Using 2009 iMac today

[mdgm]

I have to disagree about a FW800 drive being too slow. Sure the sequential speeds are a lot slower than an internal, but it’s the more “random” reads/writes where SSDs outshine HDDs. Booting a 2009 Mac Mini off a FW800 SSD and it feels a lot faster than the old internal 5400rpm HDD.

With the 2011 you can achieve faster speeds than an internal over Thunderbolt using the new NVMe drives, but FW800 is still a useful option for the 2009.

 

[kschendel]

...
You can use any SSD you like.

Just in case, let's make that "any SATA SSD you like."

 

[photogramps]

Today I swapped out the conventional hard drives in both of my old (identical) iMacs, replacing them with SSD's but to have a bit of fun (well actually to put the cosmetically better one in the lounge) I swapped the drives between the machines ... so iMac A got the cloned (Super-Duper) SSD from iMac B and vice versa, quite an interesting excursion into the innards of an iMac and the dust and debris of many years was removed
One iMac had the 'official' OWC cable fitted to the SSD to remove the thermal cable/racing fans issue and the other had a software solution (HDD Fan Control), so all fans have been reined in and both startup and read/write times have been greatly improved as a result of the SSD's.
However I have a mystery with one of the iMacs ... everything works fine, boots up great, all applications there and working, BUT when I go to System Preferences > Startup Disk no disks are displayed!
'About this mac' shows it in 'Storage' and it's there in Disk Utility ... but nothing in System Preferences > Startup Disk.
A mystery to me, any of you mac gurus out there throw any light please?

 

[mdgm]

If you go into the Terminal how does the
# diskutil list
output compare between the two machines?

 

[photogramps]

If you go into the Terminal how does the
# diskutil list
output compare between the two machines?

Interesting!

The machine that is fine says:

• 0: GUID_partition_scheme disk0
• 1: EFI EFI disk0s1
• 2: Apple_HFS SSD disk0s2

The machine where the SSD is not recognised in 'System Preferences > Startup Drive' says:

• 0: FDisk_partition_shceme disk0
• 1: 0xDE disk0s1
• 2: Apple_HFS MAC_SSD disk0s2
• 3: 0xDB disk0s3

 

[mdgm]

Perhaps backup your data, boot off a USB boot disk, wipe the whole SSD using disk utility and format it using GPT partitioning scheme and see if that resolves it.

You should be able to confirm in Disk Utility and/or in the Terminal that you’ve formatted it correctly.

Looks like the disk that’s not working properly is using MBR not GUID/GPT.

Edit: I guess it might also be possible to use gdisk to change it to GPT, but you’d still need to backup first in case something goes wrong.

 

[photogramps]

Perhaps backup your data, boot off a USB boot disk, wipe the whole SSD using disk utility and format it using GPT partitioning scheme and see if that resolves it.

You should be able to confirm in Disk Utility and/or in the Terminal that you’ve formatted it correctly.

Looks like the disk that’s not working properly is using MBR not GUID/GPT.

Edit: I guess it might also be possible to use gdisk to change it to GPT, but you’d still need to backup first in case something goes wrong.

Resolved

I connected the original (removed) Mac_HD to an external Firewire caddy, booted from the external drive and did an Erase Mac_OS Journalled on the SSD then cloned the original Mac_HD to the SSD using Super-Duper.

HOWEVER, nothing changed!
Neither Erase or Super-Duper had formatted the SSD as GUID so the drive still did not show in System Preferences > Startup Disk.

A quick search showed up Disk Utility > View > Show all Devices, which shows all native drives.
An Erase of the native drive gave the option of selecting GUID and hey presto, following another clone with Super-Duper, it works and the SSD now shows in System Preferences > Startup Drive.

Thanks for your assistance