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I have an iMac 27" (late 2012) i7 with 3TB Fusion Drive. The main board is dead and will cost me much to replace it, therefore, I’m planning to buy a Mini M1 and be able to access my work saved on the fusion drive. Some websites say that both HDD and SSD should be accessed at the same time due to some sort of data blocks distribution that I don’t understand. My question is, if I buy a 3.5" enclosure with power supply, would I be able to access the HDD as an external drive, or do I have to use those expensive software/hardware to do so? Should you require more details or need any clarification, please let me know. Thank you! ============ Update 19 July When I try to mount is I get Could not mount “disk4s2”. (com.apple.DiskManagement.disenter error -119930868.)
A Fusion Drive is not the same as a RAID set! What is RAID? A RAID-1 setup would require moving both drives. But a Fusion Drive set is a bit different. Here we have one storage drive a second drive which is used as a cache drive. All of the data is stored on the spinning SATA HDD. The small blade flash SSD function is to hold copies of the most access data blocks (mostly the OS and drivers and the application which is in use) So the bottom line here is you only need to remove the HDD following this guide iMac Intel 27" EMC 2546 Hard Drive Replacement and you’ll need an adapter which offers power like [linked product missing or disabled: IF107-108-2] or an external case like USB 3.1 (10Gbps) HD Case for 3.5” SATA Drives to USB-A
