Back in 2011, I bought an iMac, but I didn't spend the ridiculous up charge for SSD. SSD at that time was very expensive, in general, but Apple's prices made it even more ridiculous.
As a result, I ended up buying the iMac with a terabyte HD drive with the hope that I could upgrade the boot drive to SSD when prices started to drop.
As you can tell, the iMac is not built in a way that makes it easy to open up and install drives. You have to take off the 27 inch display and that isn't something I wouldn't want to do. However, the 2011 iMac has a thunderbolt port, so I figured that I could update the boot drive via the thunderbolt port when the prices started to drop.
As a result, I ended up buying the iMac with a terabyte HD drive with the hope that I could upgrade the boot drive to SSD when prices started to drop.
As you can tell, the iMac is not built in a way that makes it easy to open up and install drives. You have to take off the 27 inch display and that isn't something I wouldn't want to do. However, the 2011 iMac has a thunderbolt port, so I figured that I could update the boot drive via the thunderbolt port when the prices started to drop.
I was ready to make the upgrade, so I started investigating my options. There are SSD drives with thunderbolt ports built in and adapters for standard SATA SSD drives. Many of these adapters and drives only had one thunderbolt port. That means that you can't daisy chain with more drives, monitors, or other thunderbolt peripherals. In short, you lose the thunderbolt port on the computer to the one drive and you can't expand on it without adding another adapter. I needed both available ports on my iMac (I have a second monitor and I often hook my MBP to the iMac to get the better screen). As a result of this consideration, I bought a Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Thunderbolt Adapter. The features that set it apart were price ($149 or less), it has two thunderbolt ports, and it has its own power supply.
For the SSD drive, I got a Cosair Force LX Series Solid State Disk (SSD) 256GB 2.5-Inch drive. This may not be the fastest drive on the market, but it is fairly inexpensive with a $125 price tag and I am not too worried about having the fastest computer as long as it is a lot faster than the current iMac drive. My suggestion is that you look on sites that compare speeds if you want the fastest drive available.
I also needed a thunderbolt cable, since Seagate didn't bother putting one in the box. However, now I was ready to get this thing up and running. I decided to use this opportunity to do some housecleaning on my iMac. I had photos, movies and music that I was too lazy to move to my network drive (where I have all my media files) and took this opportunity to move them off of the iMac.
Fortunately, this process got my iMac under 230GBs, so I was able to use CarbonCopy Cloner to make a boot drive of the iMac onto the new SSD. CarbonCopy has the option to exclude files and applications, so you could get under the memory cap on the SSD drive this way, as well. Also, some people prefer to just make a fresh install of OSX on the new drive. I went with CarbonCopy because I didn't want to spend time installing my applications.
Once the computer was finished copying all of the iMac HD files to the SSD, I was ready to test it out. I rebooted the iMac and held down the option key so that I could choose the boot drive. I chose SSD and it booted right up. I also installed Trim Enabler on the computer and ran a BlackMagic Speed test. It was significantly faster than the old setup (2.7 times faster with write speeds and around 4 times faster with read speeds), so I accomplished my goal. The great part is that if prices continue to fall, I can just make a copy of the drive (which I plan to backup anyway) and just pop it out and put in a larger drive later.
Finally, this upgrade was like buying a new, much speedier computer for a lot less money than I would spend on a new iMac. I would highly recommend going this route if you want a faster thunderbolt iMac and don't have any desire to take apart your iMac.
Fortunately, this process got my iMac under 230GBs, so I was able to use CarbonCopy Cloner to make a boot drive of the iMac onto the new SSD. CarbonCopy has the option to exclude files and applications, so you could get under the memory cap on the SSD drive this way, as well. Also, some people prefer to just make a fresh install of OSX on the new drive. I went with CarbonCopy because I didn't want to spend time installing my applications.
Once the computer was finished copying all of the iMac HD files to the SSD, I was ready to test it out. I rebooted the iMac and held down the option key so that I could choose the boot drive. I chose SSD and it booted right up. I also installed Trim Enabler on the computer and ran a BlackMagic Speed test. It was significantly faster than the old setup (2.7 times faster with write speeds and around 4 times faster with read speeds), so I accomplished my goal. The great part is that if prices continue to fall, I can just make a copy of the drive (which I plan to backup anyway) and just pop it out and put in a larger drive later.
Finally, this upgrade was like buying a new, much speedier computer for a lot less money than I would spend on a new iMac. I would highly recommend going this route if you want a faster thunderbolt iMac and don't have any desire to take apart your iMac.
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