“Following our post about Japanese Mac site Kodawarisan‘s teardown of the newly redesigned 21.5-inch iMac, we (and commenters) were left with several questions,” Lee Hutchinson reports for Ars Technica. “Chief among them was whether or not the new iMac would allow the installation of a third-party solid state disk.”
“Computer-savvy DIY fans had hoped to continue doing what they’ve been doing with iMacs for years by finding a place to mount their own SSDs somewhere inside the case, but it looks like this won’t be happening,” Hutchinson reports. “The connector to actually plug in the SSD is missing. It seems that the connector isn’t even added at the factory for the base model.”
Hutchinson reports, “Further, a scouring of the logic board reveals no spare SATA ports anywhere. The SATA connector used for the iMac’s 2.5-inch hard disk drive appears to be the only one present inside the computer.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you want to add an aftermarket SSD to your 21.5-inch iMac, you do not rip it apart looking for a port on the logic board, hoping to shove a drive in sideways before re-gluing the thing back together. Apple gave you two Thunderbolt ports for a reason. Use them.
