something in the water folks... lots of hardware issues in the pub this week. For me it was the "Fusion Drive" on my late 2013 iMac. Fusion Drive means big 3TB traditional hard drive and a little 128GB SSD blade pretending to be one big 3TB drive inside your pretty aluminum and glass shell. So when that hard drive goes out... you have your choice. Replace the big drive with another one and try to make another fusion drive (which will probably have problems) or join the rest of the 21st century and buy an SSD drive. But wait - there's more choices! You can also upgrade the SSD blade (with a proprietary connector thank$$). I decided to go full Frankenstein. To get to the blade SSD, you're basically removing everything but some cables.

Mid-teardown:

Full teardown:

I swapped the 128GB blade SSD with a 512GB SSD out of a macbook air I salvaged a while ago (hiding on the back of the logic board):

In the end, I was successful:

But oh man... a couple hairy moments. I now have a 512GB OS Drive and a 2TB SATA SSD data drive. It's rippin fast. I'm glad I got to do it. It's not quite as scary as several people online want to make it sound.

I wish you all similar successes with your hardware woes.