DIY SSD Boot Drive on 27" i7 200% Worth the Time

[Besk one]

Ordered with a 2TB internal, ordered the correct cables from Apple and installed an OWC Mercury Extreme 6 SATA3 240GB SSD and 16GB RAM.

Installed the SSD (uggg pain, not for feint of heart)

Installed the system, installed the Apps on the SSD, opened the terminal did a mv /path to users on SSD / path to spinning disk

Did a ln -s in terminal of my users folder from the spinning disk back to the SSD

Opened up sys prefs, right clicked my user and changed the user folder location to my 2TB, rebooted and viola.

It's so fast I can't even describe it, my 200+GB Aperture library opens in less than 3 seconds, don't even mention Photoshop or Word, it's mind blowing.

The install was truly a pain, and I work for an AASP so that's saying something but man it FLYS.

I've not been so impressed with the speed of a machine ever.

Totally recommended. I'd not go with the Apple SSD as it's only SATA2, so you're getting half the speed and it's about the same cost as the SATA3 offerings by OWC once you're all said and done.

I thought about upgrading the spinning disk to a SATA3 model, but didn't want to screw with all the fan control mess and I truly can't imagine it being much faster.

500MB+ Read and Write from the System&Apps SSD and over 12500 on 64Bit Geekbench - that's faster than my old 8 core 3.2ghz MacPro...

I'm happy. Now comes the suck of re-installing all of my Logic Pro plugins....can't wait to see how that performs.

 

[iLidz]

Ordered with a 2TB internal, ordered the correct cables from Apple and installed an OWC Mercury Extreme 6 SATA3 240GB SSD and 16GB RAM.

Installed the SSD (uggg pain, not for feint of heart)

Installed the system, installed the Apps on the SSD, opened the terminal did a mv /path to users on SSD / path to spinning disk

Did a ln -s in terminal of my users folder from the spinning disk back to the SSD

Opened up sys prefs, right clicked my user and changed the user folder location to my 2TB, rebooted and viola.

It's so fast I can't even describe it, my 200+GB Aperture library opens in less than 3 seconds, don't even mention Photoshop or Word, it's mind blowing.

The install was truly a pain, and I work for an AASP so that's saying something but man it FLYS.

I've not been so impressed with the speed of a machine ever.

Totally recommended. I'd not go with the Apple SSD as it's only SATA2, so you're getting half the speed and it's about the same cost as the SATA3 offerings by OWC once you're all said and done.

I thought about upgrading the spinning disk to a SATA3 model, but didn't want to screw with all the fan control mess and I truly can't imagine it being much faster.

500MB+ Read and Write from the System&Apps SSD and over 12500 on 64Bit Geekbench - that's faster than my old 8 core 3.2ghz MacPro...

I'm happy. Now comes the suck of re-installing all of my Logic Pro plugins....can't wait to see how that performs.

It's comforting to hear another success story of a DIY SSD. I'm still working up the nerve to open up my imac. I'm assuming yours is a '11 model...? 21.5 or 27"? I am actually kind of waiting to score an Apple pressure wall and oem cables. Care to share the Apple part numbers for the cables you used....? Thanks!

 

[aliensporebomb]

Curious....

Sounds awesome. Do you run geekbench? What was your rating prior to the SSD and what is it after? Very curious on that.....

Sounds like a pain in the rear but worth the pain.

 

[Besk one]

It's comforting to hear another success story of a DIY SSD. I'm still working up the nerve to open up my imac. I'm assuming yours is a '11 model...? 21.5 or 27"? I am actually kind of waiting to score an Apple pressure wall and oem cables. Care to share the Apple part numbers for the cables you used....? Thanks!

Can't share the part numbers as an AASP I'm under NDA

No provider will be able to sell the outright anyways, I'd have your local shop do the work for you, they'll do it right with the right parts and warranty it.

It's a 2011 27" i7 and the geekbench was over 12500 after the SSD and 16GB, didn't do the benchmarks before as I was too impatient.

The AJA Disk Whack tests shows over 500mb+/sec read write on the boot drive, and around 87mb/sec on the 2TB!

 

[Warbitrary]

Sounds awesome. Do you run geekbench? What was your rating prior to the SSD and what is it after? Very curious on that…..

Geekbench is solely a memory and processor benchmark. It doesn't measure anything else.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Can't share the part numbers as an AASP I'm under NDA

No provider will be able to sell the outright anyways, I'd have your local shop do the work for you, they'll do it right with the right parts and warranty it.

It's a 2011 27" i7 and the geekbench was over 12500 after the SSD and 16GB, didn't do the benchmarks before as I was too impatient.

The AJA Disk Whack tests shows over 500mb+/sec read write on the boot drive, and around 87mb/sec on the 2TB!

OVER 12500! YOW! Now you're cooking with gas!

As an example, my old PowerMac G5 benched 2312 - an amazing amount of increase in performance for sure!