Before reinstalling the OS, should I look into SS drives for my iMac?

I have a relatively new iMac that isn't as stable as I would like so I plan on reinstalling the OS, I was told that could help.

Before I do that, I was wondering if a could install a Solid State drive in my iMac? With the full installation and all my data I only use 27GB so I could get a way with a very small SS drive which should make it more cost effective.

Any help on this issue?

My personal advice is to stay away from SSD for another couple of years until the prices drop. They are still very expensive for not that much space. Plus, if it's going in an iMac, you won't need to worry about movement with regular HDDs since you won't be moving the computer while using it. The benefits of SSDs are no moving parts and lower power consumption. These two benefits are better for laptops, not iMacs. I would keep the stock iMac drive in it, unless you have plenty of cash lying around and wish to have the latest and greatest.

Just my personal opinion though.

A relatively new iMac should not exhibit instability. And.. I'm not sure what you mean by "it isn't as stable as I would like"? If there are any issues with your iMac that you feel should be corrected, make an appointment with Apple to have them resolved. Your machine should still be under warranty if it's fairly new as you say.

As far as the SS drive is concerned.... Solid State drives are nice, but have you looked into the procedures for swapping out a hard drive on an iMac? Do some searching thru Google or another search engine and you will find videos and instructions. Look them over and decide if you want to change the drive out and whether you feel you're capable of doing the job yourself.

Regards.

todd51 said:

The benefits of SSDs are no moving parts and lower power consumption.

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I thought the major benefit was speed and the smaller side effects were no moving parts and lower power consumption?

chscag said:

A relatively new iMac should not exhibit instability. And.. I'm not sure what you mean by "it isn't as stable as I would like"? If there are any issues with your iMac that you feel should be corrected, make an appointment with Apple to have them resolved. Your machine should still be under warranty if it's fairly new as you say.

Click to expand...

The problem isn't repeatable enough to take it in to Apple.

If you have any insight, please let me know:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/162515-problems-crashing.html

It depends on the controller that the drive has in it. Intel SSDs are ridiculously fast. I know Chris Pirillo put an SSD into his mac pro and got like a 2 second boot time. So yes, SSDs are faster (assuming its not some crap brand).

The not so good (or very good in a way) thing about them is that they work only for a set number of write cycles. So, after your drive reaches this point it will be read only. I mean, it shouldn't be an issue, you should still get years and years out of a drive, but it will stop working at some point. The good part about that though, is it's very predictable when that is going to happen. Unlike with a HDD, where a random part could spin off and futz things up.