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ssd in 20" iMac?


jky999

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Has anyone done this? From what I've seen on the web, it's been done but in a very half-ass sorta way. It looks like you have to mount the 2.5" ssd into an adapter to make it fit into the original space, but then the hd connection cable isn't quite long enough (and not possible to move) so that the new drive enclosure is only mounted into the iMac with one screw.

 

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Icydock makes an incredibly easy to use 2.5 to 3.5 in hard drive converter for about $20. The converter opens like a clam shell and you slip the 2.5" drive inside. I'm using one in my Mac Pro to mount one of the intel SSD drives on the stock drive rails. The best thing about this particular configuration is that I can quickly swap 2.5" drives without having to unscrew the HD case from it's mounting rails! You can find them in stock on Newegg and Amazon.

 

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I like using an iMac for my regular work (a little music here and there), and changed to an SSD and it was surprisingly easy. just got a basic 3.5" bay adapter as mentioned above. popped it in and closed it up. was a little interesting lifting the glass off with suction cups to access the front panel screws. Just laid out the screws logically and the whole thing was done in < 30min, but I'm sure could be done in 15 mins (or 30-45 mins if slow careful and deliberate). I have had some strange behavior since I started using the SSD in my 24" iMac 2.0 silver iMac (1 or 2 generations ago), so just got a 27" and will swap the SSD to it to see how if it runs better.

 

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Thanks. I think I might give this a go. I've got a ssd on my work computer and it's a revelation.

 

Digital:  SonicTransporter I5 powered by Uptone JS-2,  Ghent Ethernet throughout, Ultra-Rendu's, Ghent DC cables, Curious and Ghent USB

Living Room:  Rethm Trishna, MicroZotl2, Auralic Vega, Rel E112 sub (High Fidelity ic's, DIY pc's and speaker wire from VH Audio)

Office:  Chord Hugo2, Feniks Essence, Rel 218, Noble Kaiser Encores, PM3

 

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Here's the one I'm currently using in my Mac Pro. It's cheap, works great, and gives you the ability to easily swap 2.5" drives without tools. I originally looked at the specialty mounting kits for the velociraptor drives. Those are large heatsinks that attach to the standard Mac Pro drive rails in order to dissipate heat from the motor in the drive. Since a SSD generates very little heat, a closed case like this works great.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KN8PSK/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

 

If you've got a Mac Pro and you're wanting to mount 1-4 SSDs in addition to the four standard hard drives, definately check out trans international's DX4. With it you could internally mount four 2TB 3.5" drives for storage and then have one or more SSD drives for the OS/boot partition. You've just got to love the expandability of the Mac Pro when it comes to these kinds of things!

 

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2799

 

-Patrick

 

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One last newbie question. So I need to transfer the OS to another drive first, install the new ssd drive, boot from the drive where the OS resides and then transfer the OS onto the ssd. Is carbon copy the software to do this?

 

Thanks. Joe

 

Digital:  SonicTransporter I5 powered by Uptone JS-2,  Ghent Ethernet throughout, Ultra-Rendu's, Ghent DC cables, Curious and Ghent USB

Living Room:  Rethm Trishna, MicroZotl2, Auralic Vega, Rel E112 sub (High Fidelity ic's, DIY pc's and speaker wire from VH Audio)

Office:  Chord Hugo2, Feniks Essence, Rel 218, Noble Kaiser Encores, PM3

 

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Cloning tutorial - mabe just use the MAC OSX Disk Utility....

http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/index.cfm?page=/manuals/mac/clon_data.html

 

This place has excellent tutorials and videos on replacing hard drives and cloning to the new hard drive. Their DIY kit is kind of handy as you can create an external drive out of your old drive. They've also started selling SSD drives.

 

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Thanks for the help everyone. I'll post my impressions once I'm done.

 

Digital:  SonicTransporter I5 powered by Uptone JS-2,  Ghent Ethernet throughout, Ultra-Rendu's, Ghent DC cables, Curious and Ghent USB

Living Room:  Rethm Trishna, MicroZotl2, Auralic Vega, Rel E112 sub (High Fidelity ic's, DIY pc's and speaker wire from VH Audio)

Office:  Chord Hugo2, Feniks Essence, Rel 218, Noble Kaiser Encores, PM3

 

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For cloning Mac drives, I've used Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombitch software through multiple versions over the last 4 years or so. It's easy to use and works great. Best of all, it's Donationware that's ad subsidized. This means you can use it for free and throw a few bucks the author's way if it did a great job for you.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Many thanks to everyone. Mission accomplished!!!! This was much easier than I expected. The Icy Dock enclosure for the ssd is the bomb. Thanks for the recommendation pcfixer. The thing mounts on the stock rails and is killer. With this sorta task I'm a complete newbie. One of the things that really helped was using the Universal Drive Adapter from Other World Computing. It allowed me to clone my hard-drive onto the ssd and boot from the ssd before ever taking anything apart. This was comforting because if things didn't work when I went to put the ssd into the pc permanently, I'd know it was something abt how I put things back together, rather than the drive itself. Apparently, the Mac won't boot if any of the various sensors aren't re-attached properly.

 

As far as the sound goes, if nothing else, it sounds MUCH better because I'm no longer hearing any fan noise. My iMac was pretty quiet before, but now that the fan noise is completely absent I realize how annoying it was.

 

Thanks for all the help. This is a great site.

 

Digital:  SonicTransporter I5 powered by Uptone JS-2,  Ghent Ethernet throughout, Ultra-Rendu's, Ghent DC cables, Curious and Ghent USB

Living Room:  Rethm Trishna, MicroZotl2, Auralic Vega, Rel E112 sub (High Fidelity ic's, DIY pc's and speaker wire from VH Audio)

Office:  Chord Hugo2, Feniks Essence, Rel 218, Noble Kaiser Encores, PM3

 

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I just used an Icy Dock to install an OCZ Vertex in my G5. Highly recommended.

 

I got mine at OWC, aka macsales.com

 

+1 for Mike Bombich and CCC as well. I'm a very satisfied customer, despite having inadvertently helped Mike find a MAJOR bug in his software, with near disastrous results.

 

Despite that his software is free, he bought a copy of Data Rescue to help me recover data that was impacted by the bug.

 

clay

 

 

 

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