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Hi,
Can I replace my optical drive on this mac with an SSD? I'm not sure if the optical drive is SATA or not? I saw some web pages mentioning PATA drives, which would mean my SSD (which I'd want to boot from) would be slower?
I'm assuming the process would be similar to upgrading the optical bay to an SSD on a MBP?
Many thanks,
John
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It's all SATA on your model. Here's what you'll need to do this: iMac & Mac mini Dual Drive Enclosure
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Thanks very much for that. Very useful. I note that from system profiler looking at the SATA device tree, I have the following information for the current optical drive.
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
However, the current hard drive states:
Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Is this drop in negotiated speed, something to do with the optical drive? Would I get the same performance from an SSD as a boot drive regardless of whether it was in the optical bay, or in the current hard drive bay?
Many thanks
I have the same issue, and would love an answer - seems lots of Macbook Pros had this issue fixed in a firmware update. Can't find any good info for iMac tho.
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Depending on your SSD, there are some issues with SATA3 SSDs on a SATA2 bus computer, like my OCZ Agility 3 on my 2009 iMac. This is what OCZ had to say:
"Some SATAII motherboards, when used with one of the above drives will downgrade the drive to SATA1 speeds. We find this mostly on Nvidia chipset motherboards for PC and Nvidia chipset based Mac's.
To resolve this, we have a tool that will set the link speed to be locked at SATAII and improve performance. This can be reversed when you update your motherboard/system so you can have the full SATAIII speed again."
I asked a question on a Mac forum and was helped to make it run at 3Gb (SATA2):
I've just found this thread and am curious what you did in your iMac. I am going through the same process with the same computer so would love to hear a first-hand report.
Thanks
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