External SSD HD as system drive

Jeremy

I put a Crucial 128GB into my 2008 iMac but before I did I ran it for a week or so in a Firewire 800 docking cradle as my boot drive. It was much faster for startup and application launch but it performs noticably better installed. I also noticed my system runs cooler and quieter (I was starting to hear the drive spinning). I didn't notice any difference in the system running on Firewire 800, once the drive was set in Preferences it started normally using the SSD in the dock.

Don't know what Applications you run but I've saved enough money buying the smaller drive to have more external storage for all my data and still retain a large piece of the SSD for the Applications to r/w for data manipulation.

The fastest transfer speed for FireWire 800 is 9.5 MBs not 95 MBs.

I seem to recall the reason it's called Firewire 800 is a 780Mb/s data rate. Divide by 8 and you get 97.50MB/s. Of course that would be optimal. 😉

You'll get nothing faster on a 800 FireWire drive than around 9 MB/s... transfer speed between two HD.

I have a mid2011 iMac i7 with a SSD and two gig internal drives. Transfer speeds between the two internal drives is about 95 MB/s. Transfer speed between the internal drives and a 800 FireWire drive is about 9 MB/s.

David,

From Apple:

Logic Express 9 - User Manual

FireWire 800 FireWire 800 , also called IEEE 1394b, is the next generation of FireWire after IEEE 1394a, a higher-bandwidth version capable of data transferspeeds of up to 800 Mbps. FireWire 800 is also capable of supporting cable distances of up to 100 meters.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Logic_Express_9_User_Manual.pdf

You must have another problem David, because I get 29 to 34 MB/s with 2 different USB drives and a solid 38.6 MB/s with peaks up to 44.7 MB/s with a couple of old Maxtor FireWire 400 drives.

Jeremy,

Did you actually swap the drive bay with the SSD? I am planning on doing the same to my 2010 iMac 27' and I would be grateful if you could tell me:

- Where did you get the instructions?

- Did you use a bay adapter, if so which one?

- Was it a difficult operation?

- Any problems to report?

Many thanks

jeremy, put the SSD in the HD place instead of in the Superdrive bay. There is a good chance that an SSD in the superdrive bay starts at 3GB/s "Negotiated Link Speed" instead of at 6GB/s on the original HD connector. Then place the 1TB drive in the Superdrive bay. you see these figures in Apple/AboutThisMac/ More Info/ SystemReport/Hardware/ Serial-Ata.

Thanks for the reply.

I have already upgraded my ram to 8GB but my biggest complaint is with boot time which is over 1 minute. I think extra ram will do little for this. Am I right?

I have considered placing the SSD where the HDD is and the HHD on the superdrive bay (as LexShellings says), which is what I did with my 2008 Macbook (black), but I am afraid that on the iMac it is too hard a task for my limited skills.