How much faster would an iMac with an SSD boot?

0	How much faster could I expect my iMac 27 inch, 3.4GHz with 8GB RAM to boot with if I had the 2TB HDD and 256GB SSD rather than just the 2TB Drive? ssd hdd imac asked Aug 17 '11 at 10:08 TJRichards160 196●21●22●28

3 Answers:

oldest newest most voted

1	it would reduce boot time by :42 secs answered Aug 17 '11 at 10:41 Enrico 461●6●14●22 edited Aug 17 '11 at 15:33 Matthew B 1.3k●52●62●82

1	From personal demonstrations, I've noticed about a 10 second increase in performance give or take. answered Aug 17 '11 at 12:42 catchatyou 20.7k●89●165●383

If you have a regular backup method, I'm sure SSD is fine. But it's worth noting that the reliability of longterm SSD use is still an issue. Hard disks seldom have catostrophic failures, usually when one is dying you lose a few files here and there. No such warning with SSD, it suddenly dies and the entire device is useless and unrecoverable.

Possibly, if someone built some sort of RAID system where the SSD device was live duplicated to a hard disk then maybe it would be feasible. But for the tiny speed increase compared to the issue of reliability and possible data loss, I wouldn't want to convert to the technology without some sort of regular backup method.

answered Aug 17 '11 at 15:59

Duodave
4.6k●40●49●98

Well yeah, but if you have the SSD for booting the OS, and a HDD for the data, then you won't have to worry so much. You have the speed of the SSD and the reliability of the HDD. :)

(Aug 17 '11 at 20:40) JordanV

Your answer

toggle preview

community wiki

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

*italic* or __italic__
**bold** or __bold__
link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
basic HTML tags are also supported

learn more about Markdown