I recently purchased a used iMac 2015 3.3Mhz running Monterey with a broken Fusion drive. I can access the 2TB HDD but can only see the SDD at random times and when I do it shows a non initialized. Is there a way I can initialize the SDD drive?
iMac 27″
I believe your SSD is failing or possibly the Logic Board since the system seems to be having trouble setting the power state of the SSD. All things being equal, the SSD is the weakest link so a failing SSD is most likely.
For a 2015 iMac, I would also be concerned about the health of the internal hard drive. In any case running macOS from even a healthy hard drive...the performance would be slow. You can check the health of the hard drive by running DriveDx (free trial period). Any "Warning" or "Failing" notices on the hard drive indicates the hard drive is worn out or failing respectively and should not be relied upon. SSDs are different and any "Warning" or "Failing" notices require manual interpretation by someone experienced with SSDs, plus most SSD failures will be due to the SSD's controller failing (their is no health monitoring of the SSD's controller).
If the internal hard drive is too slow or worn out/failing, then you can use an external USB3 SSD instead since replacing either internal drive is not an easy task.
I believe your SSD is failing or possibly the Logic Board since the system seems to be having trouble setting the power state of the SSD. All things being equal, the SSD is the weakest link so a failing SSD is most likely.
For a 2015 iMac, I would also be concerned about the health of the internal hard drive. In any case running macOS from even a healthy hard drive...the performance would be slow. You can check the health of the hard drive by running DriveDx (free trial period). Any "Warning" or "Failing" notices on the hard drive indicates the hard drive is worn out or failing respectively and should not be relied upon. SSDs are different and any "Warning" or "Failing" notices require manual interpretation by someone experienced with SSDs, plus most SSD failures will be due to the SSD's controller failing (their is no health monitoring of the SSD's controller).
If the internal hard drive is too slow or worn out/failing, then you can use an external USB3 SSD instead since replacing either internal drive is not an easy task.
No, the internal SSD is the most likely point of failure. Besides, even if the Logic Board was the cause, the failure may only be limited to the SSD support circuitry. In addition, booting from a full macOS external SSD is the best way to confirm the rest of the iMac's hardware is working properly.
Seems like the internal SSD/Hard Drive failure is such that it is affecting the system even when booted to external media. Unfortunately accessing the internal drives is very difficult on these iMacs.
I'm now running the iMac from an external 2TB drive but I'm getting random restarts. Is this possibly the logic board? I've attached the details from the problem report.
Thanks for the quick and thorough reply. I was considering an external SSD. Should I worry much about the Logic Board?
Well, like I said in the other thread - hardware seems likely. But then it appears that HWTech has already told you that and where the likely hardware problem is, in very good detail...
iMac 2015 PCI SSD not initialized
