I just successfully upgraded my 2008 vintage 20" iMac with a 250GB SSD and I can confirm that it's a worthwhile effort. Big apps open immediately and Lightroom is super snappy.
But the upgrade process is not for the faint of heart -- you must remove about 20 Torx T-9 screws from the case and the LCD panel after pulling the plexi display screen off with suction cups. Have a vacuum cleaner ready for all the accumulated dust! :) I feel that the most bang-for-the-buck older iMac upgrades are, in order of increasing complexity/cost: 1) install maximum RAM (6GB on mine, from Real World Computing) 2) move all external data to reside on FW800 drives (no USB2 drives other than for backup) 3) upgrade internal drive to 256GB SSD 256GB SSDs are well-priced right now; mine was $159. The 512GB and larger SSDs are still very pricey and once you go there you might as well consider a forklift upgrade and get a new iMac. I researched SSDs a lot before getting mine, a Samsung 840. I'd recommend one of: Samsung 830 or 840, Plextor M5 or Crucial m4. Avoid the popular OCZ drives as they lose mucho performance when they exceed half-full. (Generally avoid drives that use a Sandforce chipset; that's many of them. Look for something like the Marvell 88SS9174 chipset instead.) Make sure you have a SATA-USB2 adapter ready when you do the SSD upgrade. First open the iMac up and swap the harddrive out for the SSD. After reassembly install Snow Leopard (10.6) and all the updates (10.6.8). Then attach the original drive externally using the SATA-USB2 adapter and run the Migrate tool. That will bring over all your user data and apps and you're up and running again. After some 4-5 hours of copying. Longer if you accidentally bump the adapter causing the drive to unmount and have to start over. :-( Mac OS X 10.6.8 (latest Snow Leopard) has SSD TRIM support. I have no plans to upgrade to Lion or beyond as they removed PowerPC (Rosetta) app support (I have some drivers and utilities that need Rosetta to run) and made some other annoying changes I'm not prepared to deal with now. I hear that the lack of Save-as... is a royal pain in the butt. On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: > It occurs to me that I could probably seriously improve the performance of my > computer by upgrading the harddrive. It currently has the stock 320GB 3.5" > Sata, with all of the data on a motley collection of external drives (USB > 2.0, and both types of firewire). Also, the internal optical disk has been > getting flakier and flakier. > > The biggest initial upgrade would probably be to replace the main drive with > a SSD. This would tremendously speed up access to the lightroom catalogs, > which I do keep on the main drive. The biggest SSD I found easily was 512, > but apple lists 768GB. Another possibility would be to pull the optical > drive, replace it with an external USB optical drive, and drop a big spinny > drive in there, so I'd have my current working raw files close to my machine, > and not over a slow USB2 connection. > > I might also be able to do something with a RAID box on the Firewire 800 bus. > > Thoughts, comments, reality checks, clue by fours? > > specs on the machine: > Hardware Overview: > > Model Name: iMac > Model Identifier: iMac7,1 > Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo > Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz > Number Of Processors: 1 > Total Number Of Cores: 2 > L2 Cache: 4 MB > Memory: 6 GB > Bus Speed: 800 MHz > Boot ROM Version: IM71.007A.B03 > SMC Version (system): 1.21f4 > Serial Number (system): YD82006VX89 > Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-001EC20A47C7 > > ATA Bus: (this might seriously limit an internal spinny drive) > > MATSHITADVD-R UJ-875: > > Model: MATSHITADVD-R UJ-875 > Revision: DB09 > Serial Number: fE01CC5D > Detachable Drive: No > Protocol: ATAPI > Unit Number: 0 > Socket Type: Internal > Low Power Polling: Yes > Power Off: No > > SATA Bus: ( I don't know if I can add a second drive to this bus) > Intel ICH8-M AHCI: > > Vendor: Intel > Product: ICH8-M AHCI > Link Speed: 3 Gigabit > Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit > Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported > > WDC WD3200AAJS-40VWA0: > > Capacity: 320.07 GB (320,072,933,376 bytes) > Model: WDC WD3200AAJS-40VWA0 > Revision: 58.01D02 > Serial Number: WD-WMARW0399396 > Native Command Queuing: Yes > Queue Depth: 32 > Removable Media: No > Detachable Drive: No > BSD Name: disk0 > Medium Type: Rotational > Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table) > S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified > Volumes: > Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes) > Writable: Yes > BSD Name: disk0s1 > Macintosh HD: > Capacity: 319.73 GB (319,728,959,488 bytes) > Available: 33.67 GB (33,669,283,840 bytes) > Writable: Yes > File System: Journaled HFS+ > BSD Name: disk0s2 > Mount Point: / > > -- > Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est > > > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
