Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Late 2006 24” iMac SSD in Optical Bay

L

lastmile

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 10, 2008
118
7
Looking for a PATA to SATA adapter that I can use to replace my Late-2006 24” iMac’s optical drive with a SSD.

I replaced the hard drive with an SSD a few years ago. I’d seen optical bay mounts (look like a laptop optical drive but have a cut out to mount a 2.5” drive) on OWC but they did not sell one compatible with my iMac. I’m looking again now because I want to keep the SSD but add a larger drive for storage.
 
Thanks! I love putting SSDs in my old Macs. I hope the PATA interface doesn’t degrade performance too much compared to the SATA port I have it on now. I guess access time is most important for responsiveness so that should really change unless the bridge hurts it.
 
lastmile said:
Thanks! I love putting SSDs in my old Macs. I hope the PATA interface doesn’t degrade performance too much compared to the SATA port I have it on now. I guess access time is most important for responsiveness so that should really change unless the bridge hurts it.
Click to expand...
There will be a slight degradation but performance will be much improved on a mechanical HDD. There are other options too. If you haven't got the SSD yet consider a Seagate SSHD Solid State Hybrid Drive which are are available in 3.5" format so it would be just a case of cloning and swapping out the HDD Drive. The advantage of SSHD is they offer an improvement in performance and greater capacity at a lower cost. Also the interface is SATA so there will be less degradation
https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/solutions/solid-state-hybrid/
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+24-Inch+EMC+2111+Hard+Drive+Replacement/5211
 
Last edited:
I’ve had an older 256GB Crucial SSD in the iMac for about a year. I got the iMac used and it’s in great shape. It sucks thst it’s stuck on Snow Leopard (even though I really like that version of OS X) now that new browsers are not supported.

I’m thinking about building a PC (or expanding my current one) to do multiple Blu-ray/DVD rips at once. I might leave the original rips on the PC and move Handbrake compressed versions over to the iMac. At least I’d have the compressed file even if I lost a drive holding the original rips. Based on price/GB I think the iMac will get a 4 TB WD Red drive.
 
lastmile said:
I’ve had an older 256GB Crucial SSD in the iMac for about a year. I got the iMac used and it’s in great shape. It sucks thst it’s stuck on Snow Leopard (even though I really like that version of OS X) now that new browsers are not supported.

I’m thinking about building a PC (or expanding my current one) to do multiple Blu-ray/DVD rips at once. I might leave the original rips on the PC and move Handbrake compressed versions over to the iMac. At least I’d have the compressed file even if I lost a drive holding the original rips. Based on price/GB I think the iMac will get a 4 TB WD Red drive.
Click to expand...
You should be able to run Lion but that would be gaining nothing as it is just as unsupported as Snow Leopard. Make sure you use Firefox 45.9 ESR as your web browser. The upside is you can run Windows 7 on Bootcamp which at this time is still receiving substantial support
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-2-duo-2.16-24-inch-specs.html
 
I think I'd only been using Safari and Chrome. I'll try Firefox.

I may eventually set it up to triple boot OS X, Windows 7, and some version of Linux.

I've got (too many) other Macs and PCs, but not that many monitors or lots of space. I've owned several used acrylic and aluminum 23" Cinema Displays and I wish the one's I'd gotten had screens as good as this iMac.

The iMac should do a good job as a file server/back up drive and for use with things like MS Office. I'd also been using it with whichever version of Acrobat Pro came with CS3 since I refuse to buy a new version.

Graphics and CPU upgrades don't seem worth the expense.

I am curious about what I might use the Airport mini-PCIe slot for an started a separate thread on that.
 
Resurrecting this thread because I'm finally getting back to this project. I actually picked up a second 24" 2006 iMac with upgraded graphics and a CPU to take it up to 2.33 GHz.

I'd gotten the first iMac (2.16 GHz) fitted with a 4 TB drive in place of the 256 GB SSD that had replaced the original hard drive and bought a PATA-to-SATA optical bay adapter for the SSD. I didn't have any fan issues with I pulled the original spinning hard drive and replaced it with the SSD and left the optical drive in place. As soon as I reassembled the iMac with the 4TB drive and SSD in the optical bay I had fans running at full speed.

Am I possibly missing a temperature sensor that went to the optical bay or did switching to a different spinning hard drive cause a temperature sensor problem that the SSD avoided?

I can disassemble again and take some pictures if that would help.

Everything will move to the 2.33 GHz version but I'd like to get this sorted out so I only have to open that iMac once.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back