iMac late 2013 to get renewal of stock internal system SSD

[Arak]

iMac 27 late 2013, A1419, EMC 2639

A SSD 500GB is this iMac only internal and boot/system drive
since Apple factory populated this iMac with ordered mass storage
during latter one's manufacturing 2014. This iMac was
ordered 2014 to have 500GB SSD as system and the only drive.
iMac is hosting Catalina currently.
Furthermore, the current disk partitioning and file system volume
composition has the form as of time being as it has been made by the Catalina install
procedure (an update from macOS version with HFS+ as the native file system) -
this means neither the user nor administrator interfered with
partitions, volumes, others as far as it concerns this SSD.
This drive has never had Bootcamp.

iMac is going to get renewal of its internal system drive.
Renewal SSD is going to be 1TB.
The question is if I reach out my retailers to look around for replacement options
and I take some PCIe 2.0, or 3.0, eventually 4.0 offer of my choice
how are the odds to not run in the end onto troubles due to compatibility issues?
E.g. WD SN750.
I want to search not only for PCIe 2.0 also for 3.0, eventually also across 4.0
to shorten the time of the search.

Question 2
Since the year of this iMac purchase CCC and USB 3.0 PCIe NVMe
external enclosure are in use for backups and cloning, user data as well as the system.
While one day in the process of internal system SSD renewal I wonder
which hardware additionally will me need to transfer the system
from current SSD to the new one. All other desktop devices available
are of other brands than Apple. Any idea, proposals?

 

[Bigwaff]

The question is if I reach out my retailers to look around for replacement options
and I take some PCIe 2.0, or 3.0, eventually 4.0 offer of my choice
how are the odds to not run in the end onto troubles due to compatibility issues?

Purchase from a retailer which specializes in Mac hardware to limit compatibility issues. This will work in your iMac.

OWC Aura Pro X2 1.0TB SSD for iMac Models

Get all the tools and installation components you need to upgrade the SSD of your 27-inch or 21.5-inch iMac (Late 2013 - 2019).

eshop.macsales.com

While one day in the process of internal system SSD renewal I wonder
which hardware additionally will me need to transfer the system
from current SSD to the new one. All other desktop devices available
are of other brands than Apple. Any idea, proposals?

1. I performed the same upgrade on several 2011 27" iMacs some years ago. Used external USB drive for latest Time Machine backup.
2. Created macOS Catalina USB installer media on a 32GB memory stick/thumb drive.
3. Opened iMac and replaced the internal storage.
4. Booted from macOS USB installer thumb drive.
5. Formatted the newly replaced internal storage as APFS.
6. Installed macOS onto internal storage.
7. On reboot, setup will ask if you want to migrate data from an existing Mac. Attach external USB drive and select Time Machine backup.
8. Setup will migrate data.

Could not have been easier.

 

[Arak]

Purchase from a retailer which specializes in Mac hardware to limit compatibility issues. This will work in your iMac.

OWC Aura Pro X2 1.0TB SSD for iMac Models

Get all the tools and installation components you need to upgrade the SSD of your 27-inch or 21.5-inch iMac (Late 2013 - 2019).

eshop.macsales.com

1. I performed the same upgrade on several 2011 27" iMacs some years ago. Used external USB drive for latest Time Machine backup.
2. Created macOS Catalina USB installer media on a 32GB memory stick/thumb drive.
3. Opened iMac and replaced the internal storage.
4. Booted from macOS USB installer thumb drive.
5. Formatted the newly replaced internal storage as APFS.
6. Installed macOS onto internal storage.
7. On reboot, setup will ask if you want to migrate data from an existing Mac. Attach external USB drive and select Time Machine backup.
8. Setup will migrate data.

Could not have been easier.

Thanks for information and hints.
Yes, I had Aura Pro X2 offers on my desk today. In the end I went in distance with those because almost all these retailers reachable in my region list only few MBA/MBP, MacPro models in this SSD compatibility list.
Do you mean Aura Pro X2 proved in your experience to work fine in iMacs too, and for iMac late 2013 the chances are good? Do these setups show also satisfying durability?

How much are losses on user-data, system and apps customization when one uses T.M. to migrate to new setup? I ask this question from perspective of my own experiences. Those however cover only updating system to higher major version number. I didn't complete lot of such updates but those made resulted always in losses of UX, means use histories get lost (e.g. Finder, connected network shares, Safari favorites, and so on) which annoys every time it happens - productivity suffers.

 

[Bigwaff]

Do you mean Aura Pro X2 proved in your experience to work fine in iMacs too, and for iMac late 2013 the chances are good? Do these setups show also satisfying durability?

Yes. Quality products.

How much are losses on user-data, system and apps customization when one uses T.M. to migrate to new setup?

I've never had an issue migrating user data between systems or to newly installed internal storage from a backup in over 15 years of using Time Machine across my own, my family, or my business Macs.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Question 2:

If the following conditions are met, you can just use Disk Utility to restore the internal 500GB SSD to the external USB nVME enclosure which holding new 1TB nVME.
1. You want to use your iMac right away with the new drive, same OS, same applications, same settings, same everything.
2. All of your data is on the 500GB internal drive.
3. You can endure the cloning process, which might take about 4,5 hours (mostly because of the read/write verification process) without any progress bar moving.... (it took me 2 hours to clone just a 256GB drive, drive read/writing speed is non-relevant here.)

 

[Arak]

Hardware upgrade process as presented in beginning was conducted this week. Generally, the procedure proposed by @Bigwaff was followed except one point: It was not possible to install Catalina to new internal SSD blade while booted from Catalina installation media pen-drive (latter one created specially for this mission), hence a switch to a boot the clone on usb hdd created using CCC prior to hardware upgrade then installing Catalina to new internal blade SSD. The clone of Catalina-based system was updated shortly before hw upgrade procedure started and had Catalina installation tool installed.

Following works were made in hardware domain:
* Core i5 replaced to i7 (highest compatible with this iMac build according to Apple)
* new system SSD blade, storage capacity doubled (now OWC Aura Pro X2)
* bios battery renewal
* thermal grease, pads renewal
* dust removal

Due to one mistake happened while in works on hardware the mainboard needed a replacement. This way an unplanned upgrade of graphic card from 750M to GTX 775M results as side effect.

As of time being I have no hardware to make read access on former system SSD (also a blade), perhaps appropriate usb enclosure will be in possession mid term. So far only backups created using Time Machine and CCC to external USB and sparse-bundles on network share are available to restore from old state.

Procedure is drawn by losses regarding system config, user data and customization of user profile and UI.

SilenKnight is reporting SIP to be disabled, however during whole procedure so far no measures were conducted by human to disable SIP.
1. How to fix unintended SIP disablement?

FileVault2 is disabled while original SSD has it enabled. It is clear how to enable FileVault2 hence not a big issue.

Several items in Local Items keychain are gone hence it is no more possible to connect IMAP and SMTP servers imported from previous Mail app to current one. Safari password container was never used prior to hardware upgrade - there are no lost passwords in Safari. iCloud were never used to store keychains.

Grouping application icons to user-defined folders in Mission Control Launchpad is lost.
2. In Mission Control Launchpad how to recover user-defined groups/folders of application icons and the sorting of icons to those groups/folders arranged by user before migration to new system SSD?

Can't navigate to backup snapshots in Time Machine UI despite the fact to had conducted backup inheritance and disk association for system after hardware upgrade.
3. Any further measures are missing in order to be able to navigate to old snapshots in Time Machine backup (external USB hdd)? resolved

Migration Assistant migrated VmWare Fusion 11 and VirtualBox 6.1.50 badly. Both don't run on new SSD, serious runtime errors when starting app.
4. Is this a known behavior? - resolved as in both cases the reason seems to be an issue of used virtualization software (web search results).