SanDisk 960GB Ultra II into mid-2010 iMac - best Trim setup?

[alexjholland]

Hey, I picked up a SanDisk 960GB Ultra II SATAIII for £150 in Black Friday.

It's going into my mid-2010 iMac, which has 12Gb RAM and seems otherwise fine, apart from being slow.

I'm also upgrading the internal disc drive, as it's quite noisy (which apparently is a sign of a dying drive) and it's pretty cheap for a 3 Tb drive to get added too (with the fan drive program, of course).

The SSD is going into the 'hidden bay' and the 3Tb will be for movie footage.

Anyway, the mac repair place said they'd have recommended the Samsung they sell, as it contains its own 'garbage' feature, although conceded the new Apple TRIM update should work.

Having researched, it suggests Samsung's 'garbage' feature might stop my iMac sleeping, so actually, the Sandisk plus Apple Trim could be better?

- Is anyone else running this drive in an iMac of similar age?

- What's the best Trim setup, the official Apple Terminal command, or a third party app?

- If I do use the Apple Terminal Command, any third party apps I should be using to optimise my SSD?

Thanks!

 

[Weaselboy]

All new SSDs have built in garbage collection in firmware, so I'm not sure what that shop is referring to.

Sure... there are lot's of forum members running SSDs in older iMacs like yours. The only issue is your iMac has a SATA II drive interface so you wont see the full speeds advertised for any SATA III SSD. SATA is backwards compatible, so a new SATA III drive will work just fine. I have not heard anything about Samsungs interfering with sleep.

IMO about the best bang for the buck SSD now is the Samsung EVO 850 or the Crucial MX200. Nothing wrong with Sandisk either. Just get whichever is cheapest.

For TRIM, if you are in the newest Yosemite version of El Capitan, there is no need for a third party utility. Just run the command below in Terminal after you install the SSD and TRIM will be activated. No need for any SSD maintenance utilities either.

sudo trimforce enable

 

[alexjholland]

All new SSDs have built in garbage collection in firmware, so I'm not sure what that shop is referring to.

Sure... there are lot's of forum members running SSDs in older iMacs like yours. The only issue is your iMac has a SATA II drive interface so you wont see the full speeds advertised for any SATA III SSD. SATA is backwards compatible, so a new SATA III drive will work just fine. I have not heard anything about Samsungs interfering with sleep.

IMO about the best bang for the buck SSD now is the Samsung EVO 850 or the Crucial MX200. Nothing wrong with Sandisk either. Just get whichever is cheapest.

For TRIM, if you are in the newest Yosemite version of El Capitan, there is no need for a third party utility. Just run the command below in Terminal after you install the SSD and TRIM will be activated. No need for any SSD maintenance utilities either.

sudo trimforce enable

Great - that's good news all round!

 

[Simon89]

I'm running a Sandisk X300 512GB SSD in my early-2008 iMac and it does make a noticeable difference with the performance. You cut the boot up time by some considerable time and most application will load much quicker too, I found it better to do a fresh install of OS X, I initially cloned my HDD to the SSD but found it to hang at times.

 

[alexjholland]

I'm running a Sandisk X300 512GB SSD in my early-2008 iMac and it does make a noticeable difference with the performance. You cut the boot up time by some considerable time and most application will load much quicker too, I found it better to do a fresh install of OS X, I initially cloned my HDD to the SSD but found it to hang at times.

I was going to clone, but as I'm having my internal replaced, I'll be relying on my Time Machine.

Would Time Machine count?

 

[bogg]

...in the newest Yosemite version of El Capitan...

?


I get what you mean and the precise versions should be: 10.10.4 or newer or 10.11.x

 

[Weaselboy]

?


I get what you mean and the precise versions should be: 10.10.4 or newer or 10.11.x

Yeah... that should have said OR El Capitan. Between fat fingers and autocorrect, I don't how I get anything done at all.

 

[Simon89]

I was going to clone, but as I'm having my internal replaced, I'll be relying on my Time Machine.

Would Time Machine count?

To be honest I don't know as I've never used time machine and I'm unaware exactly what the backup contains with that process.

 

[bogg]

I was going to clone, but as I'm having my internal replaced, I'll be relying on my Time Machine.

Would Time Machine count?

If you haven't excluded anything important from the Time Machine backup you're on the right path. You can install to the new ssd and then restore from your time machine backup to get your system back to how it was before.