Hi guys

Looking at buying an external SSD to connect to my mid 2011 iMac to give it a nice speed boost when booting the OS / opening applications. Been doing a bit of research and definitely not keen on opening up the machine to replace the internal HDD, and because this model has USB 2 thunderbolt is my only option. 

I'm on a budget, and most Thunderbolt gear seems to be horrendously expensive, but have found the following which I can get shipped to NZ for $240 in total via Amazon:

Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter

Crucial 120GB SATA SSD

Plus a 0.5m thunderbolt cable.

The only slight downsides are:

* The thunderbolt adapter is a dock which is designed to take Seagate's SSDs / HDDs which come in their own custom housing, but from what I'm reading the interface is standard SATA so I should be able to connect any SATA SSD, the only issue being that I would have to put a wee spacer behind it so that it sits nicely in the cradle. 

* 120GB is not big enough to transfer the entire contents of my internal HDD to but I'm thinking that if I have the OS and the applications on the SDD then I can leave my user files (like iPhoto library, iTunes library etc) on the internal HDD. The OS and the applications I use currently take up less than 40GB so 120GB should be plenty.

Plus sides are:

* Seems cheap relative the speed boost I should get from it

* The adapter means I will be able to upgrade to a bigger SSD in the future (if required) as prices fall

Anyone been down this road before and have any alternative suggestions / other insights?

Cheers