Upgrade 24 Inch iMac to SSD - Is it worth it?

I

icemantx

macrumors 6502a
I have been toying around with status quo on my early 2.93GHz C2D iMac with a 1 TB HD or possibly upgrading the hard drive to SSD. Does anyone here have experience with the upgrade of the internal HD on the 24 inch iMac to an SSD? Does it really make that much of a difference? I have seen on Newegg OCZ has a 240gb 3.5 inch enclosed SSD for $339 so no adapter kit is needed.

I would need to offload all of my video media to an external drive and maybe my photos as well. Being that most of my slowness seems to be saving photos in iPhoto or Aperture as well as rendering in iMovie, will an SSD help? Also, if I put all of my media (photos included) on a USB 2.0 external drive, will that reduce performance of iTunes, iPhoto or Aperture?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Jeff
 
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I recently upgraded my 2011 iMac with an OCZ 120gig SSD to run along side with my factory 2tb HDD. I was in your position not too long ago and was torn between getting the SSD or just keep using my HDD. Getting a SSD made everything more snappy even though my iMac is fairly new and was snappy to begin with. I use Aperture, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes and they all open instantly.

I keep all my media files on my HDD while all apps are loaded on the SSD. I believe having your media loaded from your external HD through USB might not be as fast.

I apologize for not having any numbers or data to help out with your decision but if you're planning on upgrading, ram and SSD is something I would recommend. Good luck!
 
I have a very recent iMac with SSD + HDD.

Aperture is my main app. It loves the SSD.

I have the system (including paging of course), apps, some recently created documents and my Aperture Library on SSD. My older Masters are Referenced on the HDD since they won't fit on the SSD. Recent images have Managed Masters, so they are SSD-resident.

The system is very snappy.

I have 12GBs of RAM, so Page Outs are generally rare, but when they happen, the SSD makes the impact pretty much disappear.

Over in the Apple Discussions forums (Aperture Community) you will find posts from many who recommend SSD for Aperture.

PS the benefit is not so great for video files since they are large and unless they are fragmented on your HDD, the HDD is very fast at reading this sequential data. Just make sure you don't overfill your HDD at any time. Nothing over 80% works for me.
 
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Thanks for the replies...

I am still on the fence as to whether or not it is wise to invest $300-400 in an iMac that is approaching 3 yrs old which likely equals 40% of the current value if I were to sell it. That said, it would cost me upwards of $2k or more to have an iMac 27" with SSD installed so much more than the cost of a drive from say OCZ.

Sounds like the overall speed of opening applications would improve nicely, but if I put my photos and videos on an external USB 2.0 Drive then I may not see too great of a benefit.

Decisions Decisions...
 
nghix123 said:
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I recently upgraded my 2011 iMac with an OCZ 120gig SSD to run along side with my factory 2tb HDD. I was in your position not too long ago and was torn between getting the SSD or just keep using my HDD. Getting a SSD made everything more snappy even though my iMac is fairly new and was snappy to begin with. I use Aperture, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes and they all open instantly.
Click to expand...

I also have a Vertex 3 120GB SSD in my iMac (as the boot disk with OS and Apps), and was wondering whether you have the same issue as me:

Whenever I want to delete something from the Apps folder or the SSD itself, I get a message that the item is gonna be deleted "immediately". What about you? Permissions issue or a feature of the non-trimmed SSD?
 
icemantx said:
Thanks for the replies...

I am still on the fence as to whether or not it is wise to invest $300-400 in an iMac that is approaching 3 yrs old which likely equals 40% of the current value if I were to sell it. ......

Decisions Decisions...
Click to expand...

I wouldn't ponder over this bit too much. Remember you can always remove your SSD if you decide to get a new machine later. I don't have any 24"/SSD experience but I can say the SSD upgrade was very noticeable in my 2011 i7 machine. I was skeptical at first as my machine without the SSD was by far the fastest computer I have ever owned. The SSD took snappiness to the next level for me. If your machine is feeling slow to you I imagine the difference in performance will be even more of a benefit.
 
BRLawyer said:
I also have a Vertex 3 120GB SSD in my iMac (as the boot disk with OS and Apps), and was wondering whether you have the same issue as me:

Whenever I want to delete something from the Apps folder or the SSD itself, I get a message that the item is gonna be deleted "immediately". What about you? Permissions issue or a feature of the non-trimmed SSD?
Click to expand...

I did a test by deleting a file from my app folder and I'm not getting the same message. The file just goes straight into the trash-bin like it's suppose to. No settings were changed after a clean install from the OS X SL and upgraded to Lion.
 
Definitely worth it in my case. 2008 iMac 24" 2.8GHz. I replaced the 320GB drive with an Agility 3 120GB and it is a whole new experience. Everything opens almost instantly. Night and day. I keep most of my files on my Mac Pro and share over the network so I don't need a lot of space on my boot drive. So far I have used 26GB with Lion, iLife, iWork, and a few games.

I am also ordering a caddy to replace my DVD with a 500GB SATA drive and will use that for local storage of media files and as a bootcamp partition.
 
I have a 2008 iMac 3.0Ghz and I wondered the same thing about 3 months ago. I tried a 256Gb SSD and decided it was not worth it, and returned it.

My main reason was thus:

1. I hardly ever reboot my mac. In 3 1/2 years I think I've turned it off about 10 times. 8 of those to diagnose a stuck DVD!

2. My main usage is Internet, Mail, MS Office, Parallels, DVD Encoding and Video creation. None of these are very HD intensive, just use lots of space.

I put in a 2TB Raptor 7200 HDD and it flies. Even the dreaded MS Office only takes 2 bounces to start ! Normal operation... no difference to me whatsoever. Now, if I could upgrade the video card, that WOULD make a difference.
 
benchmarks state otherwise: http://barefeats.com/aper313.html

DOES HARD DISK TYPE and/or SPEED MATTER?
We tested the Mac Pro by booting from an HDD, importing from an HDD to an HDD. Then we exported from an HDD to an HDD. Then we tested by booting from an SSD, importing from an SSD to an SSD. Then we exported from an SSD to an SSD. The times were the same. So in these particular tests, storage speed is not a factor.
 
Badger^2 said:
benchmarks state otherwise: http://barefeats.com/aper313.html

DOES HARD DISK TYPE and/or SPEED MATTER?
We tested the Mac Pro by booting from an HDD, importing from an HDD to an HDD. Then we exported from an HDD to an HDD. Then we tested by booting from an SSD, importing from an SSD to an SSD. Then we exported from an SSD to an SSD. The times were the same. So in these particular tests, storage speed is not a factor.
Click to expand...

The key words in this whole paragraph are "in these particular tests" which is a test of Aperture. This means that you do not take the results of one test and broad brush apply it to make the statement that SSD's are not faster than HDD.
 
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