Install Fusion Drive on iMac 2010

My two-year-old iMac began to upset me with the speed of work. After the installation of the “Lion” braking began, after the “Mountain Lion” the system began to slow down even more.

The very slow operation of the hard drive particularly upset me. Since I work at night, listening to the constant noise of the hard drive was not very comfortable. Installing 16GB of RAM did not solve the problem. It would be nice to install an SSD drive. But they are small and expensive. And where to get data from a terabyte disk? It's like moving from a three-room apartment to a one-room apartment.

When Apple announced the Fusion Drive, I thought that’s what I need and speed and volume. But I was not ready to buy a new computer for this. And when I read on Habréthat this technology runs easily on old poppies, I realized that the time has come. So - an upgrade.


There was some thrill. This was fueled by legends and stories about dust falling under the display glass. And the fact that you can disassemble Apple devices only in specialized centers and for a lot of money. And to himself, no, no. But fear the wolves - do not go to the forest.

I already had the experience of disassembling and assembling laptops. And I realized that I would do everything at my own peril and risk, which I also warn you about. Everything written concerns aimak of 2010 of release with 27 diagonal.

A plan loomed in my head.
  1. Buy SSD drive 256G.
  2. Somehow to disassemble the iMac.
  3. Install the drive and mount the Fusion Drive.


I started from the second point.

There are two ways: the first is simpler - to install an SSD drive instead of an optical drive. Then it would not be necessary to remove the motherboard, but still it was necessary to remove the glass from the aimak. And if so, then I chose the option a little more complicated. And the DVD will remain. We put the disk in the second, gracefully gluing it with tape to the inner wall of the computer.

For work, I purchased an SSD installation kit in the USA. link. eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DIYIM27SSD10



The kit itself cost $ 49, plus international shipping of $ 13. But that is not all.
When I paid for the whole thing, they contacted me and stunned me; Due to the fact that Russia has very strict customs rules, I need to pay another 42 dollars.

My calls to conscience that I had already paid for international shipping according to the tariffs of their website did not lead to anything. They apologized warmly to me and kindly offered to cancel the order. But I was already involved in this matter and I did not want to back down. I had to pay extra. As a result, the whole set cost me $ 104. Hmm ... a little expensive.

To be honest, you can save a lot of money and not buy this kit.

Of the entire kit, I used:
1. Two suction cups that can be bought on aliexpress.com for $ 12 with free delivery to Russia.
2. Tricky T-10 camomile screwdriver, which you can buy there for a couple of dollars.
3. An ordinary Phillips screwdriver.
4. SATA cable (you will find one in your cable box)
5. Power splitter for SATA drives.
6. Towel - microfiber. Sold in the household.
7. Six pieces of double-sided tape.

Actually, the entire set of tools turned out to be superfluous. I think you will meet much less money. Oh yes, I used tweezers, which I already had. Yes, and international delivery for $ 55 you will not need.

Most valuable is the SATA drive power splitter. On aliexpress, it sells for $ 2.2.


Buying a disc.
I have no experience operating SSD drives. After talking with more experienced comrades, I came to the conclusion that you need to take a drive with any controller except SandForce. The choice fell on the Vertex 4 256GB drive with an IndiLinx controller. And there were no other discs in my city either. And his hands were already scratching their eyes to look into the guts of aimak, since the day before the package arrived from America with a set for installation.

Getting
started disassembling The site has a detailed video instruction on how to disassemble and install SSD in imac 2010.



Everything is clear without knowledge of English. For convenience, I took a tablet with me and launched a video clip on it. It really helped. I skipped the video several times so as not to miss anything.

So, the action plan.
1. Turn off the computer. Disconnect all cords.
2. Suction cups pull the glass. (And it turns out to be supported by magnets).
3. Disconnect the matrix. 8 tricky bolts. Do not touch the main matrix with your fingers, as the Americans say in the video, - "it is very difficult to clean."
4. Disconnect the motherboard. 10 tricky bolts.
5. Glue the drive to tape.
6. Connect the cable to the drives.
7. We collect.

Americans plan to spend 60 minutes on everything about everything. I got in at three o'clock with a lunch break.

The first surprise. I was very afraid that dust would get on the inside of the glass. But when I carefully disconnected the glass from the case, a pinch of dust fell out from under the junction of the glass onto the matrix. Well, that’s it! Shock! Watch me now on the Internet through a dusty window.




The second surprise. When you unscrew the screws of the matrix, the tweezers must be held very tightly. Since magnets strive to tear out screws from tweezers.

The third surprise. As it turned out, inside the poppy there was even more dust that I had to pick up a brush and a hairdryer. What my wife really helped me with.



And the dust turned out to be very easily removed from the glass and the matrix with the help of a microfiber towel.

There were no more surprises. I violated the order of the video tutorial a bit. There they glue the disk onto the tape, and then connect the cable. It is not comfortable. I first connected the cables, and then glued the disk to the case. So convenient. Very much everything is closely located inside.


Unfortunately, I do not have a photograph of the already installed drive. I was focused and forgot to take pictures, but, again, in the video tutorial, everything is shown in great detail.

Reverse assembly
When reassembling, be sure to plug all the cables into the rear connectors. This will allow the motherboard to stand up straight, and in the future you will not have distortions in the connectors. And, yes, one detail. The screws that hold the motherboard are screwed back with a noticeable effort, greater than when unscrewing. At first, it seemed to me that I was tearing the thread, but no, everything turned out to be in order, this is some kind of fastening chip.

Before magnetizing the glass, I turned on the computer and made sure that all components are working. After all, in the process, I disconnected a bunch of internal connections. Aimak booted up and pleased me with a message. “The mapped drive cannot be used. Initialize? ”

It was a good sign. When the monitor is on, I carefully checked again whether there is dust on the matrix or on the glass. Everything is good. Fears were far-fetched. And I set the glass, clicking nicely with magnets. Bingo!

Part two. Launch Fusion Drive.

The whole procedure is well-described here in this article on Habré. We pass on to Fusion Drive.
I was guided by this article , as it seemed to me more understandable.

The following procedure.
1. Format the SSD using Disk Utility.
2. We make BackUp of all system with the help of Time Machine.
3. Using the recovery utility USB Recovery HD USB, create a bootable USB flash drive.
4. We boot from the flash drive and through the Terminal we mount our Fusion Disk, as described in the articles.
5. Reboot and restore the system from Time Machine.

Everything went smoothly. As a result, I got one large 1.25TV disc.

But the system continued to “grunt” the hard drive, which upset me. Where is the promised performance? Is it all in vain?
It was necessary to conduct testing. Unfortunately, I did not measure the speed of the hard drive until installing Fusion Drive. One thing was clear, then he slowed down.

I downloaded the free Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test program on the AppStore .

The measurement showed me a speed of 130 mb / s reading and the same amount of writing. This has told me little. Then, for comparison, I measured the speed on a 2012 mac mini. On it, the speed of the hard drive was 70 mb per second. Not a big gain, I thought. Probably you still need to enable TRIM technology. By default, it is disabled if the SSD is not installed from Apple.

What is TRIM, read here. Activate TRIM on OS X Mountain Lion. In short, it increases disk speed by 30%.

I did not play with the terminal and launched the TrimEnabler program , since the authors of the program assured that all the glitches described in the article were fixed.

I rebooted the computer, and lo and behold, it booted up in about 20 seconds. Before that, it took me five minutes to boot up. Naturally with the restoration of all running programs.

I was very impressed. Here it is! No wonder I tried. Measured speed - 200 mb / s. Already better.

Conclusions.
I have been working on the system for five days now. The flight is normal. At first, the system “grunted” the hard drive, moving files to the SSD. And then came the long-awaited silence.

Aimak gasped and fluttered. Programs open very quickly. Access to the hard drive is very rare when I crawl into some old distant folder. Now I once again measured the speed of the disk. Already almost 250 mb / s. But as they say, it's not about the speed of the disk, but in the sensations.

I am very glad.


In conclusion, I can add that my fears about the upcoming aimak upgrade were in vain. Not gods collect iPhones.

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