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The logic board of my iMac 27" Retina broke and I find it impossible to get a new one in the country where I'm living in.

I wonder if it's possible to access the data in the Fusion hard drive, connecting both SSD+HDD as external drives in another Mac OSX system.

Some people say it's impossible, some very few others say it can be done. I wonder if you can give me some advice before I go and buy this super expensive SATA-to-USB Apple adapter.

Best regards!

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  • SSD and HDD are separate devices - one attached to probably a Intel Chipset via SATA and the other one attached to a SSD controller on the logic board with a different interface (mSATA or m.2?). One adapter won't suffice.
    – klanomath
    Oct 6, 2017 at 5:49
  • Of course, excuse me if I didn't explain myself correctly. I'm talking about two different adapters for two different hard drives, but detected as an only Fusion Drive in another MacOS. The adapter for the HDD is common, but the adapter for the Apple SSD 16+12 pins is uncommon and expensive.
    – JacktheThird
    Oct 6, 2017 at 6:15
  • I think the easiest way is to use Target Disk Mode, but this could be impossible when your logic board is not working correctly. You could use ifixit to see how you can replace your ssd or hdd (or how to get it out) and use it in an enclosure. I know there're enclosures for 3.5" hdds, but I haven't seen one for ssds with a m.2 connection
    – Jules
    Oct 6, 2017 at 6:45
  • Thank you Jules. Target Disk didn't work when I tried. I already got out both hard drives SSD and HHD. The idea is to access both of them at the same time to gain access to the contents of the original Fusion Drive.
    – JacktheThird
    Oct 6, 2017 at 6:50

2 Answers 2

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you can put the old fusion drive in a usb enclosure then you should be able to boot to it by pressing the Option key when the boot chime rings. you can also use the drive in the enclosure to setup a new Mac. Using Migration Assistant you can import your entire old file system just as if you were using a Time Machine backup. The question of what to do with the drive AFTER you successfully accomplished moving your old file/apps/etc to the new Mac. All of a sudden you've got a 1.12TB or bigger drive on your hands. On Disk Utility it will show up as Fusion Drive and having the Core system with 2 partitions. I'm not sure if you can actually format the Fustion Drive as one unit and use the entire thing for whatever you wanted, like storing all your media files to be streamed from anywhere in the house.

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Target Disk Mode is probably what you're looking for.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462

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  • I tried, but can't start it :(. Thanks though
    – JacktheThird
    Oct 6, 2017 at 6:17
  • Target Disk mode only works if the Mac actually starts. But since the logic board is dead....
    – Zonker.in.Geneva
    Apr 8, 2021 at 13:39

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