what hard drive will work on 2008 imac

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tenthwife Author

Level 1

4 points

what hard drive will work on 2008 imac

need to identify an external hard drive to purchase for my 2008 vintage imac.

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Feb 11, 2023 2:30 PM

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Answer 1

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Jack-19

Level 8

46,020 points

Feb 11, 2023 3:36 PM in response to tenthwife

Hi there!

Your iMac (Early 2008) has one FireWire 400 port, one FireWire 800 port, and three USB 2.0 ports.

The fastest connection will be FireWire 800 (~75MB/s). Other World Computing (OWC) still sells FireWire 800 external disks:

Alternatively, you could purchase a modern USB 3.0 external hard disk; however, your Mac will only achieve USB 2.0 speeds from it (~40MB/s). An example of a USB external hard disk is the LaCie 1TB Rugged USB-C Portable Hard Drive - Apple. You'll also need a special USB-C to USB-A adapter cable, such as this one, to connect to this modern drive.

Regardless, using an external solid state drive (SSD) isn't recommended for your Mac since you'd only achieve 5%-20% of its performance with your Mac.

Hope this helps!

Jack

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Answer 2

Limnos

Level 10

418,861 points

Feb 11, 2023 2:43 PM in response to tenthwife

The fastest ports are Firewire but I doubt you'll find anything with Firewire for sale.

The other ports are USB-A/B It's not hard finding those. If you find something with USB-C which is what modern computers use, you can buy an adapter.

The modern drive type is SSD. I am no expert on this but my inclination would be to go for an older (and less expensive) HDD rotational drive. You're running older software on that 2008 iMac and I am not sure it will know how to handle a SSD properly. SSDs have some design differences in terms of file handling that are designed to work best with newer operating system versions. The big advantage with SSDs is speed but with your older USB ports you won't be able to take advantage of that.

I know you're hoping somebody will post saying, "Buy this catalog item," with a link. My preferred usage, however, is not with a traditional enclosure but with a docking station. I can swap external drives quickly and I only have to buy one "enclosure" for the 8 drives I own.

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