Upgrading my late 2013 iMac! 

Having an SSD in an old computer can completely breathe new life into it. I definitely recommend doing the upgrade if possible because trust me when I say you won't regret it.

Literally all you have to do to make some computers go from glacially slow to sonic speed is just switch out the hard drive It's crazy If you have a desktop, get an SSD If you have a laptop, get an SSD If you have an Xbox 360, play Dark Souls

Just did this upgrade last night to my 2013 iMac.... all I can say is WOW! I am totally blown away! I swear my computer now runs better than it did when it was brand new!! Can’t thank you enough for this video! For under $90 total, I practically have a new computer!

I viewed several videos about this subject and yours was by far the best presentation. Instructions and steps were easy to follow. Thank you.

Man what a video. Thank you. I first dug into my Nitro 5 a few weeks ago and then wondered if I could upgrade my 27" iMac. You have given me the answer - a definite yes. Thanks again.

I just followed step by step this video and killed it! Although I used a Samsung SSD 850 Pro 256 gb, and now it runs way faster than I would've expected. Once again I can't say thank you enough!

I know this is an old video but THANK YOU! I bought my mom a used iMac and had HD problems that I didn't even fully understand. But I had an old SSD I wasn't using and it appears you helped me solve the problem. I got the adhesive strips and a tool for removing the screen on eBay for about $7. Installing Catalina as I type this. Again, THANK YOU.

Great video. It's worth noting that these late-2013 iMacs can easily accept Big Sur (unofficially) and the performance is the same, if not better than Catalina was. Very much recommended!

I put an ssd in my MacBook Pro 2012 and a few more gigs of ram it’s feels soo much better

5:31 That side plastic piece is a speaker :D

I bought a 500 gb kit from OWC for 2012 21.5”. It came with an ssd interface box to clone copy from the HDD. Used free version of Carbon Copy. Had to do a Pram reset. Boots up in 10 secs. Perfect! Randy

My dad didn't feel like opening up his iMac Late 2012 so I got him a USB 3 adapter and a 1tb wd blue SSD and it has made a huge difference even though its not running at full speed

Letting the adhesive cure to a clean surface is imperative. This can be aided by using some clear packing tape around some of the outer sides. If that's not an option make sure the monitor doesn't lean forward at all. If the screen falls off (I have experienced this), connectors will get tweaked and possibly damaged. Also, the screen can crack, so put pillow in front of your computer.

I am going to do this with my iMac. I already got the same SSD and just waiting for the LCD adhesives to arrive :) thanks

You can also copy the original HD on an external drive (doesn't need to be SSD). Change the Mac to boot from the external every time and take apart iMac. Now add in new SSD turn on; it will boot from external drive and now copy (requires software both times) the external to the new internal SSD. You could also buy an accessory to make the internal SSD drive a external and than copy over.

Thanks for the video! Did this yesterday. iMac is so much faster now!

I upgraded to Samsung 860 evo and it felt amazing after that 14 year old 80gb hdd.

You should use the APFS file system when you erase the volume. It is better optimized for SSDs. You will get that option in disk utility once you have updated to High Sierra and after

Thank you so much for this!! Watching this gave me the courage to upgrade my late 2013 iMac from hdd to ssd. Its like I have a new computer. Super snappy and so worth it. The only criticism I have about your tutorial is that, when I booted up the iMac with the ssd, you made it seem like you went straight to downloading macOS. I did that and it didn’t read my ssd. I started to freak out but I later found out I have to click disk utility first and erase it and then go back of download macOS. Other than that thank you!!

Mac is awesome. It indeed always works. I have an Macbook Air from 2017, a Macbook Pro from 2009 both with SSD. Super fast! Thanks for the video. Looking to buy a 2013 iMac and upgrade it with SSD. 😎

Nice of you to add music links in description 👍🏽

That's for this. My late 2013 iMac is soooo slow I have to walk away from it in frustration. I'll give this a try. 👍

In my opinion this iMac is still great this days. We have it at home, The 27” version

I've never upgraded a Mac before, but I did SSD my Asus notebook from 2012 and boy do i not regret it one bit.

I love your videos. Tech is just so fascinating and amazing

I did this (well i sent it to someone to do it) with my late 2012 imac. It is, to this day the computer i use, it runs wonderfully and it works for my 3d modelings and rendering

I got an identical unit recently for just 200€ and it is working nicely but, yes, an SSD woud boost it. Thanks for sharing this!

I still use my 2012 27 iMac and it’s actually very fast since the fusion drive failed. The hdd in the fusion drive failed so while it only has 128gb its very fast. I love it and use it more than my 2017 MacBook pro

”This side plastic piece...” it’s the speaker XD

I love this 2013 iMac 21.7 love it I am going to buy me one

Thanks for this. Have a late 2013 iMac 27 and it’s getting unreasonably slow under Catalina. Useless in fact. Tried to buy ram but the guy at the local computer shop said upgrade the SSD. Searched YT and up came your brilliant video. Gonna pull the trigger and drop another 8 Gig of RAM in it.

My neighbors still have their 10 year old iMac.

Did the same with a 1 TB EVO 860 in summer 2018. It's a real shame it won't support Big Sur, because this thing is FAST !

Thanks! Will this work with the iMac 27 Inch, Late 2012 models? I believe those have the fusion drive?

I have a 2009 MBP since new and 2 years ago upgraded with 8gb ram and 512gb ssd and works incredible. I will keep it for another 5 years.

Installing the OS without a bootable drive is brilliant and I love Maca for it

Thank you dude this really help me out thanks man.

I have a late 2015 5K i5 3.2ghz iMac, it came with a 7200rpm 1TB HD, recently on a sale i buyed a 480gb SSD and a External SATA3 to USB3 HD Caddy and installed Mac OS, on USB the SSD is 2X faster than the HD, I fallen in love with the SSD and buyed 1TB Sandisk SSD and opened my Mac and swapped the HD to the SSD, the best thing I did. I did it too to my old MacBook Pro mid 2012

Watching this on a 2009 MacBook Pro, I replaced the ultra slow HDD with a 240 Gig SSD, doubled the RAM from 2 to 4 Gig, bought new (used) internal speaker , new battery. It"s a nice laptop to use for consuming media, web browsing and basic productivity tasks.

My dad gave me his old 2010 MacBook Pro. I installed an SSD and 16GB of ram in it. I love it, it runs like a modern machine

Thanks for that, Josh. It's funny...you seemed surprised about the excellent build and durability of Macs. We Mac folk say "Once you go Mac, it's hard to go back." I'm going to give this a shot. Good video. Well done :-)

I did this with an older 27" iMac The glass is held on with magnets, not adhesive. However, I used Disk Utilities to "restore" my HD onto the SSD using an external USB3 to SATA cable first that way I didn't lose any data or settings or 3rd party APPS .

Too right since I started using an ssd my pc has never slowed down it’s amazing

The thing that frustrates me about my iMac (which has the Fusion drive) is that my hard drive started going really slow so I assumed the hard drive was failing, but it turns out that the SSD part of it was failing....so much for lasting longer than the hard drive

You should keep making videos like this one

Props to u for not just going out and spending a ton of money on a new Mac

thank you bro, it was helpful....✌️

awesome video, thanks for sharing!

thanks for the great video!

tell that one of my macbooks using a mid 2010 15" MBP :D still running great on catalina. yes catalina

4:10 there are tabs at the far left and right that you pull to remove the bottom adhesive - support the screen as it could fall BEFORE the last piece is removed

Mine is coming May 22! Got a Macally keyboard & mouse combo with it which is coming the same day.

Thank you very much! you just confirmed that i didn't need to get a special catty to put an SSD in this system in case the Temperature sensor was mounted to it!

I am really thankful that Catalina just works on a near 8 year old device. Kudos to Apple for supporting this device for so long.

Hi I love your videos dude

Yes, great video!!!! THank you.

I have a 2013 27" iMac, Quad core i5 32GB ram etc, and it's slow! Watching this video has convinced me that SSD is the way forward. So now off to the stores to grab a 500GB Samsung SSD. Need to try this before I venture down the replacement iMac route. I have the iFix It tools and replacement strips, had those a while but needed convincing it was worth a shot. Will update when done, thanks for the video fella, very informative. Also confirms I don't need any fan or temp cables as with the earlier iMacs

Good job m8, thanks!

Great video. Would you recommend the Samsung over other SSDs?

Amazinggggg Videooooo

man ty so much for the video!!

Great video. Thanks 🙏

Switched to SSD from old HDD on my iMac 24” early 2009 and its bring the computer new life! Everything is so fast, every time I wonder is it my old iMac? I also have the same Samsung 860 evo 500GB. Tomorrow will change 4GB RAM to Max on my model- 8GB RAM.

PLease can you do a follow up? What do you do with your Imac 2013 - Upgraded now? thinking if I should upgrade or not - Also should I do RAM as well?

Did this to my late 2012 13,2 27", which I bought new with a 3TB Fusion Drive. So, a 2 TB SSD in the main slot, and a 1 TB in the  proprietary PCIE slot. I reestablished it as a Fusion drive in terminal, but given the way macOS manages volumes now it's not necessary. With a little "help" it's running Sonoma 14.1.2. , although I think this may be the limit for the graphics card.

Thank you so much for this video! What kind of tape did you finally use to reattach the monitor?

Hey did you need to upgrade the firmware for the ssd. People recommend it for dampening the fan noise, which seems to increase once you install an ssd?

I'm in the process to SSD upgrade my late-2013 but when removing its display, it seems the 2 ribbon connector falls vertical whereas yours horizontal. Same for the HDD installation, it is different than yours so do you happen to know if late-2013 have different motherboards layout ?

I might upgrade mine now. Thanks. Maybe the gpu too.

wow thank you, please replay this , if do this then do i still need to put PCIe SSD on my imac?

I have a maxed out one of these 21 inch 2013 iMacs with a quad core 4th gen i7, 16g of ram and an nvidia geforce 750m graphics card. The computer still is plenty powerful to this day and probably for years more to come.

FYI: “recovery mode” ...easier to take the old hard drive, use a SATA to USB connector, boot from the old hard drive, format the new SSD (make sure to make it macOS bootable), install macOS from there or shut down, disconnect old drive and then go into recovery mode, and you should be able to recover right onto the new SSD. (if you don’t already have one, various types of SATA to USB connectors are available starting at cheap$, or put in old drive case, most older external USB drives have a SATA adapter on the drive itself).

Did you have to install the OS in the new hard drive before installing it in the Mac or was it all through recovery mode? I got a free, nicely kept iMac from my family that could use this upgrade.

From your experience does Catalina run smooth and everything works with no problems having a iMac late 2013?

I have a 2013 model, running Ubuntu because mac os dropped support. For those reading along, there's a wiring harness sold for about $39 U.S. This keeps the cooling fan from going full-boot. Often the cooling sensor is incorporated in the hard drive region. There's software that will control the fan, but not on all OS.

Hey buddy thanks for the tutorials Hey buddy, I have a iMac 2013 with 16gb ram and 1 Tb HD, I would like to upgrade the 1 Tb HD to something bigger, can you please give me some tips , as far as which HD would suites me better .. and thanks again.

This was very useful. I would be glad to see more videos like this. I have an old iMac which we still use. Any idea how to find out when it was made to see if i can do this too?

OWC website has a power board in their SSD replacement kits. Is a power board replacement recommended for these models when you do the SSD? Or should it just be done like this? Or at least I think that's what I'm looking at on the OWC site. The parts they want you to put in don't look like a regular drive and they have you doing a much more elaborate disassembly.

How did you managed the fusion drive? i can see that your new hard drive is 511 gb....did you fuse the two ssd??

or just use an external ssd (in my case Sandisk extreme) and u dont need all that, the results are great as well! used it on my late 2013 imac

even though your tutorial isnt so in depth, its narrated better than most.

I bought a 2008 imac for 50 euro's which is a bargon! But the previous owner said it whas SO SLOOOOOW, i opened up the imac and it had the original 320gb mechanical hard drive in it! I replaced it with a (temporarely) 240gb ssd, it feels snappy as heck! It opens up apps in an instant! It has a core 2 duo, but it fast enough to do light work on it like webbrowsing and watch youtube! I have a m.2 msata drive lying around just doing nothing, my plan is to upgrade this imac with a m.2 to a classic 2,5 inch ssd adapter which costs 30 euro's online! 1TB may sounds overkill, but for loading the imac with movies and such and serving as a iPhone backup station, i think its enough!

If your doing it, just boot through thunderbolt external ssd or even usb 3. I have the same one and I do and it’s absolutely rapid, and I haven’t took it apart once

I bought an iMac 27" model A1419 for $200.00 two months ago and the person I bought it from said that the hard drive was giving him an error. He didn't know what the error was but I took a chance because it had a 2TB hard drive and 32GB of RAM.Turned out that initially all I needed to do was reinstall the OS. That worked for a couple months then all of a sudden the drive failed. I just purchased a 250GB SSD and tape kit from Amazon for $60.00 total. I don't need more that 250 GB because most of my data in cloud based. Looking forward to getting the computer back up and running again. This tune keeps rollin around in my head... a country tune I think originally it goes "and we were swingin" only I'm sing (in my head) "and I'll be screamin" LOL

Same iMac as I have. Did you install a OWC temperature sensor? Or is the need for one a load of bull***t? Has the screen fallen off yet?

A 'before & after' disk benchmark would have been good... BTW, I'm now looking to upgrade my iMac :-)

i bought my mid 2012 13" MacBook pro without a drive and installed a 480gb Kingston A400 SSD. I want a new SSD (a faster one) but it's honestly still a nice laptop. Definitely one of the best purchases i've made.

Brilliant video, I will have to have a go at this on my late 2013 27" iMac would I be near the mark buying an SSD like this model...Samsung 860 QVO 1 TB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-76Q1T0)..?

"longer than the average lifespan of a computer" laughs in macbook pro 2010 base as main laptop

I think the caveat is that taking out the HDD bottleneck will allow your other components to sing. If your other components are muck then you won’t see the same benefit as this guy. But if you have an i5 and 8gb ram and you’re still running a HDD you will be amazed

I'm getting a 2012 27" imac to have Apple around for a few apps that won't play on my windows 10. I see that on some of these there is an actual slot on the MB to install an SSD. It's what Apple called it's "Hyper Drive". I guess the idea is to run the OS off the SSD and use the 1TB drive for storage.

Should one consider to upgrade RAM as well parallel to SSD upgrade?

Hi! Hopefully you’ll see this. I have a late 2013 imac 21.5”. I know you used Samsung 860 evo but would the 870 evo work too? Also, is owc ram good? While I have it opened I want to upgrade the ram. I would like to update the i5 to i7 but seems like it’s hard to buy.

Hello, great video. I want to upgrade my mid 2014 iMac, the connection cables are just the same that your computer have or there is another specification that I need to have in mind when I buy the SSD? Thanks, so much¡

Epic. Wish me luck! :)

What are your thoughts on using an external SSD as your boot drive so you don't have to open up your computer? I'm thinking of using a Samsung T5 1TB SSD with my late 2012 iMac, to replace the 1TB fusion drive. It would plug into the USB 3.0 port. Wondering if this is still a viable upgrade to the internal fusion drive. I know it won't be as fast as replacing the internal drive, but would it still be worthwhile to do? Thanks!

Hi, I heard many people had the screen fallen off after for a while they replaced the adhesives. How about you?

Just added an external SSD to my Late 2013 iMac and it's like day and night. So if you don't want to take it apart, the external SSD is just fine. It boots to User-Selection in around 10-15 Seconds, and another 5-10 seconds from User to Desktop. Before it took around 3 Minutes to Desktop and even then you would get beach balls for at least 2 Minutes as soon as you did ANYTHING.

You should be using iFixit's iMac cutting wheel to prevent the unlikely event of cutting any sensitive components

I have a 2012 iMac 21.5" but it's time to upgrade the drive to an SSD, it's getting ridiculously slow(but still usable if you have patience) and I barely use it anymore because it pales in comparison to my 2019 MacBook Pro! Time to get that SSD! I'm just scared about the screen!