Chosen Solution
I have the iMac Intel 27" EMC 2546, and my HDD broken. Now I have 3 options: Replace the HDD 1:1 with an new HDDReplace the HDD with a SSDReplace the HDD with a SSD and remove the blade SSD Now my question, the option replace the HDD with a SSD makes this sense because i have a Fusion drive, is it better to remove the blade SSD?
Before you can do anything you’ll need to break the Fusion Drive set How to split up a Fusion Drive All three are viable. If your Fusion Drive config mets your needs then just replace the HDD with a new one. If you want performance, the easiest way would be to replace the HDD with a SSD drive, but you still have the Blade SSD present which is mostly useless as a standalone drive. If you want the ultimate performer, I would swap out the Blade SSD with as big a drive I could go with. It will offer the best performance! Its more work and costly but its well worth it (512 GB or bigger)! I would then put in a 3.5” SSHD drive for my content.
The blade SSD is going to be the fastest drive in the computer. They are faster because they don’t have a length of cable to run. Unlike the 2.5 SATA III SSD’s, the Blade drive is in a socket that is directly on the board. Keep this one and put your OS and applications on it for the highest performance. The HDD is only for storage, your operating system does not live on here. Granted it is not as fast, the HDD is the cheapest way to store large amounts of data. But since you have your OS on a blade drive, you will not see any performance increase in operation of your computer. The only advantage of having an SSD for storage in place of an HDD for storage would be that you can save and transfer documents between the OS and storage drives much quicker. But you need to decide if that is worth paying 2X the cost of an HDD. I say its not really that important if your OS is already on a Blade drive.
