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Hello, I’m from Portugal (sorry if my English is not so good…I do my best) From a lot of researching here, (and not only) I ended up getting confused… I have an iMac 27" 2014 i7 4.0GHz 32GB RAM 512GB Flash SSD (AMD M295X 4GB) I bought this iMac new in 2014, and now I want to upgrade the Flash SSD blade to a higher 1TB or 2TB Flash SSD blade, but cant find a correct specification to replace it… What specification for the “blade” should I search…??? PCIe-2, or PCIe-3… 2 lane (AHCI) or 4 lane (NVME) ??? …or M2…??? Or put this 1TB or 2TB Flash SSD blade inside an enclosure, and connect it by Thunderbolt 2…??? Are some brands recommended, due to “compatibility”??? Many thanks, best regards
Your choices are limited as Apple uses a custom interface as such M.2 blade SSD’s won’t directly fit and frankly, I’ve had my share of problems with the adapters and M.2 drives in Mac’s. As what many people don’t realize is Apple uses additional signal lines for housekeeping tasks and wear leveling which the M.2 drives don’t interface with. So I strongly recommend either getting the Apple custom SSD made by Samsung or using the OWC SSD drives which emulate Apples design. Here’s one source for the Apple SSPOLARIS series drives: 1TB Apple Custom Samsung SSD (PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe)2TB Apple Custom Samsung SSD (PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe) Here’s the OWC drives: 1TB OWC Aura Pro X2 (PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe)2TB OWC Aura Pro X2 (PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe) These will give you the most bang for the buck! Here’s the guide to put it in iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Blade SSD Replacement Update (06/27/2022) What’s the difference of speed, between connecting a SATA SSD at USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, and internal SATA connector? SATA interface offer upto 6.0 Gb/sUSB 3.0 offers 480 Mb/sThunderbolt 1&2 offers 10 Gb/s per channel TB2 offers dual channel An external drive case which holds a SATA drive can only offer upto what the connection to the system offers so a USB connection will be 480 Mb/s even though the SATA interface is able to go faster.
Putting in a 2.5" SSD @boxerboss - Sadly the needed screws & cable are not present on an SSD only system. So you will need to get these parts plus the 2.5 to 3.5" adaptor frame and drive. Refer to this guide to get an idea on what’s required iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Hard Drive Replacement and iFixit kit iMac Intel 27" (Late 2012-2019) SSD Upgrade Kit and cable iMac Intel 27" 5K (Late 2014-Mid 2015) Hard Drive Cable You’ll need to reach the cable around to the back of the logic board to plug it in or you’ll need to remove the logic board to get to it iMac Intel 27" Retina 5K Display Logic Board Replacement I do manage to get it in with my fingers but its tight!
