Fusion or SSD only for early 2009 imac?

[icemantx]

Back in Feb this year I swapped out the Optical drive in my 2009 24" imac for an SSD. I then created a DIY fusion with the 2TB drive in the HDD bay.

Performance did improve, but not as much for iPhoto as I would have hoped. My iPhoto library is about 190GB with 49k photos. It is a little sluggish to open and close as well as editing photos. Some of the speed sluggishness must be attributable to the Core2Duo so that I can't do anything about.

However, with both Samsung and Crucial with 1TB SSD drive at $659 and $599, it got me thinking. Would having a 960GB SSD plus the 2TB in the HDD bay improve things? I could manually manage what goes where and have my iphoto library on the SSD along with all of my apps with room for whatever else like iMovie files. My imac is limited to SATA II.

By the way, Black Magic tests get me roughly 170 Write/240 Read. Granted that is a little skewed being the test likely only runs against the SSD.

Thoughts?

Jeff

 

[Intell]

That iMac, like all Intell iMacs, has a socketed CPU that can be upgraded. Have you tried looking at Activity Monitor when you open and do things in iPhoto to see if the CPU is maxed out?

 

[benwiggy]

A 190Gb iPhoto library is obviously going to affect a 128Gb SSD in a fusion drive. Or even a 250 Gb SSd.

If you made a Fusion drive from the 960Gb SSD and 2Tb HDD, then you would have the best of both worlds.

A Fusion drive splits data within the same folder across different drives, if necessary, thus being much more efficient, and saving time/management.

 

[icemantx]

That iMac, like all Intell iMacs, has a socketed CPU that can be upgraded. Have you tried looking at Activity Monitor when you open and do things in iPhoto to see if the CPU is maxed out?

Typically iPhoto consumes anywhere from 120%-175%. I have 8GB RAM by the way and a 2.93GHz C2D. I would think a processor upgrade would only take me to another C2D with a slight bump at a high cost?

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A 190Gb iPhoto library is obviously going to affect a 128Gb SSD in a fusion drive. Or even a 250 Gb SSd.

If you made a Fusion drive from the 960Gb SSD and 2Tb HDD, then you would have the best of both worlds.

A Fusion drive splits data within the same folder across different drives, if necessary, thus being much more efficient, and saving time/management.

I have a 256 Crucial M4 in there now and for sure it cannot hold my entire library. I could create a new fusion with either the Crucial or Samsung 960GB drives or even a Samsung 750GB. But I wonder if that would be better than manually managing data?

 

[Intell]

You're right about the CPU being a limiting factor and how upgrading it won't provide much gain for the cost.