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Dead Flash Storage on iMac 27" (Late 2013)

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BestFromTheWest

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 4, 2015
6
0
I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to the finer hardware details of Macs so I apologise in advance but please bear with me as I'm probably going to ask a few stupid questions.

Some background: Basically, my iMac died on me yesterday and I went through all the usual troubeshooting and after booting it into Internet Recovery, the main storage device is not showing up in Disk Utilities which has lead me to believe that the 512GB flash storage has kicked the bucket.

As I understand, flash storage is attached to the logic board and the prospect of replacing it myself (if even possible) scares the **** out me but not quite as much as the potential service fee from getting it replaced by Apple (in Australia!).

My main questions are:

Can I replace the flash storage with a third party drive/stick or does it have to be from Apple or an Apple device?

(Probably a very silly question) Since it was customised with only 512GB of flash storage attached to the logic board, does that mean there will be an an additional slot/space for an SSD/HDD like in the other models that come with the standard HDD (see pic) or is it completely left out (can't seem to find a clear answer to this anywhere)?

Would it just be best to play it safe and go with an external SSD kit from OWC?
27-inch-iMac-teardown.jpg
 
BestFromTheWest said:
Some background: Basically, my iMac died on me yesterday and I went through all the usual troubeshooting and after booting it into Internet Recovery, the main storage device is not showing up in Disk Utilities which has lead me to believe that the 512GB flash storage has kicked the bucket.
Click to expand...


Let's not jump the gun here. Let's see if it really is dead.
From internet recovery, open a Terminal window (in the menu bar there's an option for more tools or something where you can get at it)

now type "diskutil list"

Does your internal drive show up? If yes,
" diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ NameOfDrive disk#"

Replace NameOfDrive with what you want to call it, and # with the number that is associated with your drive in diskutil list's output
 
casperes1996 said:
Let's not jump the gun here. Let's see if it really is dead.
From internet recovery, open a Terminal window (in the menu bar there's an option for more tools or something where you can get at it)

now type "diskutil list"

Does your internal drive show up? If yes,
" diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ NameOfDrive disk#"

Replace NameOfDrive with what you want to call it, and # with the number that is associated with your drive in diskutil list's output
Click to expand...

Definitely dead. The only (large) drive that showed up was the Mac OS X Base System (1.2GB)
 
Since it was customised with just the flash storage, does that mesn the bay for the hard disk drive is empty and I could put a new drive in there if I wanted to?
 
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