External SSD for iMac?
I have a 2011 3.4 GHz i7 iMac w/ 16GB of RAM.
I have 2 1TB external HDD (MacAlly enclosures)- one for my data files and the other is for my TimeMachine.
Since I've had my iMac, I've always encountered the beach ball when opening MS Office files and data files on the external HDD.
I'm at a point where I'm getting fed up with the lagging and delay.
Are there any external SSDs or enclosures similar to what I have w/ my HDD? (Not for the TM backups, but for my drive that has data files.
FYI- I also have two monitors connected via Thunderbolt (total of 3 displays).
Comments
SSDs are still about 5-10x the price of HDDs so you can get a 1TB external SSD but it costs $1000:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549
If you don't need 1TB, you can get a smaller drive and then put files you don't need to access regularly onto the HDD.
Some people have tried the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Portable-Thunderbolt-Adapter-STAE128/dp/B009HQCARY
connected to a 3rd party SSD like a Crucial m4 or Samsung 830/840 drive. You need to buy a cable too. It's not the most elegant solution and some people reported issues with it unmounting. There are other options like:
http://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Thunderbolt-Solid-State-10024024/dp/B007FNKAYQ
Hi Marvin,
Thanks for the info! What are your thoughts on Caldigit? Looks like they're planning to release this is sometime this year: Thunderbolt Drive- CalDigit T2.
I can get one 512gb SSD now and another one later.
It depends on how much it will cost. It looks a lot like the g-tech drives:
http://www.amazon.com/G-Technology-Thunderbolt-Powerful-Transfer-0G02289/dp/B0084UYD1U
except with swappable drives. If it's not too expensive, it would be a good option.
Some people here have been putting Samsung SSDs into the Lacie Little Big Disk:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1280118&page=5
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10549
It's a nice drive but it's an expensive way to go. I think the Seagate adaptor is the most affordable route. It would be about $130 for the adaptor + cable and you'd just slot on something like a Samsung 840:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-SATAIII-2-5-Inch-MZ-7TD500BW/dp/B009NHAF3I
The new Thunderbolt controller might make things a bit cheaper but that won't be evident for another couple of months:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6885/new-thunderbolt-controllers-dsl45104410-and-future-20gbps-falcon-ridge-tb-controller-announced
You might have a drive problem. I used a product called Scannerz to test my drive when it was problematic and it was quite effective. The version I got was what I guess they call their "premium" version which comes with FSE. FSE is a file system events monitor and it spits out all the file names that are being written and read. FSE is included with Scannerz so people that think they're having drive problems that may be caused by a drive wart-hog can isolate the problems. You should read the product profile for FSE before considering the "premium" versions because for some people it's a bit above their skill levels. The company warns you about that in the product profile. If what you see looks foreign to you and you still want to test your drive, then by either Scannerz-Lite of Scannerz with FSE-Lite. PLEASE READ THE REST OF MY POST BEFORE BUYING A NEW HARD DRIVE, OR FOR THAT MATTER ANY OF THESE PRODUCTS. FWIW, however, the link to the company is:
http://www.scsc-online.com
With that said, however, Microsoft is Microsoft, and you might need to face the facts that the program is just plain slow loading. The link I provided above also has a "How-to" section, and in it you'll find an article about using Activity Monitor to test performance problems under Mountain Lion (ML). Although that article implies it's ML specific, it really isn't. A lot of the techniques they're talking about are available on all versions of Activity Monitor.
Before throwing money at ANYTHING ( new drives, Scannerz, etc. etc) I would recommend doing the following:
Read the article about using Activity Monitor with ML and understand it, but keep in mind you're going to want to monitor what Microsoft apps are doing.
Start up an Activity Monitor session
Start up your Microsoft app(s) and monitor the CPU, memory, and drive access usage levels
You MIGHT need a new hard drive, and possibly an SSD would help, but the fact is that some programs are just plain inefficiently written. Microsoft apps on a Mac are likely not optimized all that much for Macs. Why would Microsoft optimize an app for a competing platform and OS if it could potentially cost them customers? Common sense tells me it would be in their interest to make the product functional, but not necessarily high performance on a Mac. This would, from a marketing standpoint raise questions in a customers mind as to why one of their products performs well under Windowz, but not so well on a Mac. Hopefully the Activity Monitor tests could help you decipher this.
You might also want to do a web search on the slow loading of Microsoft apps with or without SSDs. If you find some links stating "Yes, this really helped" then maybe that's the solution, but I'm willing to bet my "Microsoft Paranoia" described above is more than likely the culprit. I have Microsoft Office 2008 on my system and it's the slowest loading thing on the planet. I ran FSE against it and it's NOT due to excessive file access. In fact I just checked it and it only registered 98 file system events, which is peanuts (Spotlight can generate tens of thousand of file system events in a minute). My guess is that it's the nature of the beast....in other words, you might just have to live with it.
I'm from Viet Nam. thank you. I will buy and test in amazon
Thanks you ! I'll buy and test