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FW 800 SSD as StartUp Disk - Would it increase performance
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Mar 2007
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I have a 2008 iMac 24" 2.6GHz. It still fits my needs... but I was curious. If I ran the computer off of an SSD (128gig?) connected via FireWire 800 - would I see a performance increase? I would run start up and apps off of the drive and then put large libraries like iPhoto and iTunes on the internal drive. I would love to put an SSD inside... but I don't want to mess with taking the thing apart - looks a little more complicated than I want to deal with. Frankly, where I would like to see speed increases is startup and app startup - I don't really use the thing for any hard core data crunching.
What do you all think?
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
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I'd imagine you'd probably have to over pay to get an SSD with a FW 800 interface as opposed to a SATA interface, or at the very least there would be fewer options.
Replacing a drive in an iMac can't be all that bad. At the very least, I'd Google for the service manuals to see pictures of what is involved. We've replaced drives in laptops before just using the service manuals and it wasn't all that bad, so I figure an iMac couldn't be any worse.
The only downside I see is that if you need to have two drives since you can't make do with only 128 gig, your computing might be slightly quieter with the SATA drive being internal, depending on the design of your FW enclosure.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Mar 2007
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Well, I currently have a standard drive connected using an eSata -> Seagate FW800 dock connector. Turns out the seagate dock connectors use a standard sata connection straight out of the drive - eBay has sata to esata adapters. So, all I have to do is get an external drive enclosure to power the drive that has esata and I have the connection issue solved (thanks, Seagate for using non-proprietary tech - well, they did have a piece of plastic blocking the cable connection, but I snapped that off in about 2 seconds...)
Opening the computer is really risky to me - I've opened recent macs before and I don't feel the risk of opening it is worth more than $15-20 for an enclosure/hack.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: UKland
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Stick it inside. Just follow the excellent iFixit guide. It looks far worse than it is. Don't worry about needing suction cups, tilt the screen forward, run brown parcel tape along the top and lever the outer glass off. Presto!
From start to finish, you should have your SSD internally inside 30 minutes.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Caught in a web of deceit.
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I tried this, sort of. I used my MacBook Pro as a FW800 enclosure for my iMac. It worked, and for some things it was somewhat of a speed boost, but for others it didn't improve things compared to my internal 7200 rpm drive.
Thread here: http://forums.macnn.com/57/consumer-...ot-drive-os-x/
However, my computer is more recent, a 2010 Core i7 with 2 TB HD. Perhaps the boost would be bigger with your older machine.
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