I have a late 2013 iMac (model 14,2) with a 1TB internal HDD. I feel
like the performance of the system would benefit from moving the OS,
applications, and my personal files to a SSD. There are several options
for doing this (an external USB SSD, a thunderbolt 2 enclosure for
SATA SSDs, opening the iMac to replace the HDD with an SSD, etc). I
have watched the videos from OWC on opening the iMac to replace the
HDD with a SSD or even installing a blade SSD, but I'm risk adverse
and cannot afford to wreck my iMac. Therefore I am thinking of the
external SSD options. It seems as though thunderbolt 2 will be faster
than USB, and I see disk speed test results of 390 MB/s for the OWC
4.0TB Mercury Elite Pro Dual enclosure. While this may be an
improvement over my current internal HDD speed, I read that the
enclosure itself is limiting the read/write speeds of the SSDs.
Getting to my question -- I read about the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box
(https://www.amazon.com/Akitio-Thund...ay&sprefix=Akitio+Thunder2+PCI,aps,133&sr=8-1)
which would allow me to install 1 or 2 QNINE Dual M.2 PCIe Adapters
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077YHFJZM?pldnSite=1)
for attaching NVMe SSDs and/or M.2 SSDs. Has anyone used a setup like
this? Does anyone know of a better solution for my iMac?
like the performance of the system would benefit from moving the OS,
applications, and my personal files to a SSD. There are several options
for doing this (an external USB SSD, a thunderbolt 2 enclosure for
SATA SSDs, opening the iMac to replace the HDD with an SSD, etc). I
have watched the videos from OWC on opening the iMac to replace the
HDD with a SSD or even installing a blade SSD, but I'm risk adverse
and cannot afford to wreck my iMac. Therefore I am thinking of the
external SSD options. It seems as though thunderbolt 2 will be faster
than USB, and I see disk speed test results of 390 MB/s for the OWC
4.0TB Mercury Elite Pro Dual enclosure. While this may be an
improvement over my current internal HDD speed, I read that the
enclosure itself is limiting the read/write speeds of the SSDs.
Getting to my question -- I read about the Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box
(https://www.amazon.com/Akitio-Thund...ay&sprefix=Akitio+Thunder2+PCI,aps,133&sr=8-1)
which would allow me to install 1 or 2 QNINE Dual M.2 PCIe Adapters
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077YHFJZM?pldnSite=1)
for attaching NVMe SSDs and/or M.2 SSDs. Has anyone used a setup like
this? Does anyone know of a better solution for my iMac?