Morning,

I’m looking for a 300Gb or larger SSD to put in my old iMac to perk it up a bit.

A work colleague recommended a SanDisk Plus or Samsung Evo 850.

Does anyone have a recommendation or has spotted a current deal?

Sweet spot on price was about 240 last month when I looked so maybe not, there was a bigger jump than 2 smaller ones at that point.

Samsung EVO would get my vote (and indeed, did, that’s what I bought).

We’ve been installing the Samsungs in work for about a year now, they’re very good.

Novatech sell them competitively and they come with a license for some software to image you’re current disc.

They’re also often bundled with a new PC license which you can sell if you don’t want.

Good, seems like Samsungs are well rated 🙂

I have a time machine disk for my iMac. Am I right in thinking that I will only therefore need to fit the new SSD, turn the iMac back on and then plug in the external time machine disk?

I stuck a “Toshiba 512GB SSD Drive Read 534MB s Write 482MB s 2 5 7mm SATA III” in my 2010 MBP. It was the fastest SSD about at the time (2013)….

I’ve used Samsung, Sandisk and Toshiba and they all work fine. Go with the best price per GB you can find from a major brand. My benchmark is £40 for a 240GB Sandisk from Amazon last week.

I have a time machine disk for my iMac. Am I right in thinking that I will only therefore need to fit the new SSD, turn the iMac back on and then plug in the external time machine disk?

It’s not quite that simple. Have you read the iFixit guides? Is the SSD to be your only disc? I can’t remember the details but when I did it I had to use the Mac disc tools to format the disc and then recover from the Time Machine backup.

Just clone your existing disc to the SSD using Carbon Copy before you install it….

I’ve seen the ifixit instructions but not read them fully recently. Use of disc tools sounds OK.

The computer is pretty old so keen to avoid a direct clone approach to leave behind any accumulated junk I don’t need. I’m no expert though so that may well be a unjustified concern.

Yes the SSD will be my only disc.

The “clone” approach means that you need some cloning software and a USB disc caddy; if you haven’t got these (and even if you have) then the Mac tools work fine. Put in the new disk, boot into Recovery mode, and proceed from there.

Edit: Oh, and getting into Recovery with a bluetooth keyboard can be a nightmare. If you’ve got a USB keyboard then use that.

I spent a bit more and went with the Samsung Pro range, but then it’s for work.

Thanks, that is useful. I’ll be using a USB keyboard and have a USB mouse available. I have a caddy so I will do the SSD formatting bit using that before I install it.

AlexSimon – point taken but I suspect the rest of the computer doesn’t justify Pro!

The “clone” approach means that you need some cloning software and a USB disc caddy

My SSD came with both, the “caddy” is just a $0.2 lead…

Carbon Copy is (or was) free to use for a single drive clone.

My benchmark is £40 for a 240GB Sandisk from Amazon last week.

Nice price, though I managed 480Gb Crucial BX for £72 a month or two back from Amazon.. though am on the search again and can’t find anything close. Kingston’s come with a external caddy depending on which pack you buy (sometimes cheaper than the non-caddy kits) but after initially buying a kingston drive I returned it (unused) due to the issue/non-issue of them changing spec’s after it was released (benchmarked). Oh and my crucial drives came with Acronis True image licenses – literally just discovered in the bottom of the box!
Worth checking on the crucial website as to what version of Sata your Mac uses, as my understanding is that earlier versions (Sata 1-2) shouldn’t be any faster using a ‘better’ SSD versus a more basic model but are still worthwhile as it will be faster than you normal Hdd

Samsung 850 4Tb £1130 bargain..

I’m considering fitting a SSD to an ageing iMac too. It’s currently got a 250gb HDD, with stuff stored/backed up to a 2TB RAID disc. What’s the best way of having the fast speed of the SSD, but with reasonably quick access to the files? Thought that having a fast boot disc with iTunes, iPhoto and Lightroom files all on the external would be the best option, but any other ideas? Currently using a standard 2-HDD enclosure that’s just USB2, so really not optimal! 2-disc NAS?

480Gb £85 sandisk? seem reasonable

It’s £108.80 though. 😕

Prices have come down massively. Bought a 64GB SSD for another machine just a couple of years ago, and that was £130 or so.

So; SSD in iMac and 2-disc NAS? Any better solutions?

Samsung Evo user here. Best investment I made for my mid 2k10 Macbook pro was to put a half terrabyte SSD in it.

Add “SSD” into the promocode section and it comes down to £85

Thanks. Bought. It’ll do in the iMac; no point getting a super fast one, as the iMac isn’t fast enough to take advantage of it anyway!

Any recommendations for a NAS type solution for pics and music/videos?

Isn’t there something called TRIM which the SSD needs to run mac? I read it when I was looking for a dual boot machine’s upgrade. Someone enlighten me about TRIM?

TRIM is a garbage collection process that for some reason Apple disable if you use a non-apple SSD. The general view seems to be that the built-in garbage collection that the SSD controllers do these days is sufficient. If you think otherwise you can apparently use the trimforce command in more recent OSX versions to enable Trim.

EBuyer have a cracking deal on the SanDisk ones today.
480GB is under £100!
HERE

Use code SSD

We’ve done that, hammyuk.

Modern Windows systems will (should) enable it automatically so you don’t need to worry about it. I didn’t know how it applied to Macs though, so I looked it up. This is a decent explanation:

http://www.howtogeek.com/222077/how-to-enable-trim-for-third-party-ssds-on-mac-os-x/

(Though like I said, I don’t know Macs so how good / current the advice is I don’t know.)

It’s arrived, much sooner than expected!

So, do I do a Time Machine backup to it, then instal it? Or use Carbon Copy Cloner or similar?

CCC got my vote for MacBook with a new Samsung ssd. All my tabs were still there when i reopened safari.

So, new SSD cloned and swapped. Have to say, there’s no significant noticeable increase in performance, especially booting up, which surprised me. An SSD installed in another machine made a massive difference.

Bit of a pain to swap the drives over. Apple don’t make it easy to do such things. It’s a bit like replacing a headlight bulb on some cars; you have to take the engine and gearbox out to get to it.

Very loud CPU fan noise now. It seems I pinched the LCD temp monitor cable on reassembly, and now the CPU fan is running at max speed. 🙁 I’m going to have to dismantle and repair the cable. So be careful, anyone thinking of doing similar.

Have to say, there’s no significant noticeable increase in performance, especially booting up, which surprised me. An SSD installed in another machine made a massive difference.

Sounds a bit odd, my MBP is way faster booting up / restarting, sub 10secs from cold.

Thinking about it, if you have crimped the temp sensor cable and your MBP thins it’s over heating, it may slow the uP down to try and avoid getting any hotter…

Yes, I think you may be onto something there. Everything’s working fine, and actually, some apps are starting up much quicker, and Chrome seems to be a bit better, but boot up time is still more or less the same.

Pissed off about the cable. Took 3 goes to find the problem. Seems the crimping may have led to the cable shorting, and that’s why the CPU fan is on full whack. Not an insurmountable issue to sort out, but bloody annoying. Each strip down takes at least 10-15 mins, and you’ve got to be careful disconnecting little cables. I used coloured paper clips to help identify the correct cables. Oh, and the 2.5-3.5″ drive bay adapter is practically useless as it is too short, so the SSD is not secured properly. Don’t think it will affect it though, as the SATA cables are seated firmly and it’s not going to be moved around. I downloaded an SSD fan control app to stop the other fans going mental, but there may be a way round that. Failing getting it back to silent again, I’ll just chuck a bigger HDD in there. I’d rather have it slent than feel like I’m sitting on a ‘plane.

LCD monitor cable repaired- noisy fan noise gone! 😀

And although boot up is still not very quick, all apps load much faster.

So in answer to the OP; I’ve swapped the driver over to an SSD, and the performance is better, and now with no issues.

Don’t ask me to come round and do it for you, because it’s not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry! I would advise much caution and patience with each step, and be methodical.

I hadn’t selected the new SSD in System Preferences, as my startup drive. Even though there is no other bootable drive in the machine, and it booted up ok (albeit slowly). Found a tip that suggested selecting the drive in SP, and it now boots up to login screen, from completely off, in 22.41″. Which is about 30″ faster than it did before (and with the old HDD). I doubt the iMac’s actual system is fast enough to take full advantage of the SSD anyway, as this model was designed around using a HDD.