SSD drive in 24' imac alu?

[phoobo]

as already noted, you need the IDE version. tiger has a couple of transcend drives listed with the IDE interface, but they (tiger) are always high on price.

Excellent post. I'm a big fan of SSD's and have owned 3 of them (used in notebooks). Just a word of advice: I would *avoid* Transcend drives, as I have had problems with the only 2 I used. Have a Samsung that is perfect. Would try them, or maybe some other reputable brand.

You won't want to have HDD's any more in any computer that's so close to you (too loud, too hot) after you try these out.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Why would anyone put an SSD drive in a desktop machine? I get that there is the "geek factor" there, but why? Eventually common sense should prevail over any opportunity to just be a true geek and say "oh I have an SSD drive in my desktop machine."

 

[phoobo]

Why would anyone put an SSD drive in a desktop machine? I get that there is the "geek factor" there, but why? Eventually common sense should prevail over any opportunity to just be a true geek and say "oh I have an SSD drive in my desktop machine."

Just put em side by side, you'll pick the SSD every time. No vibration, no hum, no extra heat (all imperfections of the present iMac). Your other components will also last longer as a result. Only a matter of time before HDD's are just used for storage, then ultimately scrapped.

 

[davis.graphics]

Idiots

You guys are missing the point of the SSD. It's not just a geek thing.

Let me list the benefits:

1. Crazy fast boot time
2. Fast loading of applications (perfect for Adobe's creative suite and 3D programs)
3. Stability, will pay for itself.
4. Awesome Disk performance, fast defrag times and disk verification

Cons:
1. Price
2. Difficult putting it in your imac

You would basically put all your applications and system settings on your SSD and the rest on an external for media and stuff

Just my two cents...

 

[DAMAC3]

You guys are missing the point of the SSD. It's not just a geek thing.

Let me list the benefits:

1. Crazy fast boot time
2. Fast loading of applications (perfect for Adobe's creative suite and 3D programs)
3. Stability, will pay for itself.
4. Awesome Disk performance, fast defrag times and disk verification

Cons:
1. Price
2. Difficult putting it in your imac

You would basically put all your applications and system settings on your SSD and the rest on an external for media and stuff

Just my two cents...

The posts in this thread and almost 7 months old. A LOT have happened with SSD since then. I have used the Macbook Air revB with both the regular HDD and the SSD. There is a very noticeable difference in boot times and basic applications (like you said). I have been very impressed with the SSD performance.

As someone who just purchased an iMac, I would consider the 256GB SSD drives when they come down in price. The HDD is the weakest link at this point in the computer. With the faster processors, bus speeds, and RAM, the 7200RPM (and especially 5400) drives are just not able to keep up.

 

[TrapOx]

Yep, just ordered an SSD for my PowerMac for the exact reasons davis listed above. 32GB SSD for OS and apps, 1TB HD for data.

I also agree with DAMAC3. The last reply was 7 months ago, AGES in computer technology.

Although as a note, SSD drives by nature do not need to be defragged since there is no platter head to physically wait on to move across the disk. Its like RAM, fetching data from opposite ends of the memory is just as fast as data thats inline. Defrag will shorten the SSD's lifespan.

 

[NATO]

Agreed. I am *this* close to buying a 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD to put in my iMac, and offload my videos/music onto a large external FW800 Drive. That way OS X and applications and my files will benefit from the SSD, and I can still access music, video etc via the external.

I think I've been spoilt by the 64GB Samsung SSD I put in my MacBook Pro. The iMac seems really slow at startup and loading apps in comparison, I'd really like to get that performance in my iMac.

 

[Beanlok]

If you bought a Prius would you constantly drive it at 5 mph so as to not hear a little noise?

 

[CarlsonCustoms]

If anyone is worried about the skill required to put a hd in an imac its not bad at all.. sure its not as easy as a tower system but I put a 1tb drive in mine awhile back and it was easy.

 

[darrellishere]

I put a £178 Corsier 128gb SSD into my mac mini 2009.

Definitely speeded up the whole system. Webpages notably snappier.
Opening apps its most noticeable. Start ups are the same though. Slowish ssd.

If your going to load an ssd into the imac, my advice would be to partion the ssd before you install osx. As boot camp wouldn't partition my ssd.


Don't underestimate the limitations of 128gb ssd.

 

[NATO]

24" iMac 3.06GHz + OCZ Vertex SSD

I've just finished reassembling my 24" iMac after swapping out the 1TB WD Caviar Black HDD for a 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD drive.

My initial observations are that the system is eerily quiet and the speed is outrageous! Boot time is a fraction of what it was, login is instant and application startups are instantaneous. It really feels like a whole new machine! I would recommend it to anyone who's not afraid to take their iMac apart.

For those who are worried about the lack of space, my recommendation is to have OS X + Applications + most of your user data on the SSD, and have an external FW800 HDD for the big stuff such as movies/downloads/iTunes music (if you have a huge library). It works for me, and you get the best of both worlds (Speed where you need it, capacity where speed isn't as important).

 

[barjohn]

I installed a 500 GB SSD in my iMac 24 (current model 1 month old). Boot up is actually slower up to the log in page. It appears to me to be hunting for the boot drive. I say this because I have the former 640 GB hard drive with the same image I copied to the SSD connected as an external USB hard drive and if I don't do an option boot and select the SSD it will boot from the external USB HD. Once I enter my username and password and hit enter it is almost instantaneous to bring the system up. Applications like Word, Excel, Parallels, etc. launch very fast. It was darn expensive for the SSD but installing it was not hard (I didn't even have to remove the LCD panel). It sure is quiet. If anyone knows if I need to make a change to the EFI or something else to make it instantly recognize the SSD as the boot drive I would appreciate the help.

 

[superatombomb]

I installed a 500 GB SSD in my iMac 24 (current model 1 month old). Boot up is actually slower up to the log in page. It appears to me to be hunting for the boot drive. I say this because I have the former 640 GB hard drive with the same image I copied to the SSD connected as an external USB hard drive and if I don't do an option boot and select the SSD it will boot from the external USB HD. Once I enter my username and password and hit enter it is almost instantaneous to bring the system up. Applications like Word, Excel, Parallels, etc. launch very fast. It was darn expensive for the SSD but installing it was not hard (I didn't even have to remove the LCD panel). It sure is quiet. If anyone knows if I need to make a change to the EFI or something else to make it instantly recognize the SSD as the boot drive I would appreciate the help.

how could you change the hard drive and not remove the lcd when the hard drive bay is directly underneath? Also, how did you get it to fit? did you use a 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive adapter. This would be an interesting upgrade to document and post online btw.

 

[gianly1985]

Remember just one thing: there are very good SSDs, good SSDs and bad SSDs.

If you want to put an SSD in your iMac, my advice is the Intel x25-m.

As for me, I don't want to dismantle my late 2006 iMac 17" at the moment, so I'm going to try how the Intel SSD behaves as an external firewire400 boot disk. I already got the enclosure (2.5", fw400&fw800), I'll let you know when my ssd arrives.

I know, fw400 is a "bag of hurt" if compared to SATA, but since the most important boost of SSDs is in seek time and random write of small files, i think it will perform better than any HDD on SATA. Here's some figures:

Western Digital Velociraptor speed in "Random Write 4k" test ---> 1.5MB/s
Intel x25-m speed in "Random Write 4k" test ---> 40MB/s (yes....more than 30x the speed of the Velociraptor) (you find the chart here)

SATA300 max bandwidth ---> 375MB/s
Firewire800 max bandwidth ---> 100MB/s
Firewire400 max bandwidth ---> 50MB/s

As you can see, I won't be "firewire limited" in the most important performance parameter.

I will be somehow limited in random read (60MB/s) and sequential write (80MB/s)

I will be very limited in sequential read, that at the moment is probably even SATA-limited. (see here)

 

[barjohn]

I am sorry that I didn't take any pictures; however, there are pretty good pictures on how to this if you do a google search. A few notes of explanation. Removing the glass and the bezel is pretty straight forward. All in all it is really a pretty easy project if you take your time and don't rush things. There are a total of 4 cables that connect to the LCD. I only disconnected 3. The first two are coming from the bottom edge (bottom is edge toward base of unit) one on each side. The left one is power and has a clip type connector to the mother board. The second is a slip down connector that is held down with two screws that must be removed. Once those two cables are disconnected you can tilt up the screen from the bottom. There are tabs protruding from the bottom to grip. You can then tilt it up far enough to see a twisted pair of wired going to a small slip in connector. You pull on the connector away from the bottom and once unplugged you can tile the screen up further until you reach the ned of play for the last cable. There is tape over the connector on the LCD side. I did not bother disconnecting this cable because there was enough room while holding it tilted up to lift the latch bar on the HD, tilt up the HD far enough so that I could disconnect the SATA connectors from the HD and remove the heat sensor from the HD (It is held on with an adhesive and I gently pried it lose after lifting off the foam protective piece covering it..

I had a 3.5" adapter try for the 2.5" Super Talent 500GB SSD. I installed it so that it would be sitting in the try the facing the way that the HD had been set up and installed the 4 pegs that were used to mount the HD into the 3.5" tray. I then discovered the first and only challenge. The HD SATA cables would not reach the connectors on the SSD. This is because the connectors on the HD are toward the bottom edge of the HD, not the center. However, when you install the SSD in the 3.5" tray the connectors are moved toward the center as the drive is centered in the space. I found I had to flip the drive over which placed its connectors closer to the bottom edge (bottom always refers to the bottom or base of the unit) and then I had to swap and reverse the two connectors but they then just made it and with a little effort I was able to get everything connected and put the unit back together. I did this without any help so I just used my forearms as the place to rest the LCD while working in the cavity like a surgeon. If I had help with another pair of hands to hold the LCD tilted up it would have been easier. I did use a small cardboard box to help hold the LCD at one point. I also put the heat sensor back on the SSD. So far it is working great.

I found the boot issue I was having was fixable in System Preferences Start Up Disk. I had the old disk selected as the start drive. It now selects the right drive to boot up. I can't say I see much of an improvement getting to the log in but that may be because I have a fire wire 800 and a USB drive attached to the unit and it seems to do stuff with those drives during the boot up. Once I am at the log on it is instantaneous.

Below you can see the results of Xbench performance test. The first is on the 650 GB Western Digital HD and the second is on the SuperTalent SSD.

 

[egendomligt]

Success report (with slight problems)

Hi,

I swapped the drive in my iMac to an Intel 160Gb. The disassembly and reassembly was kind of straight forward with the help of all the guides out there. I did run in to a couple of problems though:

The 2.5" -> 3-5" spacers I bought (just two metal spacers) effectively put the drive connectors about an inch to the side compared to a real 3.5" SATA drive. The SATA cable had some (very little) slack further along its path, so I solved this by pulling the SATA cable really hard which gave me that extra length.

The spacers I bought also had different threads than a hard drive for some reason (CDROM-type threads), and the manufacturer seemed to think I should use the screws they sent along with them. This was of course a problem, but I raided my home for screws and finally found a couple that worked in place of the original ones.

So. Buy good spacers for this mod, heh.

Also, my iMac now boots (from the press of the button to logged in with everything loaded) in 24 seconds. Nice

 

[mrsir2009]

I know this is a stupid question, but what is a SSD drive?

 

[nullx86]

IDK why you want to do it, but it is possible. If your going SSD, you need a 2.5 to 3.5 Adapter, because of the HDD locking mechanism in the iMac. Also, 2.5 Sata connectors are exactly the same as 3.5 Sata connectors.

 

[barjohn]

IDK why you want to do it, but it is possible. If your going SSD, you need a 2.5 to 3.5 Adapter, because of the HDD locking mechanism in the iMac. Also, 2.5 Sata connectors are exactly the same as 3.5 Sata connectors.

You misunderstood what he was saying. Yes the connectors are the same but on a 3.5" drive they are closer to one side of the drive than the other. When you install the 2.5" SSD drive in a 3.5" adapter it places the drive in the center thus moving the connectors further away from the edge. Then the cable with the connectors doesn't quite reach the connector location on the drive.

 

[Heilage]

Have you guys even ever used SSDs? Not worth it at all in my opinion. There are several people where I work who ran out and bought em and really there is not a huge performance gain like everyone thinks. Not one person I work with thought it was worth it after buying and installing it (this is out of 7 people), and from what I used of them I dont think its worth the price either.

Make sure if you get one its from a place you can return it just incase its not everything you thought it would be.

I completely agree. I put an SSD in mine, and besides all applications booting up in about a second (Photoshop takes two seconds), everything being very smooth and fast, the write speeds five times those of a 5,4k RPM disk, the silence, the lack of heat coming from it and the fact it has no movable parts, there is no advantage what so ever.

 

[fhall1]

I know this is a stupid question, but what is a SSD drive?

...and you're a macrumors regular??? Solid State Disk......google it