Make an iMac super fast with an SSD - LFC

Last time I made a video about this, it wasn't very good. Here's a better swing of the axe. See note below about Fusion Drives.

So I entirely forgot that the Fusion Drive exists while recording this, here's a quick Q&A:
1. What is the Fusion Drive?
Apple's Fusion drive iMacs still have a regular HDD in them, but it's cached by a very small NVMe SSD mounted on the logic board.

2. Do I need an SSD if I have a Fusion Drive?
Yes. The fusion drive is better than HDD only, but it's still pretty bad. Hybrid drive setups like this are a stop-gap, and still nowhere near as fast as pure SSD. Also the HDD can still be failing, bringing down the entire system.

3. How do I deal with a Fusion Drive? Can I still use it afterwards?
My recommendation is to change the HDD to an SSD as per the video, and just erase the Fusion SSD in Disk Utility, leaving it unformatted and unused. It's too small to be useful. Technically, there are commands to rebuild a fusion drive to work with the SATA SSD, but this is generally a terrible idea that will just overcomplicate things for no benefit.

4. Can I fit a big NVME SSD instead of a SATA one?
Yes, but this requires removing the logic board. IMHO it's not worth it unless you're working on a top-spec iMac that really really needs the disk performance for video editing or VMs or something like that. Most iMacs in the wild are low/mid spec office machines, and won't benefit from anything faster than SATA.


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