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Model A1419 / EMC 2806 / Late 2014 or Mid 2015. 3.3 or 3.5 GHz Core i5 or 4.0 GHz Core i7 (ID iMac15,1); EMC 2834 late 2015 / 3.3 or 3.5 GHz Core i5 or 4.0 GHz Core i7 (iMac17,1) All with Retina 5K displays

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Remove the fusion blade SSD necessary w/SATA SSD upgrade?

I have a late 2015 27" retina iMac with the 1tb Fusion drive... including the tiny SSD on the motherboard. I was going to replace the blade SSD, but read about all the issues with the hardware firmware causing sleep-wake issues on this vintage, and decided that was not a good idea. (OWC won't even list their blade drives as compatible with Late 2015s for this reason.) So I'm going to just replace the spinning drive with a Crucial 2TB SATA SSD. I've read people stating on this forum that it's best to pull the old blade drive from the motherboard and discard it in a scenario like this. Why? Can't I just leave the thing unformatted and call it a day? Seems like a bunch of nonsense extra work unless there's an actual technical reason to do this. Any enlightenment would be helpful. Thanks

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Short answer: No

You have to break the fusion array on the old hard drive BEFORE you add the SATA ssd, and then you could have both (sata ssd and blade)!

Ask @danj for help breaking the array

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Thank you. As the OEM blade is tiny (24GB), I've decided to go whole hog and replace it with a 1TB WD Black SN850x and Sintech adapter. Fingers crossed that it works flawlessly as others have reported.

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Not all versions of macOS plays nice when you leave it.

Best to pull it, besides the size is quite small. If you want maximum performance I would put in a replacement blade drive instead. But these drives are more expensive Vs the SATA SSD.

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Yes, but has Apple issued a patch for the boot rom that stops the machine from crashing when it goes to sleep? OWC does not list their blade product as compatible with iMac 17,1 models.

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@Chris Cline - I would go with an Apple blade drive on this series.

As far as patches you’ll need to talk to Apple I have no inside knowledge. As I explained different macOS are different as Apple often alters the systems firmware which often involves Fusion Drives.

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I did some more research. I decided to go with a 1TB WD Black SN850x and a Sintech M2 NGFF adapter. People seem to be having great results with WD drives on the Late 2015 17,1 EMC 2834 (and Macs in general) with no sleep-wake issues, as long as the EFI firmware is up to date. I'm going to replace the SATA drive with a Crucial 1TB MX500, which I will use as a built-in Time Machine drive. I will report back.

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Update: SN850x is working flawlessly in the late 2015 iMac. Read and write speeds of ~3000MB/s. No sleep-wake issues at all. A worthwhile and relatively painless upgrade.

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Chris Cline will be eternally grateful.
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