I’ve emailed an independent repairer nearby to see what they’ll charge me. Getting the SSD in there while everything works is definitely the smart move.
to install High Sierra (now a security liability online)
High Sierra end of life 31st Jan 2021 thus no more security updates. Its expected that EOL for Mojave at end of this year.I’ve only just remembered I read this. Why a security liability? I’d assumed High Sierra was an established, albeit superseded OS in wide usage.
Your iMac should have a Firewire 800 port that runs at 6Gbps and that will be more than enough to allow full SSD speeds. For example this SATA enclosure at £60 supports Firewire 800 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AR9ZYYQ/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21 and for around half the price you can get a Firewire 400 enclosure and that may be enough. May be less hassle than replacing the internal drive and possibly faster too as I believe this iMac has a SATA 2 interface that only supports up to 3Gbps. Then there is the temperature sensor thing so its not as straight forward as would initially appear.It’s ready for the next failure but for daily use, crucially the 2009 iMac only supports USB2 so an HDD connected inside (SATA?) is much quicker than a SSD via USB.
I’ve only just remembered I read this. Why a security liability? I’d assumed High Sierra was an established, albeit superseded OS in wide usage.
High Sierra end of life 31st Jan 2021 thus no more security updates. Its expected that EOL for Mojave at end of this year.
Cheers,
DV
nurse it for as long as it'll continue to meet my needs whilst planning for its replacement
This sums up my (very first world) ‘problem’. We’re very light users of a daily computer and I can’t get myself beyond seeing all that metal, glass and engineering go to waste. If I was wired differently I’d have chucked it in the bin last week and could have bought a replacement twice over. I just feel a responsibility to keep it running if I can, not at any cost but £50-£100 here and there and some effort seems worth it.
Sell it & replace it with an iPad maybe
I’ve thought on this and I’m going to do nothing. A local artisan will swap in the SSD for just £60, about the same price as a FireWire 800 caddy. But @miktec ’s post about support for High Sierra made me sit up and see the bigger picture - why pour ANY money into it? If I sense I’m under attack I might have a try with e.g. Linux Mint (although i’m not really a faffer) but more likely find someone who wants it for spares (that local artisan?) then jump forward 10 years. There’s a dribble of nice items pop up on this site.