One of the key technologies that has appeared in recent years is Solid State Drives (SSD). The technology is so prevalent now that you will find it in all new computers, your phone, even your watch! It's so much faster then a standard hard drive that it will dramatically improve the performance of your computer.
Why Hard Disk Drives are Slow
If your Mac has a CD drive then it's most likely also got a Hard Drive. If your Mac is an iMac, even one as new as the 2019 model it too will be running a Hard Drive. Only the most recent generations of Mac Mini have switched to SSD, so if your's is older then, you got it, it's most likely running with a Hard Drive.
Hard Drive technology is mechanical, you can think of it like a little record player, a disc (called a plater) runs at high speed, and a little arm runs over the head to read the data off of the disk. This whole process takes time as files are not generally stored sequentially on the drive. This means for each piece of data that is requested to be read or written the drive has to seek to the correct block before it can process the data. The higher number of revolutions that the drive is rated for then the faster this process will be. However the speed is vastly slower then SSD which, being all electronics, don't have to perform the seek step before accessing data.
The slim 21.5-inch iMacs (manufactured from 2012 to 2021) all ship as standard with a 5400rpm drive. This is the slowest speed available and is the key component that is hampering the performance. It's highly recommended to upgrade the drives in these machines. Mechanical drives are also susceptible to damage from knocks and bangs which can render them inoperable, which makes them a poor choice for laptops and other portable computers.
Retro Fitting an SSD
Thankfully SSDs have been designed in a form factor which allows them to be fitted in all of these Macs that are still running Hard Drives. In fact it's the upgrade that we perform the most for people as it gives them better performance than when the machine was new. If you are interested in upgrading your Mac then get in contact with us and we can arrange an appointment to get your computer booked in for its upgrade.
SSD or More RAM
Many people instantly reach for more RAM when they feel the performance of their machine is getting slow. Although RAM can help in this regard, I would say that a better option in the most part is to upgrade the Hard Drive to an SSD. Not only does it improve the read and write speed of the machine it also can mitigate the need to fit more RAM. The reason is down to virtual memory.
Virtual memory is a technique that operating systems use to manage the RAM required by applications when physical RAM is limited. It does this be performing 'page-outs' which move data in and out of RAM as required. This data is written to the internal drive. When the machine has not got enough RAM for all of the currently open applications the number of page-outs will be high, impacting the performance of the machine especially when writing out to a hard drive. The read and write speed of the SSD is so much higher that it makes the performance hit from the page-out process negligible.
Fusion Drive
Apple have deployed a technology called Fusion Drive which is an attempt to give you the best of both worlds - the cheap large storage of a Hard Drive and the speed improvements of an SSD. It does this by intelligently combining a Hard Drive with a small SSD. It monitors the machine's usage and stores the most commonly used data on the SSD portion thus improving the performance of the machine. Although the technology is good, it still doesn't beat an all SSD system and for some workflows can even be detrimental.
For instance if you work in audio and have large sample libraries, those files will not be initially cached to the SSD, and so the applications using them will have to pull them from the Hard Drive. You are unlikely to use the same samples enough for the Fusion Drive to move them to the SSD effectively meaning you will be working from a Hard Drive only system. The good news is that we can still replace the Hard Drive component of a Fusion Drive and gain the speed benefits of doing so.