I used paper business cards, stiff enough to cut the foam tape, soft enough to not cause damage.

Stiff plastic is best but credit cards are too thick, you risk breaking the glass that the monitor is bonded to. To open the iMac and get to the hard drive you need to cut through the foam tape on the edges where the monitor is taped to the aluminium. You should also follow ESD guidelines to prevent Electro Static Discharge damage, I have seen expensive parts stop working as a result of being handled. It is no fun to get electric shock while working on the computer and it can not only kill you but also damage some components. Start by unplugging the iMac and don't touch the printed circuit boards when working on it. 16 Gig is the absolute minimum you can get away with for boot up drive, I guess you could use USB2 drive but then it will probably take an hour to boot up. I used 5-10 business cards to break the foam tape so I could remove the monitor and get to the internals.įinally you need at least 16 Gig USB3 thumb drive to boot up from. I used matt 'scotch' tape for temporary fix and then ShoeGoo for semi permanent closing. You should use very thin foam tape to tape the screen back on.

I couldn't find mine so I used 2.4 mm (1/10 inch) slot screwdriver from a set I had lying around. There is a program available to fix that but you should be safe with all the latest drives.įor tools you need a Torx (T10) screwdriver. Apparently some hard drives will cause the fan inside to go to highest speed. Although this brand/type works fine for me I'm sure there are others that are comparable in most ways, check local availability and prices. I did not want to put smaller capacity SSD into the iMac and higher capacity SSDs were much more expensive. I purchased 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 Evo because it was decent capacity at comparatively low price in my area.

For this step you need to gather some parts.Ī SSD.

Mac mini late 2012 ssd cloning