Q: Increase MAC performance with SSD upgrade
I have a 21.5 inch iMac model 14,1 (Late 2013) with 8 GB of memory and a 1 TB drive. I am running some memory intensive applications on it such as Adobe CS 5.5 and VMWare Fusion 8.1.1. I have Applecare on the machine until September 2017. I find myself running out of memory quite often. My goto solution would be to increase the memory and replace the hard drive with an SSD. However I am concerned that doing so will void my Applecare. My research indicates that, while frowned upon, I can upgrade my memory and keep my Applecare as long as it is done by an authorised Apple tech but if I do the SSD then I am out of luck for those installed components. My thinking is that I can get an external SSD and move the 'WIndows 10' VM(s) to it, as well as enlarge and move the system swapfiles to the SSD.
My questions are am I right about the Applecare and the Warranty and will my plan to use an external SSD to speed up performance and relieve memory constraints work?
I f
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)
Posted on Aug 10, 2016 2:35 PM
I went ahead and ordered a SanDisk Extreme 480GB external SSD (USB 3 of course) and hooked it up. The SanDisk had the right combination of size, performance and price ($149). I attached it and copied my Windows 10 VM over to it. I adjusted the VM to use 2GB of memory (it had previously been allocated 4GB). I fired it up and the effect was immediate. It booted faster and once up, it behaves as if it is native to the machine rather than on an emulator. Within the Windows 10 VM I upped the swap space to 8GB using Control Panel.
I also experimented with with setting up OS X's swap space on the SSD by using a symbolic link from /private/var/vm to a directory on the SSD. The system showed no discernable difference and it caused a couple of crashes so I got rid of the symbolic link. I may revisit this sometime in the future.
I couldn't be happier with the results. The VMs performance makes my Widow's apps seamless in the MAC environment. Since I lowered the VM's memory allocation I have more memory for my other applications and since the SSD is really NVRAM my WIndows VM actually has more memory than my iMAC. The SSD is slower than RAM but in practical terms I am not noticing. I have VISIO, Freecell and MS Project running at the same time and I am not seeing any slowdown. On the MAC I also have Adobe Bridge and Chrome, along with many utility apps. The performance is fine and my memory usage is down from what it was thanks to the adjustment in VM memory allocation.
I have no doubt that replacing my internal drive along with increasing my system RAM would have yielded more speed. But to do that I would have had to open up the machine, or pay someone to do so, and strip it down in order to access the memory slots. I would also have voided my Applecare for the memory and the HDD. The cost of the parts plus the labor would have been at least $300. So in the end, I got greater performance at half the price and I get to keep my warranty. Yay.
Thanks every for your help and comments.
Posted on Aug 16, 2016 6:38 PM