IMac – SSD In iMac G4 not recognized

Just an update - I've successfully connected my 2TB HD to my MacBook's internal SATA data connector. If anyone's interested in doing this themselves, you'll need:

• external enclosure with eSATA to power the drive (I'm using a NexStar CX with eSata):

• an eSATA to female SATA cable (I got mine from http://satacables.com, see "eSATA DATA Cable Extension Male to Female" near the bottom of the page):

1. You'll need to cut those plastic tabs off the SATA portion of the cable, leaving only the section with the pins - otherwise, the cable won't fit in the port.

2. Follow iFixit's steps for removing the keyboard section of the MacBook

3. Remove the hard drive, connect cable. Since we had to remove the tabs on the cable in order to make the connection, the cable does not latch in place. I recomment taping the table to the bottom of the case where the hard drive was:

   

4. Reverse the disassembly steps to put the computer back together, with the exception of the memory cover and the battery. The cable should now poke out of the hole where the battery used to be.

5. Install the hard drive in the external enclosure, connect the eSATA and power cables, and enjoy.

   

In the end I went with the most expensive but also the fastest option: #1 which was the Mercury Accelsior PCIe based SSD hardware RAID array (RAID 0 by default which I will keep) in a Mercury Helios Thunderbolt PCIe chassis. The main reason was because it was the only one that mentioned it was bootable (and made a big deal out of that fact).

I paid $799 for the 240 GB model (it's 128 GB X 2 minus the unusable amount...a nice touch for the seller not to count that). It's got a lot of technology built into the card including processors and cache etc. to monitor and control the hardware RAID array including extra error checking and load leveling/balancing. Also it's theoretically upgradable (each drive is called a "blade" and while they don't yet sell independent blades they may in the future). Also the PCIe chassis is an extra bit of the investment that could live beyond the SSD, just like the whole arrangement could live beyond the use of my iMac itself.

This is a great review on it where they say it's "really fast. Ridiculously fast."

A guy on youtube has a (somewhat boring) video of his Mac Pro taking 3 minutes to boot and launch paint shop pro with his hard drive and then after setting up one of these it cut down to 15 seconds! Crazy balls out fast.

This is the sellers sites for;

• The Thunderbolt PCIe Chassis

• The SSD RAID array

• And the bundled special of the two

Of note is that if they didn't offer the bundle discount and if it were not so much more expensive I might have opted for this much more attractive chassis.

Or for even more and larger chassis with multiple slots and supporting larger sized cards.

These chassis got me thinking about the possibilities with thunderbolt. Now any iMac or MacBook can be as capable and expandable as a Mac Pro...there are even developments with video cards in one of these things! I do wonder if it would be possible to take a MacBook Air and hook up a thunderbolt PCIe chassis with a high end graphics card with the display on the internal monitor?

If I was one of these manufacturers, or even Apple, I would consider making a full on chassis with PCIe slots and storage areas, etc. I really wanted a Mac Pro but they were so old...now I can get some of that goodness piecemeal, though for a price. :-)

I get the device about a week from now and will post back my impressions if anyone is interested.