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iMac 27-inch SSD Install (Out with the Superdrive, in with the SSD)

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:56:59 +0000

Being in that the optical drive in the iMac uses a full speed SATA connection (albeit using a ’slimline’ SATA connector), and the fact that I rarely use optical media – I decided to swap out the Superdrive with a 128GB SSD drive.

Not large enough to use for all of the data on the iMac, but more than enough for the OS, all of my apps, and even a couple VMWare fusion images I use on a regular basis. Meanwhile the 1TB 3.5 drive handles all the rest of the junk (download files, iTunes library, etc.)

The results – After cloning my boot drive (SuperDuper), and restarting – the boot time was cut down to less than 1/4 of what it was with the 1TB drive. Launch times on big/slow apps (Eclipse, DBvisualizer, MS Word,etc.) is incredible.

Notes: The slimline 2.5 Caddy was purchased from NewmodeUS.

A couple pics:

SSD Drive and Slimline sata drive caddy

SSD Mounted in Caddy

The iMac opened up, exposing the Superdrive

SSD installed

iMac 27 Takeapart

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:53:01 +0000

Just some pics from taking apart my new 27-inch iMac.

The pictures will just have to speak for themselves for the time being.

Project ‘DorkPro’

admin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:53:24 +0000

I recently decided to trade up from my Mac Mini, and into something a bit more powerful. Which led me to create the ‘DorkPro‘.

Made out of cheap PC hardware and put into carefully wedged into a discarded G5 case, the Dork Pro performs like a real Mac Pro, at a fraction of the cost.

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