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Hi everybody! My name is Jim. I want to upgrade my old MA199LL/ 17" early 2006 Imac. I can swap the old hdd with the ssd i bought but, do you think it’s possible to add a bracket for two 2,5" drives? I would prefer to keep both the SSD and the HDD inside the computer. As much as i searched online, it is possible to fit the bracket though, the height will reach the limit of the given space. But what about the connections? I saw only one SATA port on the board. How can i connect them both? I even searched for a caddy to change the optical drive with it but, to no avail. I’m waiting for the new screen to arrive - it will take some time to find it’s way from the U.S. to Greece - and i hope i’ll be able to solve this by then so that, i won’t have to open the case again. Any help would be much appreciated!!!
Be careful here! You want to watch how much you spend on these older systems. Going with a SSD drive I think is pushing it. While I understand your desire to get the best performance from your system it has limitations! The biggest one is the last version Mac OS-X (10.7.5 Lion) you can run on this system does not offer TRIM services so using a SSD will be iffy unless you can find an old copy of TRIM Enabler The second is this systems HD SATA port is only SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) so you’ll need to find a drive that supports this older slower interface. Most SSD only offer SATA II/SATA III support (auto SATA speed sensing). As to add a second drive sorry your system only offers one SATA port so one drive is your limit. You would need to replace your PATA optical drive to a PATA to SATA caddy to hold a second drive. Keep in mind the PATA interface is very slow! So you would only want to put a HD which holds the data files. But thats getting overly complex and expensive! Frankly, I would go with a SSHD like Seagate FireCuda SSHD this drive offers support for SATA I and has a SSD cache onboard so you don’t need to worry about TRIM services at the OS level as the hardware takes care of it all. For reference here’s the drives spec sheet: FireCude Specs. Review your SSD’s spec sheet it needs to state it supports SATA I. You’ll see this drive does! SATA Transfer Rates Supported (Gb/s) - 6.0/3.0/1.5 You’ll get the zip you’re looking for and yet have the depth of a traditional drive. And you don’t need to give up your optical drive! Here’s the IFIXIT guide you’ll need to follow: iMac Intel 17" Hard Drive Replacement
