM HDDs in other cases. I was very happy with the performance increases in each case.

The OWC kits are also convenient providing everything needed to do the update. I can highly recommend.

Since I use the HDDs for data storage, the Mercury Electra speed vs. HDD was over-kill. It all depends on how much money you want to spend and how you will use the SATA drive.

 

[brockhill]

Thank you for that.

I think i will go with replacing the blade with the 1 TB Aurea Pro X2 and then keep the existing HD for storage as my usage is pretty light.

 

[rpmurray]

I've found that OWC blades are OK for read speeds but usually turn in half the performance of other blades when it comes to writes. You may want to read through A list of successful iMac 27" (2012-2019) SSD upgrades.

 

[SketchyClown]

After replacing the 2TB spinner HDD a couple years ago with a Silicon Power 1TB SSD and recreating an all-SSD Fusion Drive, my iMac performed amazingly in comparison.

Fast forward to now, and the 128GB Apple blade SSD was getting worn out. DriveDX reported that the lifetime wear indicators showed in the 50% left range. So that's not bad for a 7yo workhorse, but not good.

Also, while the new configuration ran circles around the old HDD version of the Fusion Drive, I knew that newer blade drives would get things moving and breathe some fresh life into my old iMac.

Found a great tutorial on YouTube for this as it requires far more disassembly of the iMac than just replacing the platter.

I purchased a $12 adapter from Amazon which allowed me to utilize a 1TB Western Digital Black SN770 NVME.

Surgery went well and Humpty was back together again. The old read/write was about 1800/375.

Overall, the difference is noticeable from installing updates, opening apps and boot times. Much faster.

 

[rpmurray]

Found a great tutorial on YouTube ...

I tend to take these claims with a grain of salt unless there is a link to said tutorial.

 

[SketchyClown]

I tend to take these claims with a grain of salt unless there is a link to said tutorial.

Here's the rest of the salt for you. Tutorial.

Most people in 2022 are able to use the Youtube search box, no?

I did not create it, and whomever did, just FYI, that music is horrendous.

 

[rpmurray]

Most people in 2022 are able to use the Youtube search box, no?

True, but apparently YouTube has trouble finding what I want when I enter the search terms, sort of like Google, where I have to go several pages in to see something that isn't an ad or sponsored.