SSD Upgrade - 2011 iMac

[mrjimmy]

Hey all,

I want to swap out my original (eek) 1TB HD for an SSD in my 2011 27" iMac 12,2.

I have a quote for a local shop to install ($75 CAN), I just need to determine the best and cheapest drive.

All recommendations and insights welcome!

Thanks!

 

[pm-r]

I have a quote for a local shop to install ($75 CAN), I just need to determine the best and cheapest drive.

All recommendations and insights welcome!

I installed a SSD into my 2011 27" iMac this thime last year as a replacement main boot drive and that is a very good, reasonable install price you had quoted to you.

It may not have been the cheapest choice for a SSD drive, but for various reasons I chose to go with a solid state drive from 0WC (Macsales.com), and I am quite pleased with the drive and its performance.


- Patrick
=======

 

[mrjimmy]

I installed a SSD into my 2011 27" iMac this thime last year as a replacement main boot drive and that is a very good, reasonable install price you had quoted to you.

It may not have been the cheapest choice for a SSD drive, but for various reasons I chose to go with a solid state drive from 0WC (Macsales.com), and I am quite pleased with the drive and its performance.


- Patrick
=======

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for that. I'm currently looking at a WD Blue 1TB 2.5 SATA III SSD for about $115.00 or so. It gets so-so reviews, but the drive you purchased now sits at $200.00.

Was a bracket required to install the drive in your iMac? The shop added another $15.00 on for that part. I want to keep my optical drive, so installing there wasn't an option.

MJ

 

[ferrarr]

Give Crucial a look at for your SSD.

SSD & RAM Upgrades | Crucial.com

Upgrade the storage and memory in your with Crucial's compatible RAM and SSD. Use our System Scanner to find the perfect upgrade for your device.

www.crucial.com

 

[pm-r]

WD Blue 1TB 2.5 SATA III SSD for about $115.00 or so. It gets so-so reviews, but the drive you purchased now sits at $200.00.

If and when I purchase any WD drive, I always have and always will pay a bit more for their Black models and have never regretted doing so.

I'm surprised at the OWC price increase in a years time. I paid:
1.0TB OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD 7MM $134.99
NewerTech AdaptaDrive 3.5"-2.5" adapter $14.25
OWC HD TCM Fan Control iMac 2011 $37.75
Plus shipping, brokerage and $ exchange to Canada, so well over $20.00 cdn for landed product plus install costs as my rhumatism-arthritus in my hands prevented me from doing my own install.

One of the other reasons I purchased the OWC SSD is that they do not need any TRIM support or software and I tend to run older mac OS versions like Mavericks 10.9.5 and the SSD also had good reviews, especially when used with an older iMac model.

Anyway, your choice, and good luck...


- Patrick
=======

 

[krs]

Give Crucial a look at for your SSD.

SSD & RAM Upgrades | Crucial.com

Upgrade the storage and memory in your with Crucial's compatible RAM and SSD. Use our System Scanner to find the perfect upgrade for your device.

www.crucial.com

I replaced a 500GB spinner drive with a 1TB Crucial SATA SSD on my 2012 MacMini more than a year ago - worked great so far.
I think any SSD from a well known, reputable manufacturer will work well.
You may want to look at the details of the technology used to make your final decision.
Crucial for example has the MX500 and BX500 series, I bought the slightly more expensive MX500 series.
And since you mentioned "cheapest"- I found that SSD prices vary a lot from week to week for the same item. I always check 3xcamel to make sure I'm not buying at the top of the price curve.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I think any SSD from a well known, reputable manufacturer will work well.

There are huge differences between different brands and models of SSD. However, the difference may not be noticeable right away. In some cases the difference will be that the SSD begins to drastically slow down very early in its life, and in others it may be that the SSD will only last about half as long as other similar SSD's.

For any internal SSD you are considering purchasing, you should ask:

- Is it compatible with Apple's implementation of TRIM? i.e. does it have "native Mac TRIM Support." (And, no, an implementation of TRIM-like function in the firmware of an SSD is not nearly as good.)

Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained – An SSD Primer - The SSD Review

- Does the SSD include DRAM for fast lookups when doing a read?

- Is there built-in over-provisioning?

https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/#:~:text=Over-provisioning Percentages Marketed OP* , 100 1 more rows

- You should read reviews to see how hot any SSD you are considering runs. Some otherwise fast SSD's often exhibit poor performance because of thermal throttling.

How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling

The best SSD's come from Intel and AngelBird. However, once you see their prices you will see that they are premium components and why users don't flock to them. Most users opt for SSD's that are reasonably priced, but such SSD's are reasonably priced because of compromises either to speed or durability.

OWC and Samsung offer reasonably priced SSD's with compromises, yet are very popular.

Note that Samsung SSD's are very popular because they are both fast when new, and reasonably priced. But they lack any built-in over provisioning, and do not offer native TRIM support. That means that they will slow down early in their lifespan, and die an early death.

Someone created a huge spreadsheet of the specifications of a lot of SSD's here:

SSDs

 

[pm-r]

Note that Samsung SSD's are very popular because they are both fast when new, and reasonably priced. But they lack any built-in over provisioning, and do not offer native TRIM support. That means that they will slow down early in their lifespan, and die an early death

Randy, even though I do not use any, but I am interested in your opinion of the TRIM utility software that's available, and if it is actually beneficial. But I guess I could do the searching myself or try...
I just thought some others might be interested...

And also interested in your comment above and where I could get more information:

(And, no, an implementation of TRIM-like function in the firmware of an SSD is not nearly as good.)

I had done some googling before, but didn't come across any real disadvantages, and as I recall there were quite a few advantages.

Regardless, the 1.0TB OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD 7MM I installed last year seems to be working quite well in my 2011 27 inch iMac, at least for my use. I also have it partitioned for installation of various older Mac OS X versions.

This iMac model can run from Snow Leopard 10.6 up to 10.13 High Sierra which is much more than I need, at least for my use. I don't need nor can I use the latest mac OS bells and whistles models and versions.

EDIT:
One of the articles I had checked out previously:

To TRIM or not to TRIM (OWC has the answer)

Enabling TRIM could actually hurt the performance and reliability of your OWC SSD, rather than help it.

eshop.macsales.com

- Patrick
=======

 

[krs]

Note that Samsung SSD's are very popular because they are both fast when new, and reasonably priced. But they lack any built-in over provisioning, and do not offer native TRIM support. That means that they will slow down early in their lifespan, and die an early death.

This worries me the most about using an SSD.
Although a spinner drive can also just suddenly fail, one often gets an early warning before it actually happens.
Is there any "warning" with an SSD one could look for?
Or some way to test the SSD once in a while?

 

[pm-r]

Is there any "warning" with an SSD one could look for?
Or some way to test the SSD once in a while?

Try a Google search???

Google Search

(About 6,700,000 results (0.40 seconds))

- Patrick
=======

 

[krs]

Ha, ha Patrick.

Google must love you.

I find that a google search for something like this brings up an awful lot of useless hits.
For one, many apply to Windows PCs only, then there is the comment quite often that the SSD is failing when the computer fails to boot up - well,that's a little bit late to find out; I also hardly ever boot up my Mini, it runs 24/7, and then I thought I had found a Mac application that will check the health of the SSD.
On this site dated April 2022, ie very current, they suggest the app Smart Reporter Lite

5 Warning Signs Your SSD Is About to Break Down and Fail

Worried your SSD will malfunction and break down and take all of your data with it? Look for these warning signs.

www.makeuseof.com

Then when you click on the link for that application, you get: version 2.7.3 which has been discontinued since 2012

SMARTReporter Lite - protect your data with failure prediction

...and when I googled for version 3.0 which that web page recommended, I come up empty.

Anyway - thanks for the suggestion.

BTW - One comment I came across which I found interesting is that with a "failed" SSD one can not write to it but all the stored data is still fully intact and can be read.
Not sure of that is 100% true, but it would make an SSD failure somewhat less catastrophic.

 

[ferrarr]

Is there any "warning" with an SSD one could look for?
Or some way to test the SSD once in a while?

I recommend DriveDx.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

Test it and see how you like it.

 

[pm-r]

I find that a google search for something like this brings up an awful lot of useless hits.

The Google Web search function, like most other search engines, are only as good as the search data one provides, and if you want to narrow the search down, then modify the search phrase so that it is more precise. I usually cannot be bothered to do so and just skip over the surplus and out of date hits if I can.

Google has a webpage as to how to create proper search phrases and filters but I don't have its address handy. Sorry.

To find some, just try a search something like this:

Google Search

That of course could use a log of refining and it is a good example of input equals output.


- Patrick
=======

 

[pm-r]

I recommend DriveDx.

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

Thanks for that information and the reminder Bob.


- Patrick
=======

 

[krs]

I recommend DriveDx.

Test it and see how you like it.

Thanks,
I tried it before but it doesn't work for me "out of the box"
I have a bit of a unique setup in that my boot SSD drive for the Mini is an external USB 3.0 drive and DriveDX can't check USB externals unless one installs some Kernel extensions on theMac.
I'm a bit hesitant to do that especially since I keep planning to install that SSD in the Mini and then would not need these Kernel extensions.

Besides, it seemed to me that DriveDX just readsthe SMART status ofthe drive and reports that....or does it actually do some verification of the SSD?

 

[ferrarr]

I'm a bit hesitant to do that especially since I keep planning to install that SSD in the Mini and then would not need these Kernel extensions.

Why would you not want to monitor external drives? I monitor my TM drive, and any other drive I connect to my Mini, even NTFS .drives

 

[pm-r]

I'm a bit hesitant to do that especially since I keep planning to install that SSD in the Mini and then would not need these Kernel extensions.

I was reading about a Mac Utility a week or so that allows the Mac OS to access and read the SMART data of external drives. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the name of the utility at this point, but hopefully my brain will kick into reverse gear and recall what it was.

Maybe of Google search could point you in a correct direction as to the name of the utility...???


- Patrick
=======

 

[Randy B. Singer]

This worries me the most about using an SSD.
Although a spinner drive can also just suddenly fail, one often gets an early warning before it actually happens.
Is there any "warning" with an SSD one could look for?
Or some way to test the SSD once in a while?

While an SSD can fail suddenly, what I was speaking of is how an SSD with no over-provisioning will start to slow down noticeably at around the 50% full mark, and then around the 70% full mark, it is so slow that it is essentially done.

"In practice, an SSD’s performance begins to decline after it reaches about 50% full."
https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/

"The rule of thumb to keep SSDs at top speeds is to never completely fill them up. To avoid performance issues, you should never use more than 70% of its total capacity.
...
"When you’re getting close to the 70% threshold, you should consider upgrading your computer’s SSD with a larger drive."
https://pureinfotech.com/why-solid-state-drive-ssd-performance-slows-down/

"SSDs may suffer performance issues, especially in writing speed, when the drive reaches full capacity. It is easier for the drive to write to an empty cell when there is free space available. When the drive is full, the SSD needs to find out which blocks are partially filled, move that information into a cache and then write it back to the drive. It is best to have 10-15% of your drive set aside for free space, to keep a good balance between performance and space utilization."
Top 7 Tips to Get the Most from your SSDs

"By reducing write amplification and employing technologies that make SSD operation ever more efficient, buyers will not only get more storage for each dollar, but that storage will perform faster and last longer than other options could possibly provide."
https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/

 

[mrjimmy]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

I really had no idea how involved a process this is. Trim function, DRAM, sheesh. I may just continue with the old tried and true SATA drive. The idea that an SSD becomes useless at 70%, is deterrent enough...

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Thanks everyone for the replies!

I really had no idea how involved a process this is. Trim function, DRAM, sheesh.

Oh, that's only the beginning of it. Additionally, there are differences in the type of memory that an SSD uses:
https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/about-ssd-layer-configurations/

...and different Mac models can require some pretty Apple/model-specific technology:
Apple Proprietary SSDs: Ultimate Guide to Specs & Upgrades | BeetsBlog

So, once you identify a particular brand and model of third party SSD that you are considering upgrading your Mac to, it's really important to make absolutely sure that it is compatible with your year and model of Macintosh. (That makes it very attractive to purchase an SSD from a Macintosh specialist such as OWC. Their assistance and advice can make your purchasing decision way easier.)

If your Mac has an SATA interface, this SSD might fit the bill, and it has been extremely well reviewed. But I highly recommend that you get assurances that it will work in your particular Mac first.:

Crucial MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD - CT1000MX500SSD1
$100
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078211KBB/?tag=macforums0e4-20

I may just continue with the old tried and true SATA drive. The idea that an SSD becomes useless at 70%, is deterrent enough...

LOL! You may not have heard this before, but rotating disk hard drives have almost exactly the same limitation (only for entirely different reasons). I often hear from users whose rotating disk hard drives are toast by the time they start approaching roughly about 80% full. (And sometimes a lot earlier.) See:

Macintosh Routine Maintenance
Item #5 and Note #1