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External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

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Re: External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

Postby RogerS » 06 Dec 2019, 18:10

Woodster wrote:It’s an iMac about 8 years old and I think the 500Gb drive is getting pretty full. Probably getting a new iMac next year so I want to back up everything manually so we can start afresh.


You don't need to do that because you connect the two Macs together and the new one asks if you want the data to be copied over.

What OS are you on? iPhoto disappeared with later versions and I know some people had difficulty with the migration over to Photos.

You do know about the Apple Refurb store ?

It could be that your drive is starting to fail. There is an excellent program called scannerz...free last time I looked. Basically it really puts your hard drive through its paces (in max diagnostic mode) and will (at the initial pass) give you a view regarding how its performing ...not 100% accurate, of course, because it is only a snapshot and a loose comparison against how similar drives should perform.

It's strength lies in the fact that it saves a detailed log regarding your drive and so if you run the test again in the future, it compares the two results and highlights if the performance has dropped.
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Re: External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

Postby Woodster » 06 Dec 2019, 21:43

I’m aware I can just copy the data over from an old machine to a new one. We’re both agreed though that there’s a lot of rubbish on the old machine that we’d rather not just copy over to a new one. I run a diagnostic check on the HD from time to time and in spite of it being quite old it was ok when I last checked it. The iMac has done good service but at 8 years old it’s time to upgrade. I will probably wipe the old machine and use it for “secondary” duties when the other machine is in use. My wife uses a desktop quite a bit but 95% of what I do gets done on an iPad. It’s Sod’s law sometimes though that we both want to use a desktop at the same time...

We’ll probably just get a current version of the 21.5” iMac we’ve already got but with a 1Tb fusion drive. I’ll also need to get an optical drive for legacy stuff.

I need to decide what photo editing app I intend to use in the future as I’ll likely drop LightRoom.
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Re: External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

Postby TrimTheKing » 06 Dec 2019, 21:57

What iMac do you have Woodster? I have the 2010 model 27". The HD was dying on it a while back so I stripped it and replaced with a 1GB SSD, and also took the opportunity to add a load more RAM. Originally the specs said it could only take 16GB *which I had in it) but when Yosemite came out I found something that said it could actually handle 32GB, so I went on Crucial and bought it up and it's still going strong now.

Genuinely, I am running that 2010 machine right now, as my main machine, and it handles EVERYTHING I can throw at it and more. I really can see it going on another 5 years or more! Bloody amazing machine, and I will sweat it as long as possible because it was the last model that had user serviceable parts. All the modern ones are locked down with all components soldered to the PCB, so the only thing you can change is the Hard Drive.

This machine will only leave my desk when it genuinely can't do the job any more, but right now I can't see that day...
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Re: External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

Postby Woodster » 06 Dec 2019, 22:22

Not sure without checking. It’s a 21.5” bought in 2011 I think. 500Gb HDD and probably 4Gb RAM. As said it’s mainly for my wife’s use but with occasional drawing/photo editing (rare these days)/letters for me. I’d go for the 27” but she only wants the 21.5”.
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Re: External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

Postby RogerS » 06 Dec 2019, 22:23

TrimTheKing wrote:What iMac do you have Woodster? I have the 2010 model 27". The HD was dying on it a while back so I stripped it and replaced with a 1GB SSD, and also took the opportunity to add a load more RAM. Originally the specs said it could only take 16GB *which I had in it) but when Yosemite came out I found something that said it could actually handle 32GB, so I went on Crucial and bought it up and it's still going strong now.

Genuinely, I am running that 2010 machine right now, as my main machine, and it handles EVERYTHING I can throw at it and more. I really can see it going on another 5 years or more! Bloody amazing machine, and I will sweat it as long as possible because it was the last model that had user serviceable parts. All the modern ones are locked down with all components soldered to the PCB, so the only thing you can change is the Hard Drive.

This machine will only leave my desk when it genuinely can't do the job any more, but right now I can't see that day...


I also wondered about more memory but then realised that Memory Pressure for the sort of stuff I do was always very, very healthy.
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Re: External backup drive - SSD or hard drive ?

Postby TrimTheKing » 06 Dec 2019, 23:13

Memory allows you to have a LOT more open at any given time, and I rarely power my machine off, it sits in standby, so memory leaks play a part. I also do a bit of video encoding and that can be a beast for memory consumption. At the time it cost me £120 for 32GB RAM, whereas Apple wanted £800 for half that when factory fitted!!!!
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