Chosen Solution
I have a mid-2010 iMac. Can I replace the 1TB hard drive with a SSD? If so, will there be a noticeable difference in performance?
Yes! Putting in a SSD or even a SSHD will offer better performance. As well as putting in more RAM. But before you make the jump think about the investment. How long are you going to hold on to this system. You’ll either need to swap out your current drive out or give up your optical drive (you can still reuse it in an external case) iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2389 Hard Drive ReplacementInstalling iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2389 Dual Drive You do need to stick with a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) compatible drive. Many of the drives now on the market are fixed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) which won’t run in your system. Seagate’s 3.5” SSHD’s & Samsung 860 SSD’s are auto sense drives which will match up to the systems SATA ports I/O speed. Review the spec sheet of the drive if it does not state it don’t use it! As an example review this spec sheet Seagate FireCuda SSHD note the interface line 6.0/3.0/1.5 which are SATA III, II & I data rates (Auto Sense).
