My late 2014 iMac is approaching 6 years old and I am considering if it is worth the money to open up the iMac and upgrade the Fusion to an SSD or just add an external SSD to speed things up. I see slowdowns when using apps such as iMovie (loading library) and Photos (again loading library) and wondering if replacing the Fusion with SSD is worth it for a computer that is this old? I will not be buying another Intel iMac and if anything will wait for Apple Silicon in the the next iMac or get a MacBook pro when they switch from Intel.
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iMac 27" Retina - Replace Fusion or add external SSD?
- Thread starter icemantx
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I would say no, it's not worth it. The 2014 version won't let you get full speed from a internal blade anyway beacuse of the limited PCIe 2.0 x2 connection interface. Not sure what the max speed is, around 750 MB/s? Compare to an external USB 3.0 SSD which reaches 500-550 MB/s.
An external USB 3.0 SSD is perfectly fine.
An external USB 3.0 SSD is perfectly fine.
Remove the spinning drive with a 2.5 inch ssd. I've done it several times (using ifixits tools and guide) and with just a little care it's not hard at all.
And don't listen to @petsk . The read/write speed of an ssd is only a small part of what really makes an ssd feel so much faster, instead it's the virtually instant access times. Even a sata ssd will feel transformationally faster. I've upgraded a couple friends fusion drives by replacing the spinning drive with a 2.5 inch ssd and they both were completely stunned by the difference.
And don't listen to @petsk . The read/write speed of an ssd is only a small part of what really makes an ssd feel so much faster, instead it's the virtually instant access times. Even a sata ssd will feel transformationally faster. I've upgraded a couple friends fusion drives by replacing the spinning drive with a 2.5 inch ssd and they both were completely stunned by the difference.
@Nicole1980 why on earth would you go through the trouble of opening an iMac to replace the drive on the SATA connection? SATA III basically has the same bandwidth as USB 3.0. No offence but your advice is plain stupid.
Replacing the spinning drive with a SSD makes for the cleaner upgrade with no external devices needed. Unless you’re comfortable with opening up the iMac the external is the path of least resistance. What size fusion do you have? The 1tb is marginally faster than just a spinning drive. The larger SSD in the 2 & 3Tb versions gives much better performance.
Incorrect. SATA is a good bit faster than usb 3.0
With usb 3 the Mac takes about 40 seconds to boot compared to 18 with an internal SATA sad.
I have experience with the difference an internal ssd makes and obviously you don’t. So for you to say I’m wrong is stupid.
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Right now I have a 3TB Fusion and would be getting a 2TB SSD (Crucial or Samsung) to replace the HDD. Would not replace the Blade.
in the Same Boat... I added a Ext SSD to my wives 21.5 Imac ... Made a BIG diff in speed and work the Imac up big time.. Now this is just a band aid until the NEW 21.5 New Style Imacs come out... with the apple silicone.
Sorry to burst that bubble, but the difference between SATA III and USB 3.0 is not as big as you might think:
SATA III = 6 Gbps
USB 3.0 = 5 Gbps
That's not because USB 3.0 is inherently slower than SATA III. That's because of a bug introduced with I believe Mojave. It caused Macs to just sit and do nothing for roughly 25-30 seconds before booting off an external USB drive. However, that bug has been fixed a long time ago, therefore you're looking at maybe 20 seconds to boot off an external USB 3.0 drive versus 18 seconds to boot off an internal SATA drive.
I agree with @petsk Going through all that hassle to replace a SATA III HDD with a SATA III SSD is not worth it. The 2015, 2017, and 2019 iMacs are different since you can install a blazingly fast Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD reaching up to 2,500 MB/s compared to 500 MB/s USB 3.1 (2015) or up to 1,000 MB/s USB 3.2 Gen 1 (2017 & 2019) but even then an external USB 3.2 Gen 1 NVMe SSD can be more than fast enough.
Sorry to burst YOUR bubble, but theoretical too speeds often dont perform like that in the real world. This from Tested.com
"USB 3.0 SuperSpeed, has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5Gbps, or 625MB/s, but much of that is overhead. It's not clear how much, but the fastest USB 3.0 attached SSDs seem to top out near300MB/s,"
meanwhile:
"6Gbps SATA is more than twice as good as 3Gbps SATA. Right now top-tier consumer SSDs can hit 515MB/s in sequential reads. The Samsung 840 EVO also gets around 515MB/s writing directly to its SLC cache, which means that if 515MB/s isn't the absolute real-world limit for 6Gbps SATA, it's awfully close."
300 MB/s? Once again you are mistaken. That may have been true back in 2013, when the two reviews you are quoting and referring to were first published, but that was more than seven years ago! Modern USB 3.0 SSDs tend to top out at around 500 MB/s both read and write whereas SATA III drives usually peak out at around 550 MB/s.
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Ive had a chance to compare the two options. Clearly you havent. I get that some people are too wimpy to do the internal drive upgrade. So yea, in that case having crap hanging off the back of your imac is the best option.
lets not even get into the wisdom of getting rid of an internal spinning drive that is much more subject to failure
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2013 iMac USB attached 1TB Samsung T5
And yes we boot and run from this external USB SSD, which is infinity faster than the busted 1TB internal spinner. The T5 sits nicely between the stand and screen on a Kleenex box which also keeps the screen roughly vertical since the stand hinge is also broken
FWIW I’ve been doing brain surgery on Macs since our first Mac XL (AKA Lisa). Opening up this aging iMac just isn’t worth the risk. We'll replace the 2013 iMac with a 2020 iMac after the dust settles -- say Black Friday.
GetRealBro
And yes we boot and run from this external USB SSD, which is infinity faster than the busted 1TB internal spinner. The T5 sits nicely between the stand and screen on a Kleenex box which also keeps the screen roughly vertical since the stand hinge is also broken
FWIW I’ve been doing brain surgery on Macs since our first Mac XL (AKA Lisa). Opening up this aging iMac just isn’t worth the risk. We'll replace the 2013 iMac with a 2020 iMac after the dust settles -- say Black Friday.
GetRealBro
We've been talking about internal sata ssd replacing the spinning drive portion of a fusion drive vs external usb 3 ssd - so get with the program.2013 iMac USB attached 1TB Samsung T5
View attachment 950109
And yes we boot and run from this external USB SSD, which is infinity faster than the busted 1TB internal spinner. The T5 sits nicely between the stand and screen on a Kleenex box which also keeps the screen roughly vertical since the stand hinge is also broken
FWIW I’ve been doing brain surgery on Macs since our first Mac XL (AKA Lisa). Opening up this aging iMac just isn’t worth the risk. We'll replace the 2013 iMac with a 2020 iMac after the dust settles -- say Black Friday.
GetRealBro
Nothing worse than someone who pipes on an argument who doesnt grasp the essense of the disagreement.
Either way, go crazy on your synthetic speed tests.
They dont relate to real world 'feel'.
Also you have crap hanging off the back of your imac, and you've left a spinning hard drive inside your imac that is much more subject to failure.
So to sum up, you have imaginary speed that is close to an internal sata ssd, but with two major drawbacks.
good luck with that.
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So your contribution was that an external ssd is faster than an internal spinner? Thank god you came along and gave us that insight.
It's not just about transfer speeds, latency on usb is about 10x SATA3, which depending on what you do, can be a big deal, or not. It will come down to your appetite for opening the iMac up. If you are confident in doing that, SATA will give you better results. If not, the external SSD will still be much better than a spinning drive.