Late 2009 imac 27" question + firewire HD

[Sean-G]

Hey all

i love my imac 2009 it seems as though the hard drive might be flaking a little bit, it'll freeze up. I'm running 12 gb ram with a 1 tb HD

my main thing is my mp3 collection which is close to 400 gb, im backing it up as we speak, but was thinking of running a firewire 800 external to run my mp3s and movies, how fast is this really compared to USB 2.0

Also has anyone installed an SSD drive in a 2009 imac , is it do able?

i love this mac its been my workhorse for almost 3 years and it actually still runs pretty smoothly

sorry if these are dumb questions btw

 

[rkaufmann87]

Hey all

i love my imac 2009 it seems as though the hard drive might be flaking a little bit, it'll freeze up. I'm running 12 gb ram with a 1 tb HD

my main thing is my mp3 collection which is close to 400 gb, im backing it up as we speak, but was thinking of running a firewire 800 external to run my mp3s and movies, how fast is this really compared to USB 2.0

Also has anyone installed an SSD drive in a 2009 imac , is it do able?

i love this mac its been my workhorse for almost 3 years and it actually still runs pretty smoothly

sorry if these are dumb questions btw

I can't answer on the SSD but moving your music library to an external Firewire 800 drive is probably overkill. You don't need speed for that, a FW800 interface is orders of magnitude faster than USB 2 but with music you won't see any benefit unless you're composing music. For playing music save your money and stick with a USB EHD, just get a good quality one such as an OWC product. IMHO stay away from Western Digital (WD) drives, while they are plentiful and inexpensive their track record isn't that great. Personally I use Lacie Quadra D2's for my EHD's and yes I have my music and photo libraries on them connected via FW800 but as I mentioned for music it's overkill.

 

[phoenixsan]

I think....

FireWire 800 will be more speedier, because it has a better nominal speed (786.5 Mbps, roughly 57.36 Mb/s effective) against 480 Mb/s (up to 35 MB/s effective). About the SSD update, you have to look, because can be done in other models.