Best COMPATIBLE ssd for NVidia MCP79 chipset?

I think it should be in the apple updater it automatically would update it, I know that when are using the public beta of el capitan and yosemite sometimes it would need to update the firmware, I have mine with password protection so no newer update will cripple my iMac, which is in many cases that apple will launch an update on their OS for certain machines and it could cripple some features even slow down your machine, But don't take my word for it, I just research and read many blogs about this PRAM reset thing but I think it won't work at all.

the funny thing is that apple will not give you an explanation about this so I have no idea about this all I know is that anyone with the nvidia chipset would get a hit or miss with getting SATA 2 on it, some has report SATA2 and some had the bad luck of SATA 1

All I could say is for those with SATA 1 to do a raid 0 and maybe they could get speeds of Sata 2 but I would not recommend doing any raid with the nvidia chipset.

I am curious about TRIM. As mentioned earlier in this discussion, later versions of Yosemite and all versions to date of El Capitan make it easy to enable TRIM on 3rd party SSDs via a simple Terminal command. But that command is OS dependent. Meaning, if I boot from an external drive (which could have Yosemite or and even older OS), I would assume that TRIM would then become DISABLED for attached 3rd party SSDs?

Also, if we keep updating El Capitan, over time will our TRIM setting ever become disabled?

Making sure TRIM is ALWAYS enabled is an important point of consideration. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

The reason I ask is because in this thread we are talking about 2009 Macs. My late 2009 iMac11,1 originally came with Snow Leopard (10.6). I still have a 1TB external FW800 drive running that OS, and I occasionally boot into it if my son wants to run some old games that don't work on newer OS's. But in that case, what would happen to the SSD? Clearly, TRIM is not support on OS 10.6, so assuming the SSD even mounts fine, then writing to it and deleting files from it may be problematic in a way that you would never notice. Since TRIM deals with deleted files, if you booted into your 10.6 external HDD and then deleted some files from your SSD, there would be no TRIM enabled at the OS level, so what happens? Those delete bytes are not taken care of by TRIM, so are they considered "irrecoverably lost forever"? Think about what happens to an SSD over time if TRIM is never enabled.

But this would apply to any SSD with any OS. Let's say you have an SSD but did not enable TRIM. You use it for 1 year, and then you read that TRIM is good to enable, so you enabled it via the Terminal. Over that past year, no doubt you deleted many files. Does enabling TRIM magically fix all the garbage collection of the past? Or does it only apply to files you newly delete AFTER TRIM has been enabled?

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/279412-32-trim-garbage-collection-beating-de ad-horse#12258914

If you haven't seen this particular page scroll about half way down to the post by Kent Smith, very informative.

Mike, as always, thank you for your helpful input. I found points (9) & (12) in that Dec. 2013 talk by Kent Smith (Director of Marketing for Sandforce) to be of interest. (Note though that links to his blog and PDF are now dead.) Specifically, he says Garbage Collection (GC) exists even without TRIM enabled but invalid data would be tossed to and fro on the SSD in that case; however TRIM, once enabled, should be able to identify and take care of that invalid data. That implies that if I boot into an external HDD with Snow Leopard on my older Mac, an OS that doesn't support TRIM, and if I delete files on my internal SSD, GC will move around the deleted "invalid" data, and when I reboot into ElCap from off the internal SSD, TRIM (if enabled) will clear those "invalid" (deleted) blocks and allow them to become usable (writeable) free space once again.

By the way, that Kent Smith talk says RAID is typically not supported by TRIM, but it is in fact supported on all RAID levels when using SOFTRAID, even the Lite version:

http://www.softraid.com/pages/features/softraid_application.html

I wrote SOFTRAID and asked if their $49 Lite version would be adequate to RAID 2 internal SSDs inside and older 2009 iMac and they said "yes."

if you want to save money just setup the raid with the yosemite disk utility like I did... You have to make a bootable pen drive, I did mine with disk maker x and boot up holding the ALT or what is known for mac the option button and once booted into it I used disk utility and setup the raid there then install yosemite and then upgraded to el capitan. Also with Raid you will have to save that pen drive because in raid config your SSD will not save a partition for recovery mode boot up only in a pen drive so keep that pen drive in a safe place always.....

Fwtiw...

Just went through the same path: install a 500GB 850 Evo in my old 9,1 iMac, followed by a fresh install of El Capitan and guess what: negotiated speed is 1.5Gbps 😟

JDW1, can you confirm yours is in the 'main' HD tray?

Because mine is in the optical bay, so that might be an issue...

I have a WD Blue in the main tray, and sometime it negotiates at 1.5Gbps, sometime at 3Gbps. When it is at 3, it is faster than the SSD which is very frustrating.

Amedee, I put my Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD into the main HDD slot of my iMac9,1. I did not use the optical drive slot.

So your experience and mine are PROOF that reports of the Samsung EVO working at 3G speeds in the iMac9,1 (early 2009) are ALL LIES AND DECEPTION.

But I also confirmed, along with one other person in this thread, that the same Samsung EVO SSD installed in the HDD slot of a 2009 MacBook Pro 5,5 works perfectly at 3G speeds. Since the MBP5,5 and iMac9,1 use the same exact NVidia controller chip, it make zero sense to me why the iMac9,1 cannot achieve 3G speeds. It makes no sense at all. And and it's a crying shame!

Well, I really don't know anymore...

I had to open it anyway, as it was stupid to leave an expensive SSD in it while the cheap WD Blue HDD was obviously faster as it was going full speed.

Since I had taken the HDD out as well to set set a jumper to force the 3Gbps, I decided to give the SSD a last chance and booted the system with the SSD in the HDD tray...

... and hooray, I have now a full 3Gbps on the SSD.

I rebooted - power off /on 10 times to be sure it was not a one time event, but it came up consistently at 3Gps.

I have no explanation, besides the fact that the optical drive bat has a special connector which is spitted in the tray, so maybe this connector type does not carry well SATA II or the tray degrades the signal.

I spent some time to 3D print a tray to hold the SSD in the HDD bay and rebuilt the machine.

I have now a 'fast' disk, but only 500GB storage 😕 . Maybe I'll put a 3'5 HDD in the optical bay to get some more.

So maybe they are not all liars... 😉

<Image Edited by Host to Remove Personal Information>

AmedeeBulle wrote:

Since I had taken the HDD out as well to set set a jumper to force the 3Gbps, I decided to give the SSD a last chance and booted the system with the SSD in the HDD tray...

... and hooray, I have now a full 3Gbps on the SSD.

Where is this mysterious "jumper" in the iMac9,1 which you say forces an SSD in the HDD slot to operate consistently at 3G speeds?

(Furthermore, the link you posted seems to have been blocked by Apple for some reason.)

Thank you for clarifying that the "jumper" was on your WD HDD and not the SSD. But I can only say that I am further confused. You are getting 3G speeds "sometimes" but I am not getting them ever.

I thought it might be the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter I used:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B0088QXTK6/

But if the tiny PCB on that adapter was bad or had solder defects, I would assume the connection itself would be problematic and not work at all sometimes, rather than drop me to 1.5Gb/s speeds. But since my Samsung EVO 850 500GB drive works consistently within that adapter (albeit slower than it should), I can only assume the reason I cannot get 3G speeds lies elsewhere. But again, this makes no sense because:

1) The MacBook5,5 gets 3G speeds with the same Samsung EVO 850 SSD, and

2) You apparently get 3G speeds with your Samsung EVO inside an iMac9,1 "sometimes."

All have the same exact NVidia controller!

It makes no sense at all!

JDW1 wrote:

Thank you for clarifying that the "jumper" was on your WD HDD and not the SSD. But I can only say that I am further confused. You are getting 3G speeds "sometimes" but I am not getting them ever.

Not sometimes, always: I get consistently 3G with the SSD in the HDD bay!

The 'sometimes' was with the HDD -- hence the jumper.

JDW1 wrote:

I thought it might be the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter I used:

You should at least try with a direct connection -- when my SSD is in the optical bay with an adapter it stays in 1.5G as well... (Consistently -- I never had 3G in that bay).

The reason I used this 2.5" to 3.5" adapter (to mount the Samsung SSD in the HDD slot of my office iMac9,1) is because it was the only one reasonably priced. The Newer Technology AdaptaDrive (sold by OWC and on Amazon USA) costs a mere $14, but on Amazon Japan (I live in Japan) it sells for a mind boggling, stab-the-customer-in-the-back-why-don't-ya, $50. But the concept of both products is the same insofar as there is a tiny PCB on both adapters the pass the signal through, due to the way the SSD must mount inside the bracket. But I have not seen hoards of people complaining about the AdaptaDrive for any speed (even 6G), so I assume it works fine. But if it works fine, why would the one I purchased cause a slowdown? Again, it doesn't make sense.

Even if I spend the time to reopen my iMac9,1 and direct connect, I can't close the Mac in that condition because I don't have a bracket that allows for direct connect (without the use of that little straight-thru PCB).

All I can do is take a deep breath and sigh. :-( But thank you for clarifying your experience. The info you provided is much appreciated.

I have to agree with you, all this does not make too much sense...

JDW1 wrote:

Even if I spend the time to reopen my iMac9,1 and direct connect, I can't close the Mac in that condition because I don't have a bracket that allows for direct connect (without the use of that little straight-thru PCB).

Well, if you have done it once, it does not take more than 10 minutes to open it again 😉

What I first did was connecting the SSD loose in the Mac, putted the screen back in place and then booted it again without re-assembling further. That way you know if a direct connect helps or not.

When I saw it was working for me, I removed the screen again and mounted the SSD properly. I printed this tray -- it is not perfect, as the power cable is really short you can't use the tray holes to screw the SSD, but it is good enough to secure it in place...