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A1418 / EMC 3069 / 2017 / 3.0 GHz quad-core i5, 3.4 GHz quad-core i5 or 3.6 GHz quad-core i7 Processor. Released June 8, 2017.

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Questions on fusion drive Vs discrete drives

I have an iMac 4K 21.5” from 2017 with fusion drive, it is the 18.2 mode

I purchased a NVMe Solid-State Drive Upgrade 2.0TB OWC Aura Pro X2 Gen4 It is one of those that goes on the internal card in the slot.

I have several questions to see if you can help me. By having fusion drive I have two hard drives, one SSD which is 32GB and then the HDD which is 1TB. My question is how would you set it up to get the most out of it?

1 - Remove the two fusion drive disks and put only the new 2TB NVMe on the board?

2 - Put the 2TB NVMe on the board and leave the 1TB HDD too?

Thank you so much And once you do one of the two options, how should you proceed to restore everything from zero

Thank you and greetings 👋

Update (01/15/24)

Hello Dan, I'm a little lost because I don't quite master the language well.

Could you answer me to a few?

Which is better and easier to mount OWC aura pro x2 ssd or OWC aura pro x2 ssd 2tb + Hdd sata 1tb?

Thank you

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A Fusion Drive is a dual drive setup leveraging the small blade SSD as a cache drive so within the OS it is used to speed up access to repetitive reads of the active data blocks. If the given file is altered then the updated file is written back to the HDD.

So… Here you will break that Fusion Drive pairing so it’s important to first backup your stuff!

Next, you’ll need to create a bootable OS installer thumb drive with the needed macOS your system supports. Once that is done and you know it is working you can proceed in taking both drives out. Putting the 2TB blade SSD you’ve bought.

Now carefully putting the system back together and using some masking tape to hold the display on. Plug in the OS installer thumb drive and prep the NVMe drive as your boot drive. Making sure it is above to boot up on its own you have a choice putting the SATA HDD back in as your data drive. Ideally using it for your media files music, photos, vids and your other more static files.

As you didn’t describe what your use is maybe this is not needed.

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Hello Dan . My computer currently has a fusion with 25 GB hard drive that SD on the PCI board and 1TB of Sata hard drive. I have the Ventura operating system. My computer is an iMac 🖥️ 21.5 4K from 2017 with fusion drive 1tb model 18.2. As I told you before, I have bought a 2.0TB OWC Aura Pro external. So I would like the option that is easiest to install, and the one that provides the most performance, speed and stability, allowing me the computer with the new owd ssd hard drive. I think this installation would be to only put the new hard drive where the other 25 GB boot hard drive goes, replacing it with this new 2 TB one? And also remove the other 1TB Sata hard drive. If this is so, what are the steps I should follow? Should I first remove the fusion then remove the two hard drives to install the new one? Or I don't have to do any of that, and I could remove the two hard drives and directly install the new hard drive and format it.

Thanks

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@rubengomez34721 - First let’s make sure we are on the same page…

There are two storage elements in you Fusion based system a small blade SSD and a larger SATA based HDD.


As you are mixing the labels it’s hard to tell what you bought from OWC.


So assuming you got a blade SSD, you will need to follow this guide iMac Intel 21.5" Retina 4K Display (2017) Blade SSD Replacement But You first need to follow the needed prep work as I outlined in my answer as once you start you can’t go back! And you do need to remove the SATA drive, then after getting the blade SSD running you can then reformat it and re-install if you wish to continue using it.

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Hello

I bought OWC aura pro x2 ssd (the little one that goes on the plate.

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This

OWC Aura Pro X2 SSD

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@rubengomez34721 - That’s a blade SSD.

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Ruben Gomez de Cedron crwdns2934231:0crwdne2934231:0
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