Hello all,
I've been scouring the internet and cannot seem to find a specific answer to my question anywhere, so I figured I would come here and hopefully get an answer, or at least a nudge in the right direction.
I have recently purchased a 21.5" late-2009 iMac with the 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I have always been a PC guy, but decided for whatever reason that I wanted to blow some money and get an iMac. I got a solid deal on it, and I really do like it - it's not a bad computer at all for being 5 years old. Thing is, my laptop, which is only 1.5 years old, runs circles around it...it's got a SSD and double the memory, so I decided that it's time to basically max out the performance on the iMac.
I've got 8GB of memory coming to add to the 4GB that's in it, which obviously I can handle without a sweat. The issue I'm having is how to approach upgrading my internal storage.
Of course, I'm looking at solid state drives, and it doesn't need to be the biggest or baddest, so I'm going for something that's a good balance of price, performance, and capacity. That too I can handle on my own. The issue I'm having is this...
The computer came with a 1TB internal HDD. That's nice, because I have enough music, pictures, and videos to basically fill it, but it's obviously not giving me the performance I'm looking for. What I would like to do is use both of them internally at the same time. I don't even want to start talking about Fusion drives; keeping them separate would work perfectly fine for my intents and purposes.
To accomplish this, I would need to remove the optical drive (not an issue, don't use it) and have one of the drives use that SATA connection. Trouble is, I've heard conflicting information on this: I've seen someone say that this SATA connection won't recognize a storage device, and others that say it will, but it will only run at SATA2 speeds, which would mean the 3.5" HDD would need to be the one connected to it.
Ideally, I would like to use OWC's Data Double to put an SSD drive in the optical drive bay, but I'm almost positive that I've read about someone who did this and the SATA connection only negotiated as SATA2.
I'm not overly familiar with the internal layout of my computer (I've looked at the iFixIt teardown a time or two), and forgive me if this is a stupid question, but would it be feasible to install the SSD using a Data Double in the optical bay, use the cable from the existing HDD to connect that SSD, and use the optical drive cable for the existing HDD in its current location? This would allow me to use the hard drive's SATA3 connection for the faster SSD and the slower-but-still-faster-than-neccessary SATA2 connection for the existing HDD (assuming I'm correct on it being SATA2)?
Sorry if that's hard to follow, doesn't make sense, or I'm just flat out wrong about some of these things. I've been brainstorming this and attempting to research it for months now, and this is apparently as far as I've gotten.
Any help is always appreciated. Thanks!
I've been scouring the internet and cannot seem to find a specific answer to my question anywhere, so I figured I would come here and hopefully get an answer, or at least a nudge in the right direction.
I have recently purchased a 21.5" late-2009 iMac with the 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I have always been a PC guy, but decided for whatever reason that I wanted to blow some money and get an iMac. I got a solid deal on it, and I really do like it - it's not a bad computer at all for being 5 years old. Thing is, my laptop, which is only 1.5 years old, runs circles around it...it's got a SSD and double the memory, so I decided that it's time to basically max out the performance on the iMac.
I've got 8GB of memory coming to add to the 4GB that's in it, which obviously I can handle without a sweat. The issue I'm having is how to approach upgrading my internal storage.
Of course, I'm looking at solid state drives, and it doesn't need to be the biggest or baddest, so I'm going for something that's a good balance of price, performance, and capacity. That too I can handle on my own. The issue I'm having is this...
The computer came with a 1TB internal HDD. That's nice, because I have enough music, pictures, and videos to basically fill it, but it's obviously not giving me the performance I'm looking for. What I would like to do is use both of them internally at the same time. I don't even want to start talking about Fusion drives; keeping them separate would work perfectly fine for my intents and purposes.
To accomplish this, I would need to remove the optical drive (not an issue, don't use it) and have one of the drives use that SATA connection. Trouble is, I've heard conflicting information on this: I've seen someone say that this SATA connection won't recognize a storage device, and others that say it will, but it will only run at SATA2 speeds, which would mean the 3.5" HDD would need to be the one connected to it.
Ideally, I would like to use OWC's Data Double to put an SSD drive in the optical drive bay, but I'm almost positive that I've read about someone who did this and the SATA connection only negotiated as SATA2.
I'm not overly familiar with the internal layout of my computer (I've looked at the iFixIt teardown a time or two), and forgive me if this is a stupid question, but would it be feasible to install the SSD using a Data Double in the optical bay, use the cable from the existing HDD to connect that SSD, and use the optical drive cable for the existing HDD in its current location? This would allow me to use the hard drive's SATA3 connection for the faster SSD and the slower-but-still-faster-than-neccessary SATA2 connection for the existing HDD (assuming I'm correct on it being SATA2)?
Sorry if that's hard to follow, doesn't make sense, or I'm just flat out wrong about some of these things. I've been brainstorming this and attempting to research it for months now, and this is apparently as far as I've gotten.
Any help is always appreciated. Thanks!
