Early-2009 iMac upgrade recommendations

[MultiFinder17]

Like an earlier poster, I'm doubtful upgrading this Early 2009 iMac makes sense if increasing speed is the goal.

For what it's worth, these can still be excellent computers for less intense tasks. I have an early 2008 24" iMac that I still use on a daily basis for productivity and web needs. I put an SSD and its max of 6GB of RAM in it, and for non-CPU-intensive tasks, I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and much more modern Macs.

 

[TyShawn]

I think any modern SSD would be more than fine. I do agree that getting the fastest SSD on the market would be a waste, but if you want to buy one.... Also using the ram was next to nothing. I was given my 24 inch 2009 so for me to spend $50.00 on a drive and 20-30 on ram that was no brainier. I also use this box daily to surf the internet do email. and even do my nightly video encoding. It's perfect for that if your goal is some high end photoshop or heavy video encoding then yes this isn't the box for that. But if you can get one of these guys for 200.00 fully upgraded then I say do it.

 

[Cisto1983]

Today I bought a Crucial BX200, 480 gb on amazon; I'll install it in the weekend and I'll let you know if it really works at Sata 2 or not

 

[TyShawn]

Congrats you'll see a whole new beast.

 

[Cisto1983]

Well, I installed it and I can confirm that the BX200 works at SATA II speed! It feels so fast!!

 

[infinity69]

I swapped out the going-on-7 year old hard drive and installed the SSD in its place. That was about 6 months ago, no user visible issues so far and the machine has been performing very well, much better than with the HDD.

Now that I've been sensitized to the situation, I think I'll poke around in the system logs and keep an eye on it to see if it consistently sticks with the boot value, or varies after sleep, or what. I tried rebooting it about 6 times and got 1.5 Gbs 4 times and 3 Gbs the other two ... !

I bought a Bx200 240GB recently and I updated the firmware to MU02. I installed it in a caddy replacing the optical bay but I'm experiencing the same issue ... Is the the GC, the firmware? Can't tell... Did not expect that...

 

[Cisto1983]

I bought a Bx200 240GB recently and I updated the firmware to MU02. I installed it in a caddy replacing the optical bay but I'm experiencing the same issue ... Is the the GC, the firmware? Can't tell... Did not expect that...

I read somewhere that using a caddy often ends in Sata 1 speed. It happens with the Samsung 850 as well, it was stated by someone on the apple discussions forum. You should attach the ssd directly on the HD port, without any adapter; I also had to fix the drive with some tape to the internal side of the chassis because the power and sata cables are very short and even the metal tray I had didn't fit properly

 

[Floris]

Well, the plan was to be on a new iMac right now.. or a new MacBook Pro, ..
but the mbp update costs nearly $1000 more to replace the iMac that didn't get released.

So I am still on my iMac, and shelved my projects..
Watch Apple release an iMac in a few months, that's just an update, and out of necessity I upgrade.. Only to get the 'actual' update we were waiting for last November, this November -- and I feel like I've wasted my money.

 

[infinity69]

I read somewhere that using a caddy often ends in Sata 1 speed. It happens with the Samsung 850 as well, it was stated by someone on the apple discussions forum. You should attach the ssd directly on the HD port, without any adapter; I also had to fix the drive with some tape to the internal side of the chassis because the power and sata cables are very short and even the metal tray I had didn't fit properly

Right. That's why I make this distinction in my compatibility list. See page 1.
I thought this drive could do sata 2 speed in a caddy but looks like it won't do it. Reseting the garbage collection didn't fix it as well.
I wanted to keep the HDD in it's original position and use both drive that's why I did it this way. I was wrong.
Well, next step is obviously to open the iMac and switch the HDD with the SSD

 

[Cisto1983]

Update: without any reason, my bx200 started to work at 1,5 gbps as well. Rebooting doesn't help

 

[infinity69]

Update: without any reason, my bx200 started to work at 1,5 gbps as well. Rebooting doesn't help

Might be the GC or the MacOS itself ? On linux I'm getting full SATA 2 speed even in the caddy.

 

[Cisto1983]

Might be the GC or the MacOS itself ? On linux I'm getting full SATA 2 speed even in the caddy.

I don't know, but I was able to get it to work again at 3 gbps by resetting the SMC (turn off the iMac, unplug the power cord, wait at least 30 seconds, reconnect the plug and start it up).

Who knows, the only sure thing is that the Nvidia MPC70 is a piece of ****

 

[infinity69]

I don't know, but I was able to get it to work again at 3 gbps by resetting the SMC (turn off the iMac, unplug the power cord, wait at least 30 seconds, reconnect the plug and start it up).

Who knows, the only sure thing is that the Nvidia MPC70 is a piece of ****

Glad it worked. For sure this MCP79 chip is a mess but the lack of support from Apple is atrocious. They updated the macbook pro from the same year to AHCI v1.3 to fix the issue but not the iMac. Lame

 

[sibok]

Did anyone tried with a Samsung 860 EVO 250GB (MZ-76E250B/EU)? The black one with the grey tag.
[automerge]1571382000[/automerge]

I would like to plug it to an early 2009 iMac 20". I already upgraded it to 8GB RAM and ElCapitan.

 

[kschendel]

The 860 EVO is a SATA drive, if I'm not mistaken. It should work fine, SATA is SATA, more or less.

 

[sibok]

After some testing this is my experience on an early 2009 iMac 20" with 8GB RAM and Samsung 860 EVO 250GB (MZ-76E250B/EU):
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the Optical Drive bay and the computer boots up from its genuine mechanical hard drive installed on it, so SSD acts as slave drive, the reported negotiated speed is 3Gb. Always.
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the Optical Drive bay and the OS is installed on it and the computer boots from it, so SSD acts as master drive, the reported negotiated speed is 1.5Gb. Always.
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the mechanical hard drive socket and the OS is installed on the SSD drive and the computer boots from it, so SSD replaced the mechanical hard drive, the reported negotiated speed is 3Gb. Always.

The testing was done on a clean High Sierra install through dosdude1.com software. The file system on the SSD was APFS and as the machine didn't support native APFS booting it was needed a workaround to boot from the APFS SSD. The mechanical drive was formatted with HPFS+ and had a genuine El Capitan installed on it, but was an upgrade not a clean install.

 

[BrianBaughn]

After some testing these is my experience on an early 2009 iMac 20" with 8GB RAM and Samsung 860 EVO 250GB (MZ-76E250B/EU):
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the Optical Drive bay and the computer boots up from its genuine mechanical hard drive installed on it, so SSD acts as slave drive, the reported negotiated speed is 3Gb. Always.
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the Optical Drive bay and the OS is installed on it and the computer boots from it, so SSD acts as master drive, the reported negotiated speed is 1.5Gb. Always.
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the mechanical hard drive socket and the OS is installed on the SSD drive and the computer boots from it, so SSD replaced the mechanical hard drive, the reported negotiated speed is 3Gb. Always.

The testing was done on a clean High Sierra install through dosdude1.com software. The file system on the SSD was APFS and as the machine didn't support native APFS booting it was needed a workaround to boot from the APFS SSD. The mechanical drive was formatted with HPFS+ and had a genuine El Capitan installed on it, but was an upgrade not a clean install.

How are you getting those speed reports?

 

[sibok]

You know, About This Mac -> System Report... -> Hardware -> SATA

 

[BrianBaughn]

SSDs (SATA) and negotiated link speeds ?

How many of you have custom-installed (internal) SSDs in your (any model year/variant) Macbook Pro ? (i.e. the SSD didn't come with the MBP, you installed it yourself) I'm particularly interested in the mid-2009 13" MBP model (mine) and the Crucial MX300 275GB SATA SSD (soon to be mine), but no...

forums.macrumors.com

You'll have to decide if that post is relevant.

 

[thetimelesschild]

Has anyone had any recent successes with the currently available SSDs?

I just replaced my HDD with a Crucial MX500 (500GB) and have alternating link speeds of 1.5Gb and 3Gb, randomly decided on boot up - so frustrating! (I read that the MX500 uses the SMI SM2258 controller.)

I’ve got the iMac early 09, 24”, and that pesky MCP79 chip - any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[kschendel]

I don't think it matters much what the SSD is. The best I can offer is that if you manage to get it booted up at 3gbit, leave it up instead of turning it off. Also, it doesn't make a huge difference in real life; a few times when we had our early 2009, I might notice that a large file copy might be a little slow and discover that it had booted into 1.5gbit/s, but most things still felt about the same.

 

[thetimelesschild]

Thanks for the reply kschendel! I'd like to get it running stable at 3Gb as I do handle large video files on the iMac, despite it being an old computer!

So are there any reports of current SSDs working consistently at 3Gb with this machine?

 

[Twixt]

After some testing this is my experience on an early 2009 iMac 20" with 8GB RAM and Samsung 860 EVO 250GB (MZ-76E250B/EU):
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the Optical Drive bay and the computer boots up from its genuine mechanical hard drive installed on it, so SSD acts as slave drive, the reported negotiated speed is 3Gb. Always.
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the Optical Drive bay and the OS is installed on it and the computer boots from it, so SSD acts as master drive, the reported negotiated speed is 1.5Gb. Always.
* When Samsung SSD is placed in the mechanical hard drive socket and the OS is installed on the SSD drive and the computer boots from it, so SSD replaced the mechanical hard drive, the reported negotiated speed is 3Gb. Always.

The testing was done on a clean High Sierra install through dosdude1.com software. The file system on the SSD was APFS and as the machine didn't support native APFS booting it was needed a workaround to boot from the APFS SSD. The mechanical drive was formatted with HPFS+ and had a genuine El Capitan installed on it, but was an upgrade not a clean install.

Very helpful info. Changing cable to optical drive when SSD booting from there would not enable to get the 3Gb throughput?
I am about to order a kit to have new ssd instead of optical drive that does not work anymore.
Thank you

 

[thetimelesschild]

So are there any reports of current SSDs working consistently at 3Gb with this machine?

Follow-up! I put a WD Blue 3D NAND 500GB SSD into the HDD bay in the iMac early '09 24" and it's been working stable at 3Gb for a couple of days (running OSX El Capitan). Fingers crossed that it stays good!

The SSD model is WDC WDS500G2B0A. I believe this drive uses the Marvell 88SS1074 controller. Seems to work fine with the MCP79 chip on the iMac.

Will be putting the flickery Crucial MX500 drive into another computer that runs at 6Gb!

 

[sibok]

Hi, anyone tried inserting a single 8 GB SODIMM module in the RAM slot of an early 2009 iMAC 20''? If so, did it worked?

My dad's early 2009 imac 20'' started failing to boot up while 2 x 4GB SODIMM are in place by making a three beep sound (hardware error) and when removing the second slot SODIMM then it booted up correctly.

Hope someone can tell me if tried the single 8GB SODIMM.

Thanks.