Chosen Solution
I think there are two ways to do this, replace DVD drive with an SSD, or add a second drive behind the motherboard? I was wondering if there was a definite advantage to one or the other? Does the DVD bay support same speed connection as the hard drive bays? I imagine if not that might be one reason to add it rather than replace DVD? What size SSD would be optimal, is 250GB enough or is there enough to be gained from 500GB to justify extra cost? As the hard drive is five years old, would anyone think it wise to replace it at same time? Finally (sorry if this is too long a series of questions) is it ok to do a full restore or would I be best to have a fresh O/S and just restore photos / music etc. and re-install programs?
Depending on your exact model you might have a spare SATA port so you may not need to replace the optical drive for a SSD. As to speeding your system up, you may only need to do some housekeeping. To start with make sure you have a backup of your important data. Then next thing here is to create a bootable USB thumb drive so you can boot up under it to run Disk Utility to repair the disk & permissions. But, before you do that you should clean up the drive get rid of the junk. Here’s a useful tool to clear out the old log & chase files: Disk Doctor. You do want to free up at least 1/4 of the disk if you can do 1/3 thats even better. Also think about adding memory.
I did this recently. You’d have to remove the optical drive because the back of the board has only one sata input, and I don’t think it’s wise to split the power to both devices, especially with one being a boot disk. Remove the optical drive, mount the ssd in it’s place, plug the sata cable where the dvd drive was plugged in, and close it up and reformat. I’m happy to help if you need it beyond that. Don’t let your wife make you use Windows.
Even easier: upgrade to a hybrid drive. I just did this on my iMac, and it’s … sweeet. Performance is notably quicker, and there’s no changes to be done. Specifically, I had a 1TB Seagate drive (original) in a late 2009 iMac. That drive failed earlier this year; as it was failing, I copied it with SuperDuper to an external hybrid Seagate 4TB drive. I then ran on the external drive until I had time to install it per the drive replacement iFixit article. And yes, up and running and fast. Loving it. Huge capacity without the premium for an SSD.
I just did the same thing to a mid-2010 27’ Mac (2390). I replaced the optical drive as I rarely use it, I bought a caddy which comes with an external USB enclosure for the DVD drive: http://www.amazon.co.uk/caddy-MacBook-re… I’m not sure about which method is better, but now if I ever wanted to I could still add another (3rd) internal drive to the free SATA port on the back of the motherboard. For SSD I bought a 500GB Crucial BX100 which I “fusion drived” with the original 2TB Seagate. While I was at it I got a second hand i7-870 processor and replaced my original i3-550. Upgrade iMac Intel Core i3 CPU to Core i7 Updated all my apps (system and rest) to latest. Very pleased with all the upgrades, my mac feels so fast ;-) And with the excellent tutorials from fixit and others, it wasn’t that hard. Only an hour work.
