Hi everyone, my HDD started to die (I had eveything backed up BTW) and after much lurking and reading other posts about installing SSDs in iMacs I decided to have a go.
I just thought I'd share my success to help anyone else contemplating it themselves.
I fitted a Kingston V300 240Gb SSD in my iMac 21.5" (late 2009).
The installation was very easy. I'm quite confident at taking stuff to bits and putting them back together but I'm by no means any kind of expert at this. My only worry was the HDD temperature sensor.
After I'd removed the old HDD and fitted the SSD in it's place, I unplugged the heat sensor cable from the logic(?) board and cut the two wires at about an inch from the connector, bared the wires about 4mm and twisted them together, then protected the bare wire with a small piece of electrical tape.
I put the whole thing back together and did a fresh install of Yosemite. All is working fine and seems to be very fast. It's given the old iMac a new lease of life.
The HDD fan seems to run at a low level (hardly audible). I haven't bothered with any kind of fan control app as I have a temperature monitoring app and after activating the SMART temperature monitor (the SSD's own built in temp monitor) it appears to stay around 26 - 30 deg. I plan to deactivate the SMART temperature monitoring as I'm told it can slow the drive down.
I have however activated TRIM using an app (at the expense of loosing kext signing) which I don't really understand, but after spending £80 on a 240Gb SSD I want it to perform as well as possible.
I have external HDDs for my backups and iTunes library (also backed up) so the limited storage size suits me fine.
I hope this is useful to anyone contemplating doing the same. I found it very easy although I'm aware that there are differences if you have a newer iMac when it comes to the temp sensor.
Tip for removing the glass, I couldn't get hold of the proper suction cups (dent puller type) so I bought two of the shower puff/buffer things from the supermarket that had cheap small suckers on them. They worked perfectly. I also used a vacuum cleaner to suck up most of the thick buildup of dust while I was in there (not necessarily recommended, proceed with extreme caution), but mine looked pretty bad as my house is currently a full on building site.
I just thought I'd share my success to help anyone else contemplating it themselves.
I fitted a Kingston V300 240Gb SSD in my iMac 21.5" (late 2009).
The installation was very easy. I'm quite confident at taking stuff to bits and putting them back together but I'm by no means any kind of expert at this. My only worry was the HDD temperature sensor.
After I'd removed the old HDD and fitted the SSD in it's place, I unplugged the heat sensor cable from the logic(?) board and cut the two wires at about an inch from the connector, bared the wires about 4mm and twisted them together, then protected the bare wire with a small piece of electrical tape.
I put the whole thing back together and did a fresh install of Yosemite. All is working fine and seems to be very fast. It's given the old iMac a new lease of life.
The HDD fan seems to run at a low level (hardly audible). I haven't bothered with any kind of fan control app as I have a temperature monitoring app and after activating the SMART temperature monitor (the SSD's own built in temp monitor) it appears to stay around 26 - 30 deg. I plan to deactivate the SMART temperature monitoring as I'm told it can slow the drive down.
I have however activated TRIM using an app (at the expense of loosing kext signing) which I don't really understand, but after spending £80 on a 240Gb SSD I want it to perform as well as possible.
I have external HDDs for my backups and iTunes library (also backed up) so the limited storage size suits me fine.
I hope this is useful to anyone contemplating doing the same. I found it very easy although I'm aware that there are differences if you have a newer iMac when it comes to the temp sensor.
Tip for removing the glass, I couldn't get hold of the proper suction cups (dent puller type) so I bought two of the shower puff/buffer things from the supermarket that had cheap small suckers on them. They worked perfectly. I also used a vacuum cleaner to suck up most of the thick buildup of dust while I was in there (not necessarily recommended, proceed with extreme caution), but mine looked pretty bad as my house is currently a full on building site.