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gavroche

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 25, 2007
1,470
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Left Coast
So I finally pulled the trigger and got an SSD drive for my iMac (mid 2010, 27", 2.8Ghz Core i5 w/8GB Ram). I Left the existing 1TB HDD in place, to use as storage. Installed a new Crucial 512GB (I think they just call it a 500GB) SSD in place of the optical drive, which I never use anyway.

After installing it and powering up, everything worked as expected. It gave me an alert that it could not recognize the new SSD, but gave me option of formatting, which I did. I then downloaded the High Sierra full installer, and performed a clean install on the new drive... and switched the startup disk to this new installation.

I can unquestionably say that performance is outstandingly better now. Many apps, especially my iPhoto library, aren't a real pain in the arse to use any more. Much much more responsive.

But in the day or two after, several times upon waking the computer from sleep (by pressing key on keyboard or hitting mouse button)... it didn't respond right away... and twice it told me that the computer had rebooted do to a sleep/wake fault error. I was about to start googling what to do, when after that point it stopped having any issue. I've now gone three or four days and not had this happen again.... so I'm thinking that whatever caused that has hopefully cleared up.

I opted to leave my iTunes file on the HDD, and moved the iPhoto file to the new SSD. I don't access the iTunes content as much, and all of the video stuff takes up so much space.

At this point, I'm not thinking a RAM upgrade is necessary, and I'm glad I went with the SSD upgrade first. Definitely seems like it was the weak link.
 
So I finally pulled the trigger and got an SSD drive for my iMac (mid 2010, 27", 2.8Ghz Core i5 w/8GB Ram). I Left the existing 1TB HDD in place, to use as storage. Installed a new Crucial 512GB (I think they just call it a 500GB) SSD in place of the optical drive, which I never use anyway.

After installing it and powering up, everything worked as expected. It gave me an alert that it could not recognize the new SSD, but gave me option of formatting, which I did. I then downloaded the High Sierra full installer, and performed a clean install on the new drive... and switched the startup disk to this new installation.

I can unquestionably say that performance is outstandingly better now. Many apps, especially my iPhoto library, aren't a real pain in the arse to use any more. Much much more responsive.

But in the day or two after, several times upon waking the computer from sleep (by pressing key on keyboard or hitting mouse button)... it didn't respond right away... and twice it told me that the computer had rebooted do to a sleep/wake fault error. I was about to start googling what to do, when after that point it stopped having any issue. I've now gone three or four days and not had this happen again.... so I'm thinking that whatever caused that has hopefully cleared up.

I opted to leave my iTunes file on the HDD, and moved the iPhoto file to the new SSD. I don't access the iTunes content as much, and all of the video stuff takes up so much space.

At this point, I'm not thinking a RAM upgrade is necessary, and I'm glad I went with the SSD upgrade first. Definitely seems like it was the weak link.
If you have not done so already, look up the command sudo trimforce enable
 
If you have not done so already, look up the command sudo trimforce enable

Thanks for the heads up. I just ran Terminal, and entered the command. It prompted password, and permission to proceed and reboot. After reboot, I checked to verify that Trim was indeed enabled (System Info... SATA... Chipset tab for the drive..). So should be good to go.

Got a problem, however. Two original folders that were on the old HD won't delete from the trash. They are named Applications and Utilities. Once I had the new SSD up and operational as the boot drive, I deleted a lot of the old HD stuff. But those two folders won't delete. They are empty of contents. I've tried rebooting in Safe Mode, and Recover Mode (and ran First Aid on the HD). Nothing allows me to delete those two folders.
I'm guessing it was some form of permission issue/or related to them being from original startup disk. If I try dragging them out of the trash.... it just makes a copy on the desktop. If I then try to redrag those copies back in to the trash, it asks for Admin password to delete. What to do!?
 
At this point, I'm not thinking a RAM upgrade is necessary, and I'm glad I went with the SSD upgrade first. Definitely seems like it was the weak link.

RAM upgrades become less necessary when you have an SSD. the SSD is so fast that using virtual memory isnt nearly as much of a performance hit as it used to be on traditional spinner drives.
 
RAM upgrades become less necessary when you have an SSD. the SSD is so fast that using virtual memory isnt nearly as much of a performance hit as it used to be on traditional spinner drives.

Damn, I upgrade my machine and made it nice and snappy... then find out I can't put the newest OS on it. And I looked at prices for new machines, and thought WTF!?
 
A mid 2010 27" iMac will handle the current operating system, High Sierra, and as it was designed for SSDs, it will run very well. OS X.14 Mojave will not run on anything earlier than 2012 early reports indicate.

Remember backup first.
 
i wonder what BS qualification Apple will use to enforce that arbitrary limitation.... only retina display macs perhaps? :rolleyes::D:cool:

It'll run on MacBook airs so that blows that theory out of the water.

Early reports suggest its to do with metal 2 implementation.
 
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It'll run on MacBook airs so that blows that theory out of the water.

Early reports suggest its to do with metal 2 implementation.

Yeah after I posted that I looked it up and yes it's a Metal 2 thing. Will be interesting to see how they handle it with the Mac Pro 5,1. The base graphics cards that shipped with won't handle it but any Nvidia 6xx/7xx card upgrade puts it within spec. Same with AMD.
 
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