SSD initial impressions

I just got an SSD installed in my work iMac (27", i7, mid-2010). 

The iMac has a spare SSD bay in addition to its hard drive bay, although it’s fairly inaccessible. Because of the difficulty of installing the update, and because it’s a work Mac, it was sent to a local repair shop to perform the upgrade.

I chose a Samsung 830 128GB SSD, as it had a fair number of positive reviews and a low price (circa £160). The installation, by Western Computer (I took mine to the Leamington branch, and they sent it away to their repair facility in Bristol) cost around £160 plus VAT, including parts like cables and mounting brackets. I guess this would have been cheaper if I’d replaced the hard drive rather than installing it as an additional disk, but the advantages of having them both in there are considerable.

After getting the Mac back with the SSD installed, I cloned my operating system onto it, to avoid a complete reinstall (and the associated pain of getting all my settings in place). I used Carbon Copy Cloner to do this, as explained in this guide, although I opted to clone my home folder too (with the exception of my iTunes library). Then, I used the latest beta version of Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the recovery partition onto the new drive as well. To start up from the new disk, I chose it from the Startup Disk panel in System Preferences.

To move the iTunes library, I put the whole library folder (found inside the Music folder in my home directory) where I wanted it. Then, I launched iTunes while holding down the Option key, and selected the folder from its new location.

Booting into the new system took 15 seconds from power on to being able to type into the password field, the first time I booted. (I haven’t timed any subsequent boots.) Starting many apps is instant, starting Photoshop takes a few seconds, and even Xcode, while still nowhere near instant, doesn’t lag as long as it used to, particularly when switching files in the sidebar.

One weird thing: each time I boot from the SSD after having booted from the hard drive, the Spotlight indexing processes go a bit crazy, causing the fans to rev up. They settle down in a couple of minutes, and it doesn’t seem to happen except in that situation. (Of course, I won’t be switching boot disks as part of normal use.)

I’ll post a follow-up after I’ve used the SSD for a while, but initial impressions are looking favourable!