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iMac 2011 27" SD Card performance?
- Thread starter SKYNET-1
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I think you mean "SSD", instead of "SD card", which is something used for photography.
I'm not sure what speed the internal SATA bus is on the 2011. It might be able to use "most of the additional speed" an internal SSD will provide, but perhaps not all of it.
If the time has arrived when you REALLY "want a faster Mac" (than you get from a 9-year-old one), perhaps it's time to start shopping for a 2019, or perhaps a 2017 Apple-refurbished...
I'm not sure what speed the internal SATA bus is on the 2011. It might be able to use "most of the additional speed" an internal SSD will provide, but perhaps not all of it.
If the time has arrived when you REALLY "want a faster Mac" (than you get from a 9-year-old one), perhaps it's time to start shopping for a 2019, or perhaps a 2017 Apple-refurbished...
Open "about this mac", and "click on system report". Under Hardware, there should be an enry for Card Reader. And that should list the link speed and width.
Mine (late 2014 5k) is 2.5 GT/s, half the the theoretical speed of a SATA SSD. And then, there's the fact that SD Cards aren't designed for high speed random access.
(Moreover, SD Cards for some reason, are rated on read speed. My 80 MB/s SDcard writers at 15 MB/s, and reads at 80 MB/s. It's a Sandisk Pixtor U1 Class 10 card that I haven't gotten around to replacing with something better. Alas.)
The newer card readers can use faster cards, but-- they are designed for readers produced after my cameras, and after your imac.
Mine (late 2014 5k) is 2.5 GT/s, half the the theoretical speed of a SATA SSD. And then, there's the fact that SD Cards aren't designed for high speed random access.
(Moreover, SD Cards for some reason, are rated on read speed. My 80 MB/s SDcard writers at 15 MB/s, and reads at 80 MB/s. It's a Sandisk Pixtor U1 Class 10 card that I haven't gotten around to replacing with something better. Alas.)
The newer card readers can use faster cards, but-- they are designed for readers produced after my cameras, and after your imac.
The OP is referring to the SDXC card slot. On the Mid 2011 iMacs, it was located on the side of the iMac, which was nice (they are inconveniently located on the back on Late 2012+ iMacs and the iMac Pro), but also located dangerously close to the internal optical disk drive:
I was also curious about this, but have not got around to do any testing yet. I wanted to get a fast SD card big enough to run as a bootable drive just for testing, maybe one day. I am not sure about how they would do as a primary boot drive though.
According to Apple, the SDXC slots on the desktop Macs use the PCIe bus, so this could be pretty fast. Sadly, the Mac laptops use the USB bus @ USB 2 speeds.
The fast SD cards are going to be a lot more than a SATA SSD.
If you are looking for a cheaper option for fast external storage, I would suggest getting a cheap TB drive, like the LaCie Rugged with USB3.0 and TB, you can find the for cheap on eBay sometimes.
You can take out the HDD and put in your SATA SSD of choice.
This is most likely going to be the fastest external storage you can get for your Mid-2011, not counting TB RAID drives which can be very pricey.
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and SW RAIDs.
A search reveals this - that you only get USB 2 speeds:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sd-slot-bus-speed-for-imac-mid-2011-pcie-or-usb.1212901/?post=13186429#post-13186429
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/sd-slot-bus-speed-for-imac-mid-2011-pcie-or-usb.1212901/?post=13186429#post-13186429
SW raid is no option because i mostly use the better OS on the machine --> win10
SSDs already installed, n more then 2 SSDs r no option because next step is a BD drive... so i need another option(except a 4TB SSD where is wasted money with the snail speed Z68 chipset)
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No, the SD caed slot in iMacs 2011 n newer always has PCIe 1x speed, but just theoretical, because a SSD can be up to 580MB read/write but with the ****** Z68 chipset u never will reach 400, just copy u will reach 500+, because is SSD internal
SSDs already installed, n more then 2 SSDs r no option because next step is a BD drive... so i need another option(except a 4TB SSD where is wasted money with the snail speed Z68 chipset)
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No, the SD caed slot in iMacs 2011 n newer always has PCIe 1x speed, but just theoretical, because a SSD can be up to 580MB read/write but with the ****** Z68 chipset u never will reach 400, just copy u will reach 500+, because is SSD internal
That is interesting.
If you look at what the OP of that thread quoted from the Apple Support page from this link that redirects to an updated page:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3553#4
It just states that newer Macs use PCIe.
If you look at the webpage that the above link gets redirected to, it states:
Apple Support said:
It says that the notebooks are USB bus, and the desktops are PCIe bus, just like I stated in a prior post.
But, if people are reporting their Mid-2011 iMacs are USB bus, then maybe Apple updated that support page with wrong info.
I no longer have my Mid-2011 iMac, so I cannot check it. I can confirm that the Late 2012 iMac's SD reader uses the PCIe bus @ 2.5Gbps.
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According the the Apple support page above, the Windows booted on your iMac can read and write using the SD slot, but you cannot install the Windows OS on it. Although, there might be an unofficial way to do it.
I am not sure if that was what you were planning.
At least for the Mac OS, it can install on the SD drive.
Yikes!
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no, i want to use as data grave(games where i finished etc. --> move to the SD Card), win n osx will be on the main SSD...
yeah, same programms runs faster with win, better driver support(oh, wait, apple has no support for the 2011er machines anymore... sooo nice, not)
with a iphone u will have a great support, but with a mac, apple takes a sh*t on u.
yeah, same programms runs faster with win, better driver support(oh, wait, apple has no support for the 2011er machines anymore... sooo nice, not)
with a iphone u will have a great support, but with a mac, apple takes a sh*t on u.
I use both daily.
While I still think that MacOS is still a more intuitive, faster, and more stable OS than Windows 10, I will concede that the quality gap between the two operating systems (MacOS and Windows) has narrowed quite a bit with the launch of Windows 10.
Actually, this could probably be said about almost all Apple products, HW and SW, services, etc. that was released in the past 6-7 years when compared with the competition.
The once very wide gap is now starting to close.
i use cubase n photoshop on both Systems... both r lower CPU n memory usage with win10, same with surfing, safari uses much more memory then edge and is sooo damn slow...
the workflow i think is something personal Thing, i feel better with the win workflow.
n yep, thats true… i have a IP8 as work phone(privat a XZ1C, which i prefer in every way btw.)... after upgrade to 13.x Bluetooth was not working, then NFC not, when i switched between apps, the previous app restarted when open again, nice when u was writing something, just switch to another messenger back to the other n everything was gone… 5!! upgrades was needed since the last major update 13.x to fix all the crap… think apple is like every big company... too big = give a **** on customers, just sell because of the Name(best example: Intel --> security problems, payments to dell, hp n others so they not sell AMD etc.)
I'm going to hop on here and ask a related question. I have a Late 2015 iMac. I needs an external SD card reader than I can plug into the back USB port. Something that would have a decently long cable so it would hang in the air, and rest om my desk. I've added two flanking external monitors. And getting access to the built in reader on the back of the iMac is a bit frustration.