Help me justify — upgrade from 2011 27” iMac

[redfirebird08]

I have the exact setup as you and it is getting very slow. Can you direct me to a link that shows how to install and boot from a Thunderbolt extenal drive? Thanks in advance

Look for Carbon Copy Cloner software and follow the steps in this video:

 

[tyche]

The slowest thing on my computer is when I launch apps. Mail takes a long time to launch. Photoshop takes about 10 minutes. So frustrating and essentially unworkable.

No program takes 10 mins to launch normally. I would be very concerned your HDD is near failing. So I would make sure you have a backup of all your personal files. Do this first.

The next thing would be to look into moving to an external Thunderbolt drive either SSD or not depending on how much space you need. This is your least expensive option to continue using this imac.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

If this is in fact a 2010 model, not quite so fast as it has no Thunderbolt ports and only USB2.

 

[redfirebird08]

If this is in fact a 2010 model, not quite so fast as it has no Thunderbolt ports and only USB2.

It has FireWire 800, but that is still a far cry from Thunderbolt at 10-40 gigabits or USB 3 at 5-10 gigabits.

 

[Regime2008]

let's not exaggerate here...

Not an exaggeration... Power supplies aren't rated to last forever on computers. I know too many who have had PS or MB failures on their Macs.

 

[tallandy]

I have the exact setup as you and it is getting very slow. Can you direct me to a link that shows how to install and boot from a Thunderbolt extenal drive? Thanks in advance

I didn't follow a guide as such, I pretty much did the following:

1. Plugged in the Lacie SSD into a thunderbolt socket on the back
2. Made a bootable HighSierra USB stick using DiskMakerX http://diskmakerx.com/
3. Rebooted the MAC held the option key and chose the High Sierra installer off the USB
4. Installed High Sierra onto the SSD drive
5. In 'System Preferences' there is an option called 'Startup Disk' choose the SSD as the disk to boot from

Good luck

 

[tn-xyz]

Not an exaggeration... Power supplies aren't rated to last forever on computers. I know too many who have had PS or MB failures on their Macs.

nothing lasts forever. any component on any system, no matter its age, could go out any minute.
there are more than enough users still rocking their 2006-2011 macs without hardware failure.

 

[tyche]

I read the title which is 2011 and has thunderbolt. If this is in fact a 2010 you're stuck with usb2. FireWire 800 might be hard to find a drive these days. Or taking it apart and installing the ssd internally.

 

[MadDane]

My 2009 iMac is still working perfectly fine. Over the years both the original hard drive and the SuperDrive died, so I have replaced both with a spinning hard drive and an SSD, respectively, and made it into a Fusion Drive. It has been going this way for about 4,5 years by now.

Based on the slowness of your machine, it sounds like a dying hard drive. Especially since you says it takes around 10 minutes to open Photoshop. For fun I just timed opening Photoshop on my machine. It takes 5 seconds to open the program (without opening any documents).

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I read the title which is 2011 and has thunderbolt. If this is in fact a 2010 you're stuck with usb2. FireWire 800 might be hard to find a drive these days. Or taking it apart and installing the ssd internally.

Yeah you can just stick an ssd into the dvd SATA slot on those old iMacs for an instant speed and space upgrade, they are also held together with magnets making working on them a little easier.

 

[rangers12]

Yup I didn't want to take my iMac 2011 to pieces so plugged in a Lacie 250GB Thunderbolt SSD and also upgraded the RAM to 16GB. Absolutely transformed the machine runs incredibly well now.

I'll consider changing to a new iMac when it actually physically dies

I added an external ssd to my late 2012 Imac- completely different machine.

 

[kschendel]

Assuming it really is a 2010, I think it's worth trying an SSD upgrade, but don't throw money at an expensive (OWC / Samsung) SSD. Buy an el cheapo SATA SSD: Mushkin, Adata, Toshiba, a few others are often available for quite a bit less than the Samsung EVO's. It's not too hard to get into the older iMacs, you just need to work carefully and without interruption.

Replacing the original HDD on our early 2009 iMac with a Mushkin SSD made a significant difference, and I expect we'll keep it for another year or so before replacing it. Before the SSD upgrade, it was getting really annoying.