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Hello, I need help with my iMac EMC 2546 i7 fusion drive (128Gb ssd + 1Tb hdd) late 2012 model, where recently my internal SSD fusion drive was dead. It’s very strange trouble because this start after updating to 10.15 Catalina from High Sierra (32Bits to 64Bits) all I had was problems. Before to this update all was very smooth and fast (all work fine) and after this update all was troubles. I lost all my configurations and many apps and trying to downgrade it again to High Sierra the SSD was dead. From here every time the SSD show me SMART errors, (but before of this it was working perfectly) I searched for information to format it again and under low format also and there was not way to fix it. I tried all my best and restoring by Terminal, tech tools and many other tools and nothing worked. I explain all this only if anybody knows similar troubles and know how to fix this SMART issue, because it’s very strange as before I updated the OS all was fine and after the SSD starts with SMART errors. (I find it very strange) THE QUESTIONS: So I’m searching to change the blade SSD with a new unit

iMac Intel 27" EMC 2546 Blade SSD Replacement I saw this is small SSD board but I don’t find it in any place. Could anybody tell me which blade SSD I should to search, type or models available for EMC 2546 Fusion Drive SSD drive.Is it possible to replace (without this SSD drive) internally a new 2,5 HDD + one SSD NAS Like an IronWolf Solid State Drive ???Maybe one SSD into an external box by thunderbolt 2 will be enough fast and easy?? Thanks and Regards!

Your system has only two drive ports: A SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) 3.5” HDD and a mSATA (6.0 Gb/s) SSD blade interface. So as you can see both drive interfaces only offer 6.0 Gb/s throughput. It also limits you on what you can use in your system as far as the blade interface. A Fusion Drive is a wacky setup! Apple found a way to get the speed of a SSD without having to buy an expensive SSD drive. At the time Hard Drive makers introduced hybrid drives (SSHD) which where standard spinning disk HDD’s with a small SSD added to the controller board to improve performance. These drives got a lot of coverage as they indeed improve performance with a minor cost bump Vs the very expensive cost of a SSD drive of equal size! Apple took the idea and added their own spin to it. Instead of buying what the drive makers offered, they created their own using two independent drives! This confused a lot of people as they expected a single device not two! And as the small SSD was not setup like a normal drive so when it died it was painful to diagnose and setup again. So let’s move on! The best you can do here today is just get a larger blade SSD and forgo the Fusion Drive setup as it just wasn’t very good. You have the right idea, just the wrong SSD the Seagate IronWolf Solid State Drives are designed for a NAS storage sub system not a computer boot drive. Think of it this way… Which would win the race? A fast Porsche 411 or a school bus? If speed was the issue then clearly the Porsche, but if moving a quantity of people the school bus would win! So the nature of the device is important! Here we need a Porsche! Not a school bus! I would recommend getting this blade SSD Apple proprietary 7+17 pin 256 GB mSATA SSD The other option is to just takeout the old blade SSD and just live with the slow HDD the system came with or as SSD’s cost have dropped so much think about upgrading it to a SSD! 500 GB upgrade kit or 1 TG upgrade kit and here’s the guide iMac Intel 27" EMC 2546 Hard Drive Replacement Then use an external Thunderbolt HDD for your data store.