I’ve written this post in English since it might be useful information also to people outside Finland.

I’m using iMac as my photoworkstation and why not, the new i7 processor and possibility to add 16GB of RAM is plenty enough for Lightroom or Photoshop. The main concern for me was the hard disk configuration and possibility to add new disks when the old ones get full. Apple has decided not to include eSata connection in iMac’s which leaves you just with FW800 or USB 2.0. USB we can forget right away, so I tried to go with FW800. The problem here is that most cases the external harddrives just want to go to sleep when they are not used. So when opening a file dialog and the external drive has gone to sleep, you have to wait 10 seconds for the computer to respond while the external drive is turning on again. Argh, not for me thanks!

My iMac came with the new option of adding a SSD drive to the configuration, so I do have very fast internal disk already. Problem is that it’s very small, 256GB, which is just few photoshoots of memory cards. I had opened my previous 24″ iMac, so I started thinking after reading many forums that how could I move the second internal drive as eSata to external case. This way I could simple fill the drive, unplug it when it’s full and buy new cheap internal drive in the range of 1-2TB. After reading my posts the only solution I found was from a company that does esata port installation, but you have to send your iMac to them and it’s quite expensive. I knew there was one SATA connector just hanging inside the iMac, so there just needed to be away to convert that to eSata type. And what do you know, from our local PC store I found this DeLOCK SATA -> eSata adapter (6,90 EUR). Next part is the nasty bit, you have to make a hole on the bottom of your iMac case, but with it’s not going to be visible, so don’t worry too much. There is lot of free space next to the memory modules at the bottom of you iMac, just dremel or drill and push the eSata cable through. With that and 50cm eSata cable I was then able to produce this result.

The Deltaco USB/eSata docking station for the 3.5″ SATA drive (35 EUR) is not maybe the most elegant, but I kind of like the raw feeling more than most of the plastic “designer” cases that everybody seems to have these day. The disk is even quieter than my old Lacie USB-drive, this of course depends totally on the disk you buy. I’m now using my old 1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM drive, which give excellent performance and capacity. Also when copying 600GB to the drive, it didn’t get too warm either.

Configuration wise, I have my Lightroom catalog files in the fast SSD and then the actual RAW files on my eSata drive. Then I back up everything to WD Studio Edition II Firewire 800 RAID, plus to some cheap USB drives when on-location.

So there you have it, very simple, very cheap (around 50 EUR + disk) and very well performing way to get unlimited space to your iMac.

Oh yeah, and I got rid of the DVD-drive at the same time since I really don’t remember when I’ve used it before and I have another Mac that I can use for DVD burning if needed. This was done using slim-ATA to SATA adapter, just as cheap solution. I will probably change the 2.5″ drive to some SSD drive in the future to use as Photoshop scratch drive.