[xcapepr]

Hello all. I have an iMac 24'' 8.1. I want to get an SSD for it but after some research I found that the optical drive is PATA, not SATA like in the newer models.

I google'd for a bit and stumbled into this:
PATA to SATA Caddy

My idea is to install an Intel X25 80GB SSD in the optical bay of the iMac with the caddy and keep the internal 1TB drive in place. Im considering migrating the applications and system data to the SSD and keep the home folder in the 1TB drive.

I'm looking for any advise about this combination and to see if anyone has tried something similar (converting the optical PATA port into a SATA port)

[CharlesS]

Wouldn't PATA hobble the speed of an SSD?

[xcapepr]

Right, IDE maximum throughput. I knew my plan sounded too well in my head. IDE tops out at 100MB. Meaning that the SSD will not work at a 100% in read speeds but should still outperform my current 1TB drive.

Hmm I'm stumped. Anyone ever try a SATA port multiplier in an iMac?
The way I see it I may have two other options:
1. Use the 1TB drive in an external Firewire 800 enclosure and install the SSD in the SATA II port.
2. Get a 7200RPM 2.5'' 500GB SATA drive for the home folder and keep the CClone, VM's and Windows ISO files in the 1TB drive via Firewire 800.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by xcapepr 

Hmm I'm stumped. Anyone ever try a SATA port multiplier in an iMac?

Would there even be room in there for one?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Wouldn't PATA hobble the speed of an SSD?

Not really. The benefit of SSDs is more from IOPS than throughput. It's about getting 15MBps rather than 1MBps, not 200MBps rather than 80MBps.

Originally Posted by xcapepr 

Right, IDE maximum throughput. I knew my plan sounded too well in my head. IDE tops out at 100MB. Meaning that the SSD will not work at a 100% in read speeds but should still outperform my current 1TB drive.

Hmm I'm stumped. Anyone ever try a SATA port multiplier in an iMac?
The way I see it I may have two other options:
1. Use the 1TB drive in an external Firewire 800 enclosure and install the SSD in the SATA II port.
2. Get a 7200RPM 2.5'' 500GB SATA drive for the home folder and keep the CClone, VM's and Windows ISO files in the 1TB drive via Firewire 800.

Where/what are you talking about SATA PM in an iMac?

[xcapepr]

First of all, the reason I'm going this far is because I want to have everything integrated into the iMac itself.

A SATA port multiplier does just that, use more than one SATA device in a sinle SATA port. There is penty of space fone one inside the case when the optical drive is removed. The real problem I would have is to supply power to the second drive and the port multiplier as well. The unit I would use is something like this:


Cooldrives 5 port SATA multiplier

As for the power:

OR

The rest of the power cable adapters I need I already own from my previous PC builds

SATA cables:

Sata right to right signal cable
__________________________________________________ _

iMac interior pictures:

The optical disk frame is still installed but can be removed

The SATA plug on the Logic Board

PATA plug for optical drive

Plug in back of optical drive

Close-up of main HDD

[CharlesS]

Doesn't it depend on whether the iMac's SATA controller supports port multiplication though?

[xcapepr]

There is no info wether it does or not, I will try to find one locally that can be returned to test.

I saw on macfixit that it might work on newer models with the nvidia chipsets but no info about the older intel ones.

[xcapepr]

Just to follow up. I went ahead and got both units, the SSD and the slim PATA to SATA optical bay converter.

Drive was seen upon first boot and a partition was created. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone everything but the home folder. I then changed the boot order and edited my account to use the home folder on the 1TB drive. After a restart I had my system up just like before.

I ran some XBench tests and the results are worst than I expected. Results here:
1TB HDD

SSD


Second Round: SSD on left, HDD on right



Optical bay adapter


Optical bay port and SSD


SSD installed


Unit inside iMac


Temperature sensor for optical disk attached to SSD


EDIT:
Im planing to test the SSD in the SATA port directly to check speed increase (if any) over the PATA port connection. If speeds improve drastically, I might end up installing a 7200 500GB 2.5 inch drive in the optical bay adapter and keeping the SSD on the SATA port and keep large media files in external drives.

[CharlesS]

Dunno that the external drives are really necessary, since even PATA should be faster than either USB or FireWire.

[xcapepr]

The problem is that I have is the space issue.

I have 755gb in my home folder. No 2.5 inch 1tb drives exist that are 9.5 mm high and are 7200 rpm.

I would use the external drives for large media and setup files that are rarely used and install a 500gb 7200 rpm drive in the caddy for the home folder to reside in.

EDIT: Although the XBench scores look really low, the system boots 4 times as fast. From the boot selection, it takes only 19 seconds for a usable system with Safari and all menu applets loaded vs 82 seconds with the HDD.

[Simon]

Regarding consumer SSDs, I think you might have had the wrong expectations. Random read/writes are a lot better than with your HDD. I/O operations will be speedier on the SSD. That's why you are seeing the fast boot time. OTOH large sequential reads/writes are an area where HDDs always do quite ok compared to a consumer SSD. And that's exactly what you are observing.

It'll be interesting to see if and by how much SSD performance changes when you connect it to the SATA port for the HDD.

[seanc]

So after reading this thread I think I can work out the following:
-You're running out of space on your internal HDD
-You want to keep your drives internal
-You want an SSD for speed?

Why not replace the 1TB 3.5" HDD with a 2TB 3.5" HDD and replace the 2.5" SSD with a slower 1TB 2.5" HDD?
I know the 1TB 2.5" HDD is not available in 9.5mm thickness, but 12.5mm should fit, especially in an iMac.

Can you please tell us what your overall project and goal is?

[xcapepr]

Simon:

The differences al least on raw XBanch numbers are astounding. Compare these to the previous scores:
First test

Second test

Tests were done with the SSD plugged into the main SATA port and booting off my clone backup.

seanc:

The ultimate goal is to have a small somewhat economic SSD for the OS and Applications while having a slower large HDD to store all my files. That way you benefit from a faster system while still having room to spare for iPhoto and iTunes, etc.

The problem is that my iMac doesn't have a SATA optical drive port. On newer models, replacing the optical drive for an SSD will give the full speed bonus the SSD offers while on my particular model, the SSD speeds are limited to the bus speed of a PATA (or IDE) interface.

[CharlesS]

That doesn't surprise me. SSDs are getting so fast nowadays that there is even talk about SATA becoming a bottleneck, so it makes sense that PATA would have been left in the dust long ago.

I'd probably plug the HDD into the PATA adapter, if you can (or just get a large PATA hard drive). You'd probably notice much less of a difference than you did with the SSD.

[mduell]

In random operations, where SSDs really shine over HDDs and users notice the difference, ATA/100 is still more than fast enough. Bulk transfer rates don't translate into teh snappy.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by xcapepr 

Simon:

The differences al least on raw XBanch numbers are astounding. Compare these to the previous scores:

...

Tests were done with the SSD plugged into the main SATA port and booting off my clone backup.

I'm surprised to see such a dramatic increase in random read/write performance over SATA. That's truly amazing. Maybe that SATA/PATA bridge isn't that good.

In light of this and the goal you pointed out, I'd suggest the same as Charles. Move the SSD (OS, apps) to the SATA port and install a large HDD (files) in the optical drive bay. You'll benefit from the really fast I/O that the SSD/SATA combo offers for boot/launch times. With large files the sequential performance is more important and there performance of the HDD on PATA shouldn't be that much worse than what your MLC SSD showed.

The only problem I can see with that solution is that it's not trivial to find a very large and still affordable HDD for PATA. You'll be paying more per GB for a PATA HDD compared to a SATA HDD. And PATA HDDs have lower max capacities. To give you a reference, here's a 500 GB PATA HDD for $80. It's a big drive, so forget about closing the back of your case. Another option is to use a SATA notebook drive with your SATA/PATA adapter. WD has recently started shipping 1TB 2.5" SATA drives.

[xcapepr]

Thanks for the suggestions. After installing the 2.5'' HDD from my laptop (WD Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM) and running XBench once again, the performance of the 320GB drive in the PATA to SATA caddy is almost equal (actually scored higher) of that of the 3.5'' 1TB WD Green 7200RPM HDD when on the main SATA port.

Meaning that given the relatively slow speed of these HDD's in particular, the PATA bus speed is more than adequate.

I will be on the lookout of a good deal on the Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM drive for my home folder data. That should be plenty for my iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie libraries for some time. I will then store large media files in an external FW800 drive I already have. I will continue to use the SSD in the Caddy for the time being while I hunt for a deal on the Seagate 500GB one.

XBench results for the WD Scorpio Black HDD in Caddy:


I tried the SSD on my 2007 MacBook Pro that has a SATA 1 port and the results were close to that of the iMac which has a SATA 2 port:

[Simon]

Originally Posted by xcapepr 

I will be on the lookout of a good deal on the Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM drive for my home folder data. That should be plenty for my iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie libraries for some time. I will then store large media files in an external FW800 drive I already have. I will continue to use the SSD in the Caddy for the time being while I hunt for a deal on the Seagate 500GB one.

Good idea. The Momentus 7200.4 is an excellent drive. Newegg has it for $105 right now.

Do you already have a carrier to mount the 2.5" SSD in the 3.5" SATA bay?

[xcapepr]

Originally Posted by Simon 

Do you already have a carrier to mount the 2.5" SSD in the 3.5" SATA bay?

No, but im looking to get this:



Simple and cheap, found it for around $15. Still on the fence hoping to find the one that comes in the X25 retail package.

[xcapepr]

Just to close this out, I did in fact get the Seagate drive. I made some changes and moved the home folder back onto the SSD because things got a bit slower when the Library folder was on the HDD. The only user folders on the SSD is the Library and Desktop folders, the rest are symlinks to the user folders that reside on the internal and external HDDs.

The Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Public, Sites and Virtual Machines user folders are on the internal HDD while the Movies folder is on the external drive along with old historic backups and disk images.

As for backups, a second FW800 drive is daisy chained to the data external disk and configured for TimeMachine. It backs up all three drives. As for the clone, it only captures the data from the OS partition so its less than ideal. I have yet to come up with a better solution for the clone backup I usually kept in another room.

[zerostar]

I wanted to thank you for doing all this, I am running a 1.5TB WD Caviar Black internal in my iMac (and scoring around 100 in XBench, Like 96MB Read / 100MB Write) I have a few more TB externally (on FW800 Drives) for Media/AppleTV, etc.

I had thought of putting a SSD in here for performance reasons. I really need around 1TB minimum inside though for rendering and the prices are still way too high for that (NOT Dropping $4K for a lil performance!). I had thought of using the Optical but now see it wouldn't be a very good idea.

[Malcom98]

Hi,

I´m planning to to do exchange the optical drive with a 2,5 Pata HDD and the SATA-HDD with a new SSD. Could you tell me which optical bay adapter is the right one for this adventure?

Thanks a lot

Malcom

[Simon]

I left a few links to optical bay adapters in this post.

[elek]

iMac 8,1 uses the PATA bus only at UATA/66 mode! That's the reason of the slow speed.