Macworld - USA (2019-10-B)

OCTOBER 2019 MACWORLD 19

the way, here’s how you can upgrade an

iMac’s NVMe SSD with something cheaper,

faster, and more capacious.

FINDING AN NVME SSD FOR

THE UPGRADE

As I intimated, there was never any

question that the NVMe SSD could be

upgraded, just whether it could be done

for a reasonable price. A huge issue is that

Apple uses proprietary connectors. OWC’s

compatible drives on Newegg were 40

cents per gigabyte, and Apple’s on

Amazon were an incredible $1 a gigabyte!

This is 2019: standard M.2 2280 NVMe

SSDs start at 15 cents per gigabyte!

Perusing further, I found Apple-compatible

SSDs for around 30 cents per gigabyte. That’s

better, but they were from unfamiliar

companies I was unable to chat with. Finally, I

stumbled on a company with an office in

Birmingham, Alabama, called Fledging (go.

macworld.com/fldg), whose Feather drives

run around 25 cents per gigabyte and are

available in up to 2TB of capacity. The

The Fledging M13 was the most affordable upgrade SSD I found from a

vendor in the U.S. It’s a good performer and the company is accessible

for support and tips.

SSD with something that offered more
space but was relatively less expensive (in
other words, not sold by Apple). I found
conflicting info about the upgrade, though.
Authoritatively stated advice such as
“You’ll kill the machine and possibly
yourself” was hardly useful (not to mention,
completely incorrect), while “Well, it
worked in my 2017 [iMac]” provided hope,
but no specifics.
After buying the iMac (it was a bargain I
had to jump on) and later talking with
vendors, it became apparent that my leap
of faith (and general storage knowledge)
had been justified.
A disclaimer: if you bought a 21-inch
iMac with a standard hard drive, you’re out
of luck—these iMacs didn’t have a PCIe
SSD slot on the board. But there is a viable
option you can read about—NVMe via
Thunderbolt (go.macworld.com/nvia). If
your iMac shipped with a Fusion Drive or
SSD, read on.
Another disclaimer: if your iMac is still
under warranty, this will void it. You also
run the risk of
permanently
damaging your
iMac. If you’re
careful, you
shouldn’t, but stuff
happens.
With the
disclaimers out of