LaCie Little Big Disk 240 GB SSD on an iMac

[Walter Soyka]

Roger, some more information about the software you use and the work you do would help us advise on whether your hardware could use an upgrade.

SSDs are always good, but a workstation might be better…

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Roger Burton]

Thanks Walter, lightweight After Effects use really, and I rarely have to import video so it’s mainly graphics based instructional videos, animated maps etc, – generally nothing more than 3 minutes duration and often only web-based output but then when I need to produce for transmission in HD I feel a little more speed would help my workflow and when looking at resources outlining ways of improving performance I often read that getting rendering and caching away from the hard drive that the media is on is a good idea !

Roger

[Kevin Camp]

i’m sure walter will get back to you, but if you are looking for an internal solution, i’d just buy an internal ssd… unless you had a plan for the external enclosure.

i believe the 2011 imac has a sata3 internal bus, so you should be able to use a 6gb/s ssd. owc has several to choose from, a 120gb runs under $200:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/

double check with them about specs for your imac model.

also, i think bang for the buck, i’d get just one ssd and use that as the boot/application drive and keep the standard hd for footage.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Walter Soyka]

What Kevin said! If you can get an internal solution in the iMac, it’ll perform far better.

I will add that starting with CS6, a separate disk for the cache is a relatively cheap way to improve performance. If you can fit two SSDs in the iMac somehow, it would be worthwhile.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kevin Camp]

so i found this at owc:

https://blog.macsales.com/11638-owc-turnkey-program-for-2011-imacs-announced

they can fit 3 ssds in an imac. the fact that they do the install would make me assume that it is a difficult process. they probably fit 2×2.5″ ssds in the 3.5″ bay and another under the optical drive.

i did find a walk though to do the optical bay install, and it does seem rather involved:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Lg4IgJd04

and they sell a kit for that install (tools and all):

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/OWCDIYIM2

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Roger Burton]

Thanks both for making such an effort to help me out, I’m in the UK so will explore the local Mac people for the ‘upgrade’ (don’t feel brave enough to do it myself having looked at a few videos explaining the procedure) – so is an external SSD not really going to hack it ? Roger

[Kevin Camp]

the mid2011 imac has thunderbolt (i believe), so you could use a thunderbolt ssd like the lacie drive you were asking about.

you may not be able to use that as a boot drive, you’d need to check that part out, but you could use it as after effects’ media cache drive, which would still speed up working with ae and previews in cs6.

you typically don’t get a great performance boost in ae by using really fast drives for standard media (video, audio, images), so that would be fine on a tradition hd, which could also be an external thunderbolt enclosure if you wanted.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Roger Burton]

Thanks again Kevin, I’ll dig into this a little deeper now with the benefit of your help. – Roger

[Roger Burton]

There’s a little enclosure, it seems it takes 2 x ssds: LaCie eSata hub, might be a more flexible way to go, ie a small ssd for cache and another (when I get some more money) for rendering to or storage or whatever ?

Still expensive for a ‘housing’ plus the TB cable of course and then the drives ! – anyway thought I’d add this alternative in case anyone is following this thread.

Have good weekends chaps – Roger