Long time lurker; first time poster.
For those of you sitting on the fence about the possibility of installing an SSD, specifically in an iMac, but might be afraid to try, allow me the opportunity to allay your fears.
Summary of the below: removing the glass panel and taking the screen off the iMac is pretty easy, and any dust that might show up during the process is easily handled. IMHO, the unibody iMac is not that hard to work on, coming from someone who has taken apart the original MBP, a Macbook Air, and an iPod. And its reputation of being difficult due to the glass screen cover is unwarranted.
Long story: I'd been running the first gen 17" Macbook Pro (2.16GHz Core Duo) since buying it new in 2006, and as always happens, started getting a lot of beach-balling as newer versions of OS X were installed (although I felt it ran faster on 10.6 than 10.5). Instead of buying a new machine, I started looking into the possibility of buying an SSD to increase performance. I figured that the relatively high cost was worth another year or 2 of use, and the computer was fully functional at the time. So I went ahead and bought a 120GB Corsair SSD and, using iFixit, installed it without any issues, also using Carbon Copy Cloner to facilitate the data swap. As hoped for, the SSD was like putting a turbo on your car: no more beach balling practically ever. I now knew what people meant when they said they would never go back to a spinning hard drive.
Fast forward to this fall: my MBP's screen is broken and I'm using an external monitor in clam-shell mode, and I'm stuck on Snow Leopard due to the old Core Duo processor. So I like many on this forum had been waiting for a new iMac. While the new iMacs are ok I guess, I was not overwhelmed, and went and found a mid-2010 model with the 3.2GHz Core i3 and 1TB drive. While the processor and RAM were welcome upgrades from my previous MBP, this machine was still slower to use than my old MBP because of that spinning HD. Another visit to iFixit, along with some power drilling (I had to modify a bracket), and that same Corsair SSD is now in my iMac. And it was far easier than I thought. Simply follow the directions, take your time, and make sure you have the proper tools to do the job. And about dust between the glass and screen: there was actually quite a bit there when I first took the glass off, and I couldn't see it under normal use. A can of compressed air took care of it. End of story.
So I'll repeat in closing: for anyone who is remotely thinking about doing this upgrade, especially if you have an early unibody iMac that can still handle the current and future OS X versions, I highly recommend that you try it. You can get a 256GB SSD now for the price I paid for my 120GB two years ago, especially with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales coming up in a few days. And you will love the performance boost you will get out of it, guaranteed.
For those of you sitting on the fence about the possibility of installing an SSD, specifically in an iMac, but might be afraid to try, allow me the opportunity to allay your fears.
Summary of the below: removing the glass panel and taking the screen off the iMac is pretty easy, and any dust that might show up during the process is easily handled. IMHO, the unibody iMac is not that hard to work on, coming from someone who has taken apart the original MBP, a Macbook Air, and an iPod. And its reputation of being difficult due to the glass screen cover is unwarranted.
Long story: I'd been running the first gen 17" Macbook Pro (2.16GHz Core Duo) since buying it new in 2006, and as always happens, started getting a lot of beach-balling as newer versions of OS X were installed (although I felt it ran faster on 10.6 than 10.5). Instead of buying a new machine, I started looking into the possibility of buying an SSD to increase performance. I figured that the relatively high cost was worth another year or 2 of use, and the computer was fully functional at the time. So I went ahead and bought a 120GB Corsair SSD and, using iFixit, installed it without any issues, also using Carbon Copy Cloner to facilitate the data swap. As hoped for, the SSD was like putting a turbo on your car: no more beach balling practically ever. I now knew what people meant when they said they would never go back to a spinning hard drive.
Fast forward to this fall: my MBP's screen is broken and I'm using an external monitor in clam-shell mode, and I'm stuck on Snow Leopard due to the old Core Duo processor. So I like many on this forum had been waiting for a new iMac. While the new iMacs are ok I guess, I was not overwhelmed, and went and found a mid-2010 model with the 3.2GHz Core i3 and 1TB drive. While the processor and RAM were welcome upgrades from my previous MBP, this machine was still slower to use than my old MBP because of that spinning HD. Another visit to iFixit, along with some power drilling (I had to modify a bracket), and that same Corsair SSD is now in my iMac. And it was far easier than I thought. Simply follow the directions, take your time, and make sure you have the proper tools to do the job. And about dust between the glass and screen: there was actually quite a bit there when I first took the glass off, and I couldn't see it under normal use. A can of compressed air took care of it. End of story.
So I'll repeat in closing: for anyone who is remotely thinking about doing this upgrade, especially if you have an early unibody iMac that can still handle the current and future OS X versions, I highly recommend that you try it. You can get a 256GB SSD now for the price I paid for my 120GB two years ago, especially with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales coming up in a few days. And you will love the performance boost you will get out of it, guaranteed.