I want to use an external SSD drive as startup disk to extend the life of my beloved iMac. Now it runs at snail pace and spinning beachballs abound.
![late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd](https://applech2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/iMac-4K-HDD-SSD-Model.jpg)
I used iFixit and replaced the drive with a reasonably priced SSD last year. Maybe an odd question, I searched for a bit and didnt see anything that stood out as the same. I’ve maxed the memory but it’s been running slower and slower over the years but it was still tolerable until I updated to Big Sur 11.6. Level 1 (4 points) Q: Built in SSD from a fusion drive vs.
#Late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd mac#
Suggestions? (This Mac has run 24 hours a day since 2012. I have a iMac 27 5K Retina Fusion drive (late 2014). I see some suggestions online from many years ago, and many previous versions of macOS, using Terminal commands, but am unsure if they would still work, and I don’t have much experience. I would like to completely disable the internal Fusion drive. I replaced my dying 1TB 7200 RPM Fusion HDD on my Late 2012 iMac with a 1 TB Samsung Evo SSD, and it. My big problem is the noise from the internal disk trying to spin. Fusion drives can be pretty fast for some tasks. I prefer not to physically open the iMac to remove the drive (apparently, it's not a simple operation). (It will show up for a while sometimes and start to show the hierarchy, before shutting down.) The SATA hard drive only mounts occasionally at start-up, and often dismounts itself after unsuccessfully getting stuck reading. The SSD part of the disk still usually mounts. The Fusion drive is labeled as follows: “Type: SATA Internal Physical Volume” “Device: disk1s2”. In 2015 was aware that there would soon be a retina screen 21.5' iMac coming along, so I patiently waited for that, thinking that Apple would also bump the specs so that there would be more options and also maybe most of the machines would come with SSD as the default drive.
![late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LMs6Nhp3Ob0/maxresdefault.jpg)
I also disassociated the two parts of the Fusion drive and reformatted them as 2 separate drives, one becoming a 120GB SSD, and the other a larger hard disk drive. In fact, I long ago began using an external Thunderbolt drive for macOS and documents now using Mojave 10.14.6. My late 2012 27” iMac came with a Fusion drive, which has long since stopped working correctly.
![late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd late 2015 imac fusion drive vs ssd](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B-RcpWT9P5w/Wh87o4jbzyI/AAAAAAAAABA/l1cMB_skQ-8a1u2PaCVOmfzdCai2-ihEwCLcBGAs/s1600/dgkeghdjegdhjg47d4gd4dg4ydg4.jpg)
I want to completely stop my internal Fusion drive from powering up, since I no longer use it and it is very noisy.