Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have got an iMac (EMC 2638) here, with 1TB hard drive. I have read that there is a PCIe SSD slot on those iMacs as well, originally for the fusion drive. Is it possible to upgrade my iMac with such a SSD module? I don't care if it would work as a fusion drive, or simply have it as the main drive for OS and programs.
If this is possible, where can I buy such a SSD module? iFixit has repair instructions, but maybe I can let this be done by my local Mac shop.
It seems there is a workaround for this. One can buy an external Thunderbolt SSD, and set up a Fusion Drive. Since Thunderbolt is extremely fast, this is a low cost, low work solution that is very suitable for desktop machines like the iMac.
There are a lot of guides online on how to set up the disks.
It boils down to
Maybe one can skip the install to external HD, since newer Macs come with Internet Recovery. This would save quite a bit of work.
Once in recovery, you can see your disks using diskutil list. Let's say you see the disks disk1s2 (internal HD, OS X partition) and disk2 (clean SDD).
Now you can create the Fusion Drive:
sudo diskutil cs create [ArbitraryName] disk2 disk1s2
sudo diskutil cs createVolume [UUID] jhfs+ [ArbitraryName] 100%
The output of the first command results in a UUID which you use in the second command.
After this, you should be able re-install or restore OS X onto the Fusion Drive.
I haven't tried this yet, it is merely a summary of the linked article! So be careful and make backups!