Replace HDD with SSHD, SSD or optical drive with SSD?
I have an iMAC EMC 2133 with a new 3TB seagate Barracuda HDD. The previous one dies after about 3 years. We use about 1.5TB of this drive but we are wasting a lot of space with multiple photos. And with the gradual migration of photos to the iCloud I suspect we wont require anything like this amount of local storage.
I would like to extend the useable life of this computer by speeding it up.
I have reviewed your website and there appears to be 3 options.
Option 1 : replace the existing 3TB HDD with an SSD (prob 480GB. This will increase the speed dramatically but also reduce our local storage to a bare minimum.
Option 2 : replace the optical drive with an SSD. There seems to be some issue regarding the optical drive being a PATA drive. Thus reducing the usual increase in speed.
Option 3 : replace the existing 3TB HDD with a 2TB SSHD. This might be the best compimise of speed and storage capacity. I assume it wont be as fast as a pure SSD (in the old HDD space). Not sure if its as fast as a pure SSD in the optical space with the PATA (assuming my iMac has the PATA connection).
Interested in recommendations/options about these 3 options.