Shopping for the best SSD for Mac? Internal or external, there's a great range of SSD upgrades you can perform on your Macintosh desktop or MacBook laptop to bring it up-to-speed with high-performance storage.įor upgrading many legacy Mac's and MacBooks, a very affordable off-the-shelf 2.5' laptop-size 6Gbps SATA III SSD is the right choice. Once done thats it! Just keep in mind a USB connection is much slower than a FireWire connection so if you have a very full drive it could take a while.Apple Compatible Solid-State Drive Upgrades This is the you want to connect your old drive externally to your system so you can bring all of your stuff over.

So at the end of the fresh OS install from the USB installer it will ask you if you want to migrate and user, apps or data. Unlike 2.5' laptop drives desktop drive pull more power which is why it needs to be a powered unit.

You'll need either a FireWire case to hold your old drive (which I think is a good idea) or you'll need a powered SATA to USB adapter like: Universal Drive Adapter. Here's how to create a bootable OS installer drive: How to Create a OS X El Capitan Boot Installer USB Flash Drive. Here's the IFIXIT guide you'll need to follow: iMac Intel 20' EMC 21 Hard Drive Replacementįor setup up your Mac OS you are limited to El Capitan 10.11.x. Last point is you do need to take the mounted thermal sensor off your old drive and place it on your new drive. The reason why these are your best choices here is your system only has a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) SATA interface so a fixed speed SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) drive won't work reliably! Both of these drives are auto sensing so they match to the systems I/O speed. You could also go with a 2.5' SSD like a Samsung 860 EVO I would go with a Seagate FireCuda as being the best for your system. If you go with a 2.5' SSD as an example you would need an adapter frame to convert the size difference as the system is expecting a 3.5' drive.Īs to drives I would go with a SSHD as it offers more zip than a typical HD. You can use either a 2.5' or a 3.5' drive.

Internal hard drive for imac 2007