Setting up a SSD

I'm going to install a 120gb SSD in my 27" iMac core i7. Currently I have a 2TB Hitatchi drive installed. I would like to install OSX as well as all my apps on the SSD and then keep all my user files on the 2TB drive. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get this set up once I install the SSD.
Right now I have all data, apps and OSX on the 2TB drive. Here's what I'd like to do. Once I install my SSD I'm going to do a fresh install of OSX and my apps. Then I'd like to remove OSX and apps from my 2TB drive and only keep my user files on it. My questions are ...
1. What's the best way to remove OSX from my 2TB drive? Do I have to erase the disc and then load all my user files once its been erased.
2. Also, is it ok if I keep OSX and all my apps on the 2B drive as well as my user files but still boot from the SSD? I would only be accessing my user files on the 2TB drive but wonder if I can still keep the OS and apps installed at the same time. Assuming I could but it would kind of be a waste of space, right?
3. Once I get both SSD and 2TB drive set up how I want them, I need to regularly back both of them up using CCC. I have a 3TB external drive that I backup to. Will I need to create 2 partitions on it, one for the SSD and one for the 2TB? I would like the SSD partition to be bootable incase the drive ever fails I wont miss a beat. I'm assuming to back both of them up I would need to create separate partitions on my external drive, one for the SSD and one for the 2TB.
Any help/answers are appreciated, let me know if my knowledge is incorrect. Thanks!
Message was edited by: labeck

Hello,
I will try to answer some of your questions ...
May I suggest that you read these articles to get an idea of what you are getting into doing this yourself. This is not an easy procedure and it is easy to damage your iMac:
OWC provides a closer look at iMac's SSD slot from Macworld
Installing iMac Intel 27" hard drive from iFixit
27 Mid 2010 iMac Disassembled from OWC
Also, note that *installing the SSD yourself will void your warranty!*
Is the SSD from Apple, or is it a 3d party SSD? The reason for asking is that if you don't get the SSD option with your original iMac purchase, you probably don't have the brackets to physically install the drive. OWC have a service where they will install the SSD for you (you have to send your iMac to them), but so far I haven't located a source for brackets alone. If anyone knows, that would be great news!
You can keep the 2TB SATA drive in place and add the SSD drive. To install OS X on the SSD, just boot your Mac using the restore DVD and install to the SSD drive; doing so will also change your boot drive to the SSD. (At this point, OS X would be on both your SSD and your 2TB drive; and if you wanted to, you could actually boot from either drive. You could select the boot drive every time you boot, or in SystemPrefs you can change your boot drive at any time.)
With a clean install of OS X on the SSD, I would also do a fresh install of the apps on the SSD. And I would not keep apps on two different drives - too much potential for confusion and problems.
Regarding your backup plan, since you want your SSD backup to be bootable, I would definitely partition the external drive; use the 1st partition for your bootable SSD backup and the 2d partition for your other backups.
Personally, I am far more intrigued by OWC's eSATA kit for the iMac.

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JumpCat4 wrote:
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Hamish,
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The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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Hardware: SSD drives and scratch disks

Hi,
I am building a new system for Photoshop. Two quick questions:
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Thanks in advance,
Alastair

G'day,
In answer to your query SSDs work fine to install cs4 on bar the following I'm having.
I've built a new system using ssds.and is working fine bar one problem
Specs of the system is
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I hit OK and get this error -
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Pressing ok then shuts the program and I need to reset cs4 prefernces and then it all works fine. OS is Win7 64 bit.
Now I have just got to try and fix this problem Anyone got suggestions?
Cheers
Onslow
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Thanks

Hi Ential,
Thanks for the info, I thought my question would go unanswered forever. I posted the question in January, and I have since set up the computer. Below I will detail my research and the configurations of drives that I have used on my M6800 since the time I posted the question you answered. Perhaps the results of my research and testing might help you.
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Samsung told me to leave 200GB of the drives (100GB each) unallocated when I partitioned the drives, this is generally referred to as "overprovisioning" (which you probably knew already).  I initially thought that overprovisioning could only be configured by the Samsung Magician software and a special process needed to take place to tell the firmware to utilize a specific amount of drive space for overprovisioninng.  The Samsung support agent told me that the Samsung SSD firmware (on both mSata and SSD) automatically uses any unallocated space as overprovisioned space (they are basically the same thing to the drive firmware) and it increases performance in a very noticible way when you have sustained use of the drive and/or durinng the time in between the TRIM process (garbage collection). The unallocated space is used by the firmware to write data to while blocks of data are awaiting internal wiping initiated by the TRIM process.
Since I have 200GB of unallocated space, I am able to have more sustained deletion and writing of data between TRIM/Garbage Collection runnninng than I would ever utilize without affecting the performance of the drive. Basically most SSD drives have performance decrease throughout the day until the TRIM process is completed by the drives firmware, so Samsung instructed me to leave at least 10% of the drive space unallocated to limit that problem. Smaller drives likely need a higher percentage of space unallocated as compared to larger drives since the daily amount of read/write operations is typically the same regardless of drive size.   The amount of space left unallocated/overprovisioned is based upon the amount of read/write operations done on any given drive, not based on the size of the drive itself. If you run drive intensive applications, you would then want to overprovision more GB of drive space, if you have light use of the drive then you can overprovision/unallocate less GB of drive space (all of the configuration info regarding overprovisioning and TRIM was given to me by a Samsung specialist over the telephone - I called their tech support phone number and got a storage specialist to talk to me).
I will look into the SATA version on the optical bay, I never thought about that with this computer. My prior computer was a Dell XPS 17 3D (L702X) notebook which had 2 internal 2.5" SATA, in which I installed an optical bay drive. On that specific computer the optical bay was technically an SATA 3, but due to design constraints it couldnt run at that speed since there was voltage leakage across some pathways in the chipset when the optical bay has read-write throughput that is typical of a hard drive (as opposed to much less data transfer typically seen on an optical drive).  The M6800 can be factory configured with an optical bay hard drive, so I suspect it can support one properly. The XPS 17 was not available with an optical bay drive as an OEM configuration from Dell, so it couldnt be expected to properly support one. The design issue with the voltage leak across the chipset pathways on the XPS 17 was known by Dell, but due to the low bandwidth of an optical drive, the problem never occured with any of the factory OEM configurations.
It is possible that the optical bay hard drive offered by Dell (the exact OEM Drive installed by Dell) could have an internal limitation to SATA 2 due to a similar design limitation. It would not be surprising if an SATA channel designed for optical drives had SATA 2 speed since I suspect there is no SATA Optical drives that could use more than 3GB/s of data anyway.
I purchased 2 of the 2TB 2.5" hard drives that Dell uses for OEM configurations for this computer, they are Samsung 5400 RPM drives. I have one in a 2.5" internal bay and the other in the optical bay - I converted my Blu Ray Recorder/Writer drive to an external drive. I will do some extended time speed tests on the optical bay drive to see if its performance matches the internal drive (which is the same exact model drive - I have 2 of the same Seagate 2TB drives installed with the same firmware).
I use the pair of 2TB drives to store .vhd and .vhdx drives for test platforms for Hyper-V machines. The virtualized servers with high hard drive utilization get moved to the SSD RAID-0 array, the rest are stored on the 4TB rotational drives.
If you have any questions or comments for me, please let me know. I will see what info I can find on the optical bay SATA revision for this notebook, I am very curious to find out if it is in fact SATA 2. I will let you know what my test results are, I will try to use the AS SSD benchmark program, I believe it will work with rotational drives, otherwise I will find another benchmark utility - do you have a recommendation on which to use?
Thanks again for your info and for pointing out the possible limitation of the optical bay..

SSD with HDD

Hi
I have a late 2011 Macbook Pro
I am planning to buy a 240gb SSD for boot and application, and use the current HDD for file storage
The HDD will be in the optical drive bay with a caddy, and the SSD will be where the HDD was before.
I was wondering how EXACTLY I would go about doing this, right from the moment I put the hard drives in.
Could you please include step-by-step instructions

Install the SSD in place of the HDD. Use Internet Recovery to set up the SSD:
Install OS X Using Internet Recovery
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your newly installed SSD (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.
This should restore the version of OS X originally pre-installed on the computer.
Now, you should be able to download Mavericks from your Purchases page in the App Store. Once done with this you use Startup Disk to set the SSD as the default startup drive. Once this is done, then you can install the HDD.
Now, with the HDD installed you can redirect OS X to use the Home folder on your HDD:
How to use an SSD with your HDD
If you are going to use an SSD as a boot drive together with your existing HDD as the "data" drive, here's what you can do.
After installing the SSD you will need to partition and format the SSD using Disk Utility. Then, install OS X on the SSD. After OS X has been installed boot from the SSD. Use Startup Disk preferences to set the SSD as the startup volume.
Open Users & Groups preferences. Click on the lock icon and authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on your user account listing in the sidebar and select Advanced Options from the context menu. You will see a field labeled "Home dir:" At the right end you will see a Change button. Click on it. In the file dialog locate the Home folder now located on the HDD (HDD/Users/account_name/.) Select the folder, click on Open button. Restart the computer as directed.
When the computer boots up it will now be using the Home folder located on the HDD.
Another more technical method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.
Be sure you retain the fully bootable system on your HDD in case you ever need it.
I would not try installing and using applications from the HDD nor making any other changes. There is little to be gained by doing more than is described above.

Setting up a SSD

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