Out of storage on 2011 iMac, what can I do?

[Turnpike]

A friend of mine has a mid-2011 iMac, and they are nearly out of space. I'm trying to buy time till I visit them where I can bring a 2017 iMac with larger storage to update their daily computer.

In the meantime, are there some easily manageable things that someone can do to make room on their mac? (Her photos and data from her phone I think are automatically backed up, and her changing anything complicated was what I was trying to avoid.). I already had her remove her iTunes downloads, and am hoping there's something like that I'm not thinking of.


Also, this is a mid 2011 iMac, the old thick style... was there a possibility that this was originally configured back then with 2 hard drives, one being an SSD or is there likely an SSD (external I'm guessing) that someone over the years added for faster speeds? Attatched is a screen grab of the 2 drives, if anybody remembers what was an option back then, that would be helpful.

Thanks!

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Replacing the 1TB HDD with a bigger one might help.
Opening the iMac 2011 to replace the HDD is not very difficult. You'll need a torx screw driver and a pair of clever hands.
Before opening the iMac, plug in the new HDD via external USB box, reformat it to Mac OS Journal or APFS and copy all data from the internal HDD to it, then turn-off the machine and swap the HDD.

1TB of data will require at least 3 hours to copy. Too many small files and it would take 5~6hrs in actual situations.
You can also use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to copy the data, too.

 

[DeltaMac]

Any mid 2011 iMac was available with 256GB flash storage (SSD), and/or a 1 or 2 TB HDD, so sounds like a standard custom config. The 256 GB SSD would be the boot volume, so that's where the attention needs to go.
I would check to see if the HDD (1 TB) has more than just a Time Machine backup, that has finally nearly filled up that drive.
That iMac would take a 2.5-inch SSD. The prices for new SSDs have dropped significantly, you can find 1TB SSDs for less than $80. And, as mentioned in above post - a 2011 iMac is not difficult, although, as always, you have to be careful when opening up.

 

[Turnpike]

Is there a plug-and-play solution I could mail her to keep the computer from getting too full over the next few weeks till I could visit in person with a newer larger iMac?

Some kind of external SSD that would be able to provide more space that wouldn't take any complicated set up that she could do on her own, or that I could help with over the phone?

Or would that require moving existing stuff over to the new hard drive or be too complicated for an easy fix?

 

[The_Croupier]

Any external usb HDD would work albeit slow, preferably get a thunderbolt HDD for faster transfer but more $$, just walk her through how to move large file to the external drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Out of storage on 2011 iMac, what can I do?"

Plug in an external USB drive.
Move "less-frequently-accessed" stuff onto it (such as movies, etc.)
That was easy.

 

[rpmurray]

And, as mentioned in above post - a 2011 iMac is not difficult, although, as always, you have to be careful when opening up.

Opening it up (removing the glass) isn't that hard since it's just held on with magnets. The hard part is unscrewing the LCD and then being very carful not to damage any of the cables and connectors between it and the logic board when taking it out. After that replacing the drive is EZPC.

The simplest way to increase the storage that I found was to buy a TB2 Thunderbay 4 from OWC (either this or that), slap some drives into it and then plug it in and turn it on.

Edit: Yes, the 2011 27-inch iMac came with an option to have an SSD installed along with an HD, the SSD went behind the optical drive.

 

[pshufd]

She could get a Sandisk 512 GB SD card for $75 and plug that in and then move stuff to it that isn't used often. Transfer rates aren't great but it's pretty convenient to have it available. I have one of these on my 2014 iMac 27 and it's a nice supplement to the internal 500 GB SSD. Otherwise you could use an external HDD or SSD but the 2011 iMac us USB 2 so transfer rates will be slow.