Chosen Solution

HI all, I’ve been looking around here on iFixit, on OWC and on seperate forums, but i still cant find a clear answer to my question. What i want to do: I have a 2011 iMac that shipped with only a SSD. So, since Im running low on space, i want to add a 2nd hard drive. I want this to be a 3 GB 3.5mm disk. Not an SSD. My questions:

  1. Do I need a bracket to install a 3.5mm hard drive?
  2. Where inside the iMac will this bracket be installed?
  3. What will happen with the hard drive fan control that Apple has incorporated? Does this apply when you add a 2nd drive? I’ve seen that there are some posts regarding this, but I have not managed to find a answer. But most of the posts are for replacing the original hard drive with a new one. Or the posts are about 2010 or 2009 iMacs. And I want to be 100% sure before i purchase the tools needed.

Theres a couple of different options here: Move the SSD to the second SATA port and then affix the SSD to the behind the optical drive (because the SSD is lighter in weight) ig you have the SSD in the HD frame. Review this IFIXIT guide: Installing iMac Intel 27" EMC 2429 Dual Drive Kit (HDD or SSD) Then mount your new 3gig HD into the HD frame. You’ll need the SSD cable set iFixIt offers to do this. Update (09/25/2012) Check out the iFixit Guide HD Replacement Note the current HD is a 5.25 inch and is hung by one side. For a 3.5 drive you’ll need to get a subframe to hold it to the 5.25 mounting clip. Your current 2.5 SSD drive likewise has a subframe to hold it to the 5.25 mounting clip. You could also go with a full 5.25 inch drive as well.

I also have a mid 2011 that shipped with ONLY SSD, no spinning drive. The SSD is plugged in to the SATA2 port (not SATA0 where the spinning HD would normally be), and is mounted on a bracket behind the DVD drive, NOT in the center of the system where the spinning drive would go. SATA0 has a different power connector than the SATA1 and SATA2 ports. The cable included in this kit is for the SATA2 port, NOT for the SATA0 port. SATA0 on mine has a normal SATA data connection, and the power is a 2x5 ribbon cable pin block (like an USB header, but slightly different), it currently has a jumper across two of the pins (I am assuming to tell the HW that it does not need to monitor the HD temp.. but that is just a guess) I was going to add a second 256GB SSD, but because of the different power on the third SATA port, I had to unplug my DVD to plug in the SSD. I’m going to try using a SATA power splitter to get power to the third device, but that will require cutting the provided cable as the “apple” side of the cable is different than anything I have lying around, and the “device” side of the cable is joined together. I went through the guide a few times before cracking my imac open, I was surprised with what I found, I didn’t have any reason to expect that the config of my imac would make the kit not work, but that is in fact what happened, and I strongly suspect that is what the other people above are talking about.

did anyone ever find a solution here? in the same boat.

Sorry for bumping the old post but I’m not seeing a correct answer here. To install a new 5.25" HDD in my mid-2011 27" iMac which only came with a SSD, I need a 5.25" HDD bracket, 2 mounting pins and the proper sata/power cable. If I want to install a second SSD then I would need a 2.5" to 5.25" bracket as well. My existing single SSD setup is sitting in it’s own bracket under the optical drive. The location where the HDD normally sits is completely empty. Is there a kit for this? Or at least a thread explaining how to do this that I’m not finding? TIA!

Still no answer! After all this time