The computer is actually enjoyable to use now, instead of being a cleverly-disguised punishment! A read/write speed test tool I used measured the old HD at around 20-30 MB/s. The speed! I'm not the primary user of this computer, but I'd forgotten what it was like to click an application on it and for that application to just open, without waiting twenty minutes and seeing the spinning wheel of death three times. I was very nervous that all of my work would have gone to waste and the computer would be no different from before. Having a second person here is a definite bonus for getting the display lined up nicely. There might have been a better way around this, but I ultimately settled on creating a bootable recovery mode flash drive with the newest version, at which point I was able to use Disk Utility to convert the SSD to APFS and finally was able to boot the computer properly.Īfter I was sure that everything seemed to be working properly, I used the adhesive strips I bought and very carefully reattached the monitor (fortunately remembering to also keep the display cables attached).
Imac spinning wheel after a few minutes mac os#
I finally realized that, although the time machine backup was of the newest macOS version, the SSD had been formatted as Mac OS Extended by the recovery mode OS installation tool, but the newer OS versions are based around the newer APFS format, which I wasn't able to convert my SSD to as the recovery mode I had was too old. It would make the startup sound, show the apple logo, and the loading bar would go to full, but it would never reach the login screen. However, after the time machine backup finally restored, the computer wouldn't boot. I had to first make a new installation of macOS to the SSD before I was able to start copying the time machine backup (I got an error related to the recovery partition when I didn't do this). I had a time machine backup of my old hard drive, but the recovery mode the computer automatically installed was an old version (I'm guessing it was the version from 2011) and was considerably more clunky to use. I connected the display cables back to the motherboard, but didn't reattach the display with adhesive yet.Ĭopying the old hard drive data over to the new drive was a bit more involved than I anticipated. I could have bought a replacement, but I didn't have the patience to do so and the part didn't seem particularly critical, so I glued it back together with some old shoe glue (which seemed to work pretty well!) and put the new SSD in. The material had started to decay a bit, and in pulling the hard drive from it I tore one of the sides of it. I didn't realize this before I opened the computer up, but the hard drive had some sort of rubber bumper case in addition to the actual mounting hardware. I removed the hard drive mounting brackets (required a T10 Torx bit) and was able to pull out the hard drive. Once I got the screen loose, I removed the two ribbon connections from the display to the motherboard and was able to fully remove the unit. Having gone through the process, I can easily see how you could try pulling the screen off before all of the adhesive is removed and accidentally damage it-I think it's very important to be patient at this step and really restrain yourself from trying to forcibly remove the screen from the adhesive, and just let the screen come off naturally as you remove more of the adhesive. I was terrified about cracking the screen, as the screen bezel has a strip of unreinforced glass at the edges that I've heard about other people damaging.
Imac spinning wheel after a few minutes full#
Removing the screen was surprisingly painless I used the roller side of the blade to cut most of the adhesive (I gradually cut further with it, rather than cutting to full depth immediately) and then used the back side of the tool to fully separate any adhesive that was still partially attached. Well, I bit the bullet a couple of days ago and bought an SSD and the adhesive strips and screen-removal tool I needed. From other posts about hard drive issues, this seemed like the root of the problems I was experiencing, but I wasn't sure, and paying over a hundred bucks on some hardware that doesn't fix any problems kind of sucks. I made a post a little less than a month ago asking about my old late-2011 iMac, trying to decide whether I needed to replace my hard drive to make the computer usable again. I know I tried to find a few posts like this one before I made my decision (to be sure I could justify the money), so hopefully this post will help others as well. There've been other posts on this subreddit about replacing the HD with an SSD, but I think it can't hurt to give another story.
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