You Can No Longer Upgrade the Main Hard Drive in Your iMac

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Posted May 12, 2011 at 1:40pm by iClarified

Apple has taken steps to prevent any third party hard drive upgrades of the main drive in the new iMac.

Signs of this began with the 2009 iMac which required a special thermal sensor cable for each hard drive manufacturer. Now OWC has discovered that with the new 2011 iMac Apple has made it impossible for you to upgrade to a third party drive.

For the main 3.5″ SATA hard drive bay in the new 2011 machines, Apple has altered the SATA power connector itself from a standard 4-pin power configuration to a 7-pin configuration. Hard drive temperature control is regulated by a combination of this cable and Apple proprietary firmware on the hard drive itself. From our testing, we’ve found that removing this drive from the system, or even from that bay itself, causes the machine’s hard drive fans to spin at maximum speed and replacing the drive with any non-Apple original drive will result in the iMac failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT).

In examining the 2011 27″ iMac’s viability for our Turnkey Upgrade Service, every workaround we’ve tried thus far to allow us to upgrade the main bay factory hard drive still resulted in spinning fans and an Apple Hardware Test failure. We swapped the main drive out (in this case a Western Digital Black WD1001FALS) with the exact same model drive from our inventory which resulted in a failure. We’ve installed our Mercury Pro 6G SSD in that bay, it too results in ludicrous speed engaged fans and an AHT failure. In short, the Apple-branded main hard drive cannot be moved, removed or replaced.

OWC notes that you can still add space using a secondary drive; however, if your main drive fails you have no alternative but to purchase a new one from Apple and pay them to install it via an Authorized Service Center. Also if you were planning to get a larger 3TB drive, those are aren't offered.

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You Can No Longer Upgrade the Main Hard Drive in Your iMac

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smate333 - May 14, 2011 at 12:21am

Matter of days, and the "adapter fix" will be available. What I don't get, why does it matter to Apple? The nowise will always go to the "genius" for a hard drive swap, the geeks are happy for the new challenge. It seems like another tricky lets talk about Apple marketing scheme...

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Notch - May 13, 2011 at 2:27pm

Apple has gone down this proprietary lane before, and it almost killed them. Steve jobs saved apple by using MORE off-the-shelf commodity components, making macs MORE compatible with wintel than ever before. That, along with osx (also a more-compatible move), turned apple around. Am I the only one that remembers? The recent push by apple to run back toward manufacturing all their own hardware is puzzling. Ok, do the chip, I get that. Maybe the chipsets, but that's tricky. But hard drive?!? That's almost as stupid as making your own LCD screens. Lol ! The beginning of the downslide of apple has dawned. Watch it happen.

KnightGeek - May 13, 2011 at 10:05am

Wtf kind of iMac are u gettin for 2500?? Lol They start at 1199, or 1699. And if the hdd is the first thing to fail u have warranty. And if ur too cheap to pay 169 for a 3 yr warranty then that's on u. I've no problem w it. I'm sure I'm not gonna go over 2TB + 256GB SSD in the 4-5 years that I'll own this machine.

Tunger - May 12, 2011 at 4:16pm

@Mo, @Syd No one is forcing Apple products on you. As with any other type of product you purchase, you weigh the pros and cons, factor in the price, and decide if the product is worth it to you. It would not be worth it to me, so I won't but an iMac. No problem. Manufacturers of all sorts of products across a broad spectrum of industries use proprietary components. It's part of controlling your brand, quality, revenue stream, etc. This isn't governmental control over your purchases, nor is Apple knocking on your door, putting a gun to your head and demanding your money. Get over it.

DigiHead - May 12, 2011 at 6:03pm

exactly! like dell forcing you to use only original chargers and some third party not working properly and there is lots of examples how one brand makes parts not interchangeable with other brand parts. and so? nobody gives a shit! There is always reason behind it not only financial but technical too. apple pays more attention to the part they use and to keep the brand always on top list they doing stuff to protect theirs devices from third party cheap and shitty part using. I repair idevices for living, but when i dropped and broke glass on me iphone, i took it to apple and let them repair it with original parts and service, even I can do it my self using chinese-close-to-original parts almost for free, because I care about original quality.

ambroze - May 13, 2011 at 10:20am

"to keep the brand always on top list they doing stuff to protect theirs devices from third party cheap and shitty part using." WTF - Apple has already made their $ upon the sell of the product so why should they care if you decided to upgrade that product at a more reasonable price instead of Apple's jacked up pricing? And if that voids your warrant that it up to the consumer. And yes no one is making anyone buy anything out there so people please get over that fact. The point is Apple does make good quality products that people want to have but they do not need to control everything about the products you do purchase.

Russell - May 12, 2011 at 4:15pm

To get around it, all someone (OWC, NewEgg,...) has to do is crack open the hard drive and figure out where the circuit the 3 extra pins go to. Then create an adapter with that circuit so no matter what drive you put in, the computer thinks an Apple certified drive is connected.

Rudy - May 12, 2011 at 2:57pm

This is for the Main drive bay only Could you not simply install an SSD drive into the 2nd drive bay, copy/duplicate the contents of the primary drive over to the new SSD, and remove the primary drive? The new SSD should boot since it's the only drive (aside from the optical drive) in the system Please tell me if this is wrong Thanks

Mr yogi - May 12, 2011 at 2:56pm

There's always a work around to all these locks apple puts so who cares.

Noman - May 13, 2011 at 12:53am

Yeah, exactly - its just matter of time some one comes with a fix for that.

DigiHead - May 12, 2011 at 2:30pm

then don't buy shit from them! go an get some crappy hp or sony and enjoy! :D

DacksMac - May 12, 2011 at 2:05pm

Wow, the Dev Team has a lot of work ahead of them. Time to Jailbreak hard drvies now. WTF

Syd - May 12, 2011 at 1:57pm

Control freaks... Apple is becoming an electronic dictatorship

ambroze - May 12, 2011 at 2:11pm

Yes that is an understatement. Apple loves to control everything.