When you do the fresh install you will need to reformat the hard drive as well to give maximum benefit. No point in reinstalling on a hard drive that is not up to it. Make sure you check the hard drive with disc utility first of course. DO NOT DO A TIME MACHINE REINSTALL OR YOU WILL KEEP ALL THE PROBLEMS YOU ARE TRYING TO FIX. It’s relatively easy and with a time machine backup that you use only to save your data you can transfer the stuff you need back to the fresh OS installed machine relatively easily. Hardware upgrades aside which may help, how long has it been since you had a clean install of Mac OS if at all? I can promise you that if you have generations of upgrades and old software that you no longer use that a new install of everything will give you the best performance improvement. Here's an $85 ready to go trial unit for you.

INFOCARD-Firewire+drive+enclosure-17-145-105-4&Description=Firewire+drive+enclosureĭefinitely try an external USB SSD first and see if that meets your expectation. That said, I struggled to find a single cable online (fortunate that I have loads of legacy stuff around). IMac Target Display Mode (Command-F2) works on this model, you'll need an appropriate cable (or two in my case - 2018 iMac - 2011 iMac).Ī Firewire drive caddy, with the appropriate cable also works really well. I found the upgrade extremely rewarding, but note that it wasn't the only computer on my desk so I wasn't particularly reliant on it working or not. You'll want an SSD, and something like this to mount it in -9SIA6V84043511-Product You'd need to make your own judgement of the expertise required, double the time recommendation, and have small forceps or similar for super-positioning the screen mounting screws on reassembly. Toilet plunger would certainly work for getting the glass panel that covers the screen off I used regular suction cups similar to the iFixit guide here. There's three delicate ribbon cables that require particular care. The internal installation of an SSD is not for the faint of heart, as other responders have noted. It's extremely functional and has been like this for a year or so.

This is my daily driver for work from home - 2011, 256GB SSD, 12GB RAM - Bootcamp with Windows 10, Office 365, Visio et al.

Mid 2011 imac hard drive replacement