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I am considering upgrading my system with an ssd, however, I would like to have extra storage. My thought was to use the old WD 250gb HDD as storage in the DVD bay. The HDD is a WDC WD2500AAJS-40VWA1 And the dvd is the OPTIARC DVD RW AD-5630A The ssd would go into the regular bay. Is such a thing possible or even worth while? Not sure what the speeds would be going to the HDD Thanks for your time.
Well this gets into the data rate between the different ports: HD Port = SATA II (375 MB/s)Optical = PATA 133 MB/sFireWire 800 = 100 MB/sUSB2 = 60 MB/s Now the rub! Your current HDD is a 3.5" drive, the optical drive carrier is designed to support a 2.5" drive so moving the HD won’t work as its too big! Putting the SSD into the optical drive carrier doesn’t really improve performance as about 1/3 of the speed of your SATA port. So I recommend you find FireWire case to house your internal drive. Here’s one of the few FireWire 3.5" enclosures still available! AKiTiO SK-3501 Super-S3 3.5" Enclosure without Drive, 1x eSATA, 2x FireWire 800, 1x USB 3.0 Maybe a better idea is to go with a new HDD but get a hybrid SSHD like Seagate FireCuda 3.5". It gives you the speed on booting up as the onboard SSD cache will zip! And yet, you still have the storage depth of a traditional HD. The price isn’t bad either! Here’s the IFIXIT guide to replace it: iMac Intel 20" EMC 2133 and 2210 Hard Drive Replacement. Here’s the IFIXIT SSHD: 1 TB SSD Hybrid 3.5" Hard Drive. Do make sure you transfer the thermal sensor to your new drive.
