How to upgrade 4 year old Imac

Hi Genshu,


Exactly what do you want to upgrade? The only thing that is user upgradeable is RAM and if your machine is upgradeable to Snow Leopard (10.6.x) you could upgrade to that too.

Please let us know exactly which iMac you own, if you're not sure open System Profiler (Applications - Utilities - System Profiler and you will see something that looks like:


*Hardware Overview:*

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 6 GB

Please copy and paste that information into your reply so we can figure it out.

Roger

Well the good news is you could upgrade the RAM to 6GB and you could also upgrade the HD up to 2GB if you wanted to. Upgrading the RAM is simple and takes minutes, the HD is another matter. It was never designed to be user upgradeable however if you are handy, brave and don't mind diving into notebooks to fix them you could probably do it. If the thought makes you nervous then take it to your local AASP and get it done. For the RAM I'd upgrade to either 4-6 GB, here is a link to OWC.

Personally if it was my machine I would upgrade to Snow Leopard ($29), upgrade the RAM $90-$125 and get an external HD to begin using TM to back up your data. The hard disk I would let it run until it died. Then when the HD did die I'd probably begin looking for a new machine.

Yes, that's the retail price. If you buy the RAM from OWC, they also sell high quality external HD's to use as your backup drive and they also sell the upgrade DVD. Prior to doing any upgrade I'd highly recommend backing up first! You can download either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner and backup your system, then do the RAM and SL upgrade. After successfully doing the upgrade you can then erase the external HD and use it for a Time Machine backup drive or you may like to use SuperDuper or CCC. Many people (including myself) use both TM and SD or CCC. The reason being is it's safer to have redundant backups. Here is an article from MacWorld that talks about that.

Well you don't have to get as complex as he does. What I do is I have 2 external HD's that I use for backup. I use one for Super Duper to create a bootable clone and the other I use Time Machine. Some people ask if they can use the same disk for both a bootable clone and TM and the answer is yes in theory however this is a recipe for disaster. The reason being is if that HD crashes the user has lost both backups! If you have some redundancy when one crashes you can recover.

The details of how I have mine setup are like this. Time Machine by default is designed to backup every hour however my data doesn't changes that often so this is a waste for me. I downloaded a little utility called TimeMachineEditor so I can tell TM how frequently to backup. I have mine set for 4x day. On my SuperDuper drive I have it set up to backup at 2 AM (when I'm sleeping) every day and it only backs up files that have been changed or added. By going this route I know that when I wake up I have a perfect clone of my internal HD just in case.

I tried a Mini once and sold it after 2 months because it was just too slow for me - but then it depends on what your needs are, of course. The Mini has the same type of drive as a laptop (5400 rpm), whereas a desktop has a 7200 rpm, which is obviously quite a bit faster. So, you'll need to think of what you will be using it for.

As for your 5,1 iMac - I pulled up the complete specs here:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac-core-2-duo-2.16-20-inch-sp ecs.html

Since yours is what I had (except for a 24" screen), I thought I remembered that the *maximum RAM for that machine is 3 GB*, although it's been reported that there would be a slight advantage by going to 4 GB. It will only recognize a fraction above the 3 GB though - something like 3.2 or so. I had mine maxed at 3 GB (one 1 GB and one 2 GB module) and it was quite good, although much much slower than the new iMac I have now (see my profile).

Well, RAM will help your problem (and remember, you can only have a total of 3 (officially) or 4 GB - not 6) - but, it's a slower (older) processor as well. Mine worked quite well, but I do a fair share of video editing, so I needed something a little faster.

Another important thing: do you have an absolute minimum of 10 - 15% of your hard drive space available at all times? The OS needs that space to operate properly.

Other little things to keep things speedy:
repair permissions after any software install/update;
don't work in too many apps (especially photo or video editing) all at once;
Safari or Firefox: reset/empty caches/history

And, I occasionally run DiskWarrior ($$) to rebuild the file directory which helps also.

Just to clarify: hard drive space is not usually referred to as memory; hard drive space is just that (a hard drive is pretty much like a CD or DVD which holds the information that is being written to it); memory is the RAM you have installed.

So you have an external monitor?

As for your full hard drive, that's easy: get at least one external hard drive - you could move your entire 15,000 photo library to it. I have two LaCie d2 Quadras (just remember that Firewire is much faster than USB):

http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10033

And then get the 3 GB RAM - it's quite inexpensive:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac/IntelCore_2Duo

Clearing hard drive space and increasing the RAM should help quite a bit.