Thanks for the video! I was inspired to upgrade my 2009 iMac. I just finished it and my stats are: hdd write 88.5 read 96.4, sdd write 254.1 read 269.0. Hdd boot time 1:18, ssd boot time 30.49 seconds. Sweet!
Excellent video, thank you. The close-ups of the cable removal and replacement were particularly helpful and I had no idea about the fan control issue. Thanks again.
This was extremely helpful!! i really liked the work around on the suction cups. i was about to go by them and i realized i have that SAME soap dish! go figure. Also appreciate the careful editing and viewing angles on dealing with the all important cables. Really nicely done!
i am a pc technician & am curious to related videos ... FYI very well done, clear speech, no music & concise to the point. You are a good thinker. VERY WELL DONE. Cheers
Excellent - Well organized, logical & sequential work flow, helpful hints, tips and suggestions. The SSD fan control app was an unexpected plus. Great job - Extremely well done! Kudos, DSN
This is the mother of all old iMac SSD replacement videos. You've got the explanation about not needing the temperature sensor (because software!) AND the fact that the original cables plug right in to the new drive without going through an adapter! These were the things I wanted to see working! Awesome. Thanks Rick! Now what about installing the OS BEFORE you install the drive. The machine only goes to Sierra right?
I moved my OS before swapping drives. You just need to boot up from the restore partition (hold down Option key on startup and choose Recovery drive). Once it starts up, use disk utility to restore your current drive ONTO your new drive. Your new drive will be erased and then the source drive will be copied to it.
Nice video. Messing with those cables seems a bit tricky. An SSD does make a tremendous difference. I put one in my 2009 Macbook pro and it turned an old slow machine into a fast one. I since bought a used 2012 Macbook pro so I could get 16GB of Ram and I took the SSD out of the old computer and put it into the new one. I read that the newer imacs have the glass glued on instead of using magnets.
I haven't messed with any newer model iMacs. I just installed SSDs and RAM in my parent's 5yr old Mac Mini and Macbook Pro. It really gives the older hardware new life. It is seems like magic.
Cheers for video Rick - successfully installed new 500GB Samsung SSD SSD Fan works a treat as well... RU-vidrs - don't make schoolboy error I made - forgot to create a bootable USB version of OS Sierra...(DOH!)
nice video I have the same iMac, I'm going to swap the optical drive for a SSD I think in mine. I did it in my MacBook 2011 and made a fusion drive which is working like charm ( touch wood !).
Thanks for the video. A question: Do you know if I can put the SSD drive like a primary drive and leave the HDD drive like secondary drive? Only for storage.Thanks again.
+JR TECH COMPUTER Innovation & Quality I am not sure. You might be able to put one of the hard drives in place of the optical drive. I think there are companies that make mounting adapters to do that but I don't have any experience with it.
Thanks for the useful video Rick! I downloaded the ssd fan control and i'm not getting a temp reading and I also don't have the smart option (im assuming because of that) I've set the RPM to 1100 on manual.
I was about to order the suction cups, the only had them in the US so it wouldve taken weeks to get to australia, so i used the phone window mount out of my car and used that haha
Nice, I'm planning to upgrade mine as well! :) Just to confirm, is this your computer specs: Model: A1311 (EMC 2308), ID: iMac10,1? Also, how is your computer doing now? :)
Thank you a lot for your video, thanks to you I found the right products on Amazon and now I got a better idea how to proceed . I don’t have any time machine back up … my bad. But I guess I can re-install the OS with the starting recovery system ?
what is needed to be done to the ssd so that the iMac recognizes it? my ssd was new and empty and the iMac does not recognize it. I could not clone it because the previous one got damaged. I formated the ssd to journaled mac os and it still is not recognized. what Am I missing??
You will need to install the system (macOS) on it. You can boot into the recovery console by pressing command-R while the machine is booting. This will have the option to install macOS. Otherwise, you can plug the SSD into a USB enclosure and install macOS on it using another Mac. You just need to run the macOS installer (downloaded from the App Store) and make sure to choose your external USB drive instead of the internal drive. Once you have it installed on the SSD, you can put it in your iMac and it should boot.
RickMakes comand R does not pull my recovery mode. instead it shows a grey folder with a question mark meaning it does not see the hard drive. I have no idea how to approach this issue. please help!!!
actually i find out the problem. It has nothing todo with your hard drive. Its because the keyboard was not recognized. Try to open the capitalize function and see if the green light on the keyboard is on. If not, your keyboard is not connected to the computer thats why it won't start up properly. I recommend to use a wire keyboard and press windows sign+R when you start up.
Dave Trussell I was able to fix mine by installing the OS into the drive usinh a MACBOOK PRO. after the OS is installed, the drive gets recognized. Another thing that I realized is that when you install the OS into the drive, some other files needed for recognition get is taller as well. Another option would be to clone the SSD from any other OS system you have at home. that way you will get this files that you need and can upgrade to a new OS if you need. hope this works for you!!!!
If you are doing light computing (email, web browsing, etc...) you might be able to get by with a small, cheap SSD. That would give you a little bit of a speed increase to get a little more life out of the computer. If the computer dies or you get rid of it, you can remove the SSD and put it in a USB enclosure and use it as a portable drive.
There is a noticable speed boost. It would be a bigger boost if this computer had SATAIII. This is my wife's computer. She doesn't use it daily. She mostly used for managing her photos. If I hadn't upgraded, I'm guessing we would have needed to get a new computer.
I would assume based on the benchmark tests and the visible video boot times that it did. I have bought a few 10 year old laptops and put in SSD and there is a better performance issue. Trust me!
Excellent video, but seriously.... Who eats fat free cottage cheese? LOL. Truly amazing video and helpful. I have a 2009 and for your guide. Thank you!
Thanks for the compliments! Only AE (Anderson Erickson) Old Fashioned Cottage Cheese. I used to eat a ton of it. I would eat fat free, 2% or 4%. I have since cut dairy out of my diet for a number of different reasons and have lost a lot of weight.
A very hard video to watch, as the lighting is all shadows and with such a precise intricate job, such as this , why didn't you get a close strong light to enable watching which cables went where ?
If I do another video like this, I'll try to be more aware of the lighting. My brother is a videographer so I'll try to enlist his help next time. Thanks for the feedback.
dear creator Ive got a black screen, is it somthing disconected??? I can check the power of screen and sound. I`m guessing that the problem is the most wide cable. isnt it? by the way the video is the best help Ive ever seen before thx
I would check all of the connections. You can also shine a flashlight on the screen when you turn it on. If you see a dim image on the screen, then the backlight isn't working.
You should be able to install the system on it after you install the drive in the computer. If you hold down command-r while booting, it will take you into the recovery console. This can take a while as it has to load the recovery system from over the internet. From there you can using Disk Utility to format the drive and then install macOS. Alternatively, you can install the system on the drive while it is in an external USB enclosure. That way it is ready to do.
+RickMakes great idea to control the fan, do you have to set it to 'smart' every time you restart your computer? or it is one time setting and it will be permanent?
+Neethan kanesha The setting is persistent. If you boot into recovery mode, the fan will run at high speed because the fan control hasn't loaded. When booting normally, the fan control keeps the speed under control and the computer is nearly silent.
+pokeutopia It is Mac only. When you boot into Windows, I'm guessing the fan will run at full speed. There are other (hardware based) techniques to slow down the fan. I would do some searching online.
+Yanick Norman I don't disagree. It is a little intimidating. I am big on backing up before taking a project like this on. This computer was 6 years old so I figured it was worth the risk to try and update it. If I were to break it, I would have had to get a new computer to replace it and I was okay with that.
hey what if i do not clone my hard drive im replacing and just put in the new ssd? will i be able to install the os or will i need a installation dist or thumb drive? thanks
Hi,Great video😎I’m getting a 2007 IMac with Intel 2.4ghz and 4gb ram.Have you ever heard about this model having a over heating problem? I’m getting the iMac next week,and I was wondering if I should get something to fix it,if it needs it.Thanks for your time😎😎
I haven't heard of any problems with my 2009. I'm not sure about the 2007. If you are skilled and want to take the risk, it might not be a bad idea to blow the dust out of it.
Thanks for this useful video and links! I'm doing this to my late 2009 iMac soon. Can you add any insight on TRIM support and El Capitan on such a machine with a Samsung EVO? Probably the EVO 850 500GB due to it having a better price then the 840, at least where I live. I see the fan control was fixed to work with 830/840 "and possibly other" so I might be in for a surprise there.
+Tommy Stormstereo I'm running a Samsung 840 EVO and I have upgraded to El Capitan. The fan control software is still working. I'm guessing it will work with the 850 but I can't say I have tried it. I have a video on enabling TRIM (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-J9RLqVgjfXA.html) on the Mac and this is the technique I used on my iMac. A commenter on that video pointed out that there could be a problem with enabling TRIM on the Samsung drives (www.macnn.com/articles/15/07/02/latest.os.x.version.offers.preliminary.support.for.third.party.drives.129345/). I do have TRIM enabled but I also have multiple backups and I absolutely recommend having multiple backups before messing with this stuff. I do have an 850 EVO in my Macbook Pro running El Capitan and TRIM turned on. I just can't say 100% that the fan control will work.
+RickMakes Thank you so much for your informative answer. Much appreciated! I feel confident to try this soon. I'll try and get back to this thread with an update afterwards.
great videos, thanks ! how do you boot into recovery mode ? After upgrading the old HDD to SSD, my imac 27 (year 2009 model) can't enter the recovery mode by pressing Command + R.
if you are replacing your old HDD with SSD and you don't want your fan to be noisy, just take off your old HDD control board from the top of HDD (6 small screws), plug in the temperature sensor cable and stick the board on top of your new SSD with double sided tape. если вы меняете ваш старый HDD на SSD и не хотите что бы он шумно работал из за отсутствия датчика температуры, то снимите плату с верху вашего старого HDD диска , подсоедините к ней оставшийся шлейф температурного датчика и приклейте эту плату поверх нового SSD.
The original hard drive has a temperature sensor built in. If you remove it, the computer's fan runs at full speed (very loud) all the time as sort of a failure mode. Using the software slows the fan back down like when the sensor is installed.
Excellent video BUT...Dust is a conductor and high velocity cleaning isn't recommended! VACUUM the dust off and away from the electronics, just sayin'.
Mike Scholl I can't remember what I did. :( I may have used another Mac to create a USB installer. There are instructions online for doing that. You may also be able to boot into recovery mode (Command-R at boot) and install the system from there.
I don't see a late 2010 iMac. I did find instructions for a mid 2010 27" iMac. You could probably watch my video to get a feel for what to expect but then follow the instructions on ifixit to do the actual procedure. I'm guess the procedure is slightly different from my video but things like connectors will probably be similar. Here is the ifixit procedure: www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2390+Hard+Drive+Replacement/8919
Rick, thank you very much for posting this video. I watched your video probably 5-7 times, took notes on everything, bought everything you suggested in the notes section and did exactly what you did. The only difference was that I chose the Samsung 850 EVO ssd. Hardware installation was fine. Gray screen showed up and after that the dreadful blinking question mark folder. I tried many different key combinations, including (cmd+r, cmd+rp, cmd+opt+r, shift key, etc..) to get the screen you got on your video (exact minute: 11:32) but nothing worked. I tried putting back the old HDD and everything booted normally. So with that I came to realization that I didn't format the new SSD. Can you please direct me in the right direction on how to format the new Samsung 850 EVO ssd before installing it into iMac, or do you format the new ssd after you do the hardware installion. I would really appreciate specifics on the proper formatting of a new ssd. THANKS MUCH IN ADVANCE!
Hong Li, I just saw your question. Sorry! Yes I did figure it out how to go around my problem. Here's what I did, if it's at all helpful: 1. I connected my newly purchased Samsung 850 EVO ssd to my Mac as a secondary External Hard Drive via USB 3.0 cable (www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-STAE-104-Compatible-Black-Boat/dp/B06Y55HBKQ/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1505249424&sr=8-10&keywords=Seagate+cable) 2. Before the upgrade to SSD drive my Mac was running older version of Mac OS X I believe it was (10.6.8). I can't remember now, since it was about a year ago. So, I downloaded a FREE version of newer version of Mac OS X (10.10) and installed it on a Samsung 850 EVO ssd. (That took a while, about 3 hours, due to USB speed limitation) 3. Then I went to Setting > Startup DIsk and made sure the newly SSD drive showed as an option to restart my Mac with. It was there. I selected it and restarted the Mac. Upon the restart everything worked great except evrythythg was super slow that was because the SSD drive was connected via USB cable. 4. So now knowing that everything boots from new SSD, I shut down my Mac and did all of the steps on removing old SATA drive and putting my new SSD drive by exactly following the video above. Thank you Rick! 5. I did install "Fan Control" app just as Rick mentioned in the video and everything worked beautifully. I also maxed my RAM which is 16 GB. THAT'S IT! I still use my old Mac 2009 running new Samsung 850 EVO (1TB of SSD) on it. So, for nearly $300 i've updated my 2009 Mac to a spec that isn't even available at Apple store. If you have old Mac try it, it's worth the effort.
You can clone is before or install new. If you get the drive up and running using an external USB enclosure, it should just work when you install it in the computer.
@@Rickmakes I would like to put ssd as primary hard drive, and use regular as data . Domt want to use enclosure because I believe USB speed is 2.0. Now I am confuse if I should remove optical and put ssd. Bit what should I do about the sensor ? And how can I make ssd as primary so system can boot for ssd?
If you don't have any data you need on the current hard drive, you can just replace it with the SSD and reinstall the system on it from scratch. You can use the SSD Fan Control software in place of the sensor. I put a link to it in the description.
Not really sure how else to explain it... Basically, put the double-sided tape underneath the SSD and stick it to the iMac, exactly where the HD caddy was. You're attaching it to the back part of the iMac. Maybe attach all the cables to the SSD first and then stick it, so the drive will be close enough to the cables. I put my SSD in place of the optical drive because I didn't want to have to deal with the HD fan sensor issue. Now everything is run off the SSD and the HD drive has now become a Time Machine back-up. You can also use heavy duty duct tape instead of double-sided sticky tape. That's what I used. You're not going to be moving the iMac around and the SSD has no moving parts, so it's not going anywhere
+dasboot360 It is a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition. It might seem weird to use a GoPro but they have a decent sized image sensor and pretty decent quality.
The SSD is a lot faster. It gave this old computer a new life. My wife was using it but I recently switched her to a 2012 Mac Mini. I did a fresh install on the iMac and am keeping it on hand with some older software that doesn't run on the newer systems.
@@MRrwmac Probably the biggest advantage of APFS is that if you copy a file, it only stores it once on the hard drive. If you change the copy, it only stores the change. It also has better data integrity features.
It just used magnets. I do have a link in the description to some small suction cups. You could also use something like a suction cup phone/GoPro mount like you would use on a car windshield.
Yes. You can use a 3.5" drive. You will likely still need to use the fan control software unless you can find a hard drive with the temp sensor that is built-in and compatible with the iMac.
It's a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB. This machine only supports SATA II and the SSD is SATA III so the drive is quite a bit more capable than the machine can handle.
@@abhishekchatterjee675 My wife was using it regularly up until a few months ago. I switched her over to our 2012 Mac Mini because it was sitting unused. I did notice some dimming in part of the backlight of the iMac but otherwise it is running just fine.
+Thien Kim Hoang Thank you for the compliment. I do get nervous working on computers but I always make sure to have multiple backups so if I break the machine, I can always just replace it. The data is much more important to me than the hardware.