Chosen Solution
My Early 2006 Intel iMac is still going strong after nearly 10 years. I’d like to replace it but can’t afford that now. It’s on it’s second hard drive which is now failing. I would think an SSD would be a great upgrade, but I haven’t read anything anywhere about anyone accomplishing this upgrade on a unit this old. Is it possible?
The problem you face is the hard drives SATA port is only SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) in your system. You’ll need to find a SSD which can run at this slower speed. Sadly, I don’t know of any newer units that would work. Most are SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) and might drop down to SATA II (3.0 Gb/s). The other issue here is you’ll end up still needing more traditional disk storage (HD) as the larger SSDs are quite expensive. How about a half step here: Instead of putting in an expensive SSD go with a SSHD hybrid drive like Seagate’s Desktop SSHD. That way you gain the speed benefit of the deeper SSD cache the drive has and still hang onto the deeper storage of a traditional HD as well as being cheaper » a Win - Win !! « This drive also runs at SATA I so it will work in your system as well. Most HD’s now are SATA III and won’t work in your system. I would stick with the 1 TB drive. The last issue here is making sure your systems firmware is up to date. Follow this Apple T/N: About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers
