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Resolved 2017 iMac 27" external SSD as boot drive?
- Thread starter -Ryan-
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Did you ever get this resolved?
I have a similar problem - my Imac 27" 2011 High Sierra 10.13.6 internal HDD is dead. I didn't want to crack the machine and replace it, so I created a bootable LaCie ext Firewire / USB 3.0 portable HDD and that worked, but it was slower than molasses.
Eventually I got a Transcend StoreJet 500 for Mac ext SSD and boot from one of the Thunderbolt 2 ports. It was the cheapest TB2 SSD I could find as the 2011 iMac USB ports are 2.0 - half the speed of Firewire which I already knew was sluggish as a boot drive.
It works great - feels faster than the original HDD - 285 MB/s Write, 385 MB/s Read, nowhere near the "up to" 440 MB/s quoted speed of the Transcend SSD, but certainly good enough for streaming and surfing.
There is one problem though; on startup, the SSD is not detected, the machine chunters away at the corrupted int HDD for a while and then displays the unknown folder icon. I think this is (maybe?) because the SSD is bus powered and....?
Anyhoo, the workaround I found is to unplug / plug the SSD TB2 cable after I power up the iMac - the SSD comes to life and the machine boots quite snappily. I cannot find any solution to completely disable the cratered internal HDD so that the OS ignores it, nor any fix for the undetected SSD on startup.
So do you think the issue is gone now? you sound a little like you think the problems could continue?
Was never really any issues for me actually. So whatever issues others have been having, I've not had, thus I can't speak to whether said issues persist, only that it's been a fine experience back when I did it.
Resurrecting this thread. So I have a 2017 21.5" iMac with a spinner drive, running Mojave. The speed is atrocious. I just purchased a Samsung T5 500GB drive. I plan on using CCC to copy the spinner drive to the SSD. I just want to verify that I will be doing this right. Is it just as simple as formatting the SSD and using CCC? Because I'm on Mojave, I'm assuming I need to use APFS, or will HFS+ work?
Thank you for your help!
Keep us updated about the overall performance from the T5 upgrade over the spinning drive. App Open times, speed on exporting videos maybe or copy and pasting files, boot up speed. Unfortunately, I'm not sure which is the right format to use.
Hi there! Did you purchase the 2019 iMac already? If so, how did the SSD Upgrade go? How is the performance of your SATA SSD?
Got the SSD yesterday and set it up. CCC would not work. It kept crashing at 13.77GB. I tried three times. I kept the drive as HSF+ and my iMac was APFS, so I wonder if that was causing the issue. I said screw it and used my time machine backup to set up the SSD, but it converted it to APFS.
I am getting about 490MBps Write, 530MBps Read Speeds. my iMac with the 5400 spinner was getting about 60-70MBps Write/Read before.
Start-up time from button to login screen on the spinner was 1 minute 31 seconds. From Login to fully loaded was 1 minute and 2 seconds. For a total of 2 minutes 33 seconds. Now, button to login screen is 50 seconds, and login to fully loaded is 4 seconds, for a total boot time of 54 seconds. Almost 3x faster on login.
Application launch is instant. iTunes would usually bounce 5-6 times before opening, it now opens within one bounce. Same goes for Safari. MSFT Word usually bounced for about 15 seconds before opening, now it's within 3 seconds.
I am contributing the APFS to the slower than usual boot up time from button to login. I have the issue where it hangs on a black screen for about 15 seconds. But overall, I am so incredibly happy with it. Best $80 dollars I have spent. My machine has new life.
Ok I finally took my time, and changed the external case to a 3.1 gen 2 (faster) by the USB C port. My setting is EXTERNAL SSD 250 GBS bootable 10.14, my internal 1TB HDD (AFPS more made VOLUMES better than PARTITIONS seems so) so one can clone my external SSD and keep it bootable with CCC and the other VOLUME of HDD with data, big librarys and so on. All of it also makes itself a copy to my 3TB TC via Time machine.
Question: ¿Is this a nice setup for backup and security?) should I use one more backup for the SSD portion in case??
thanks in advance, but information is important, even for a home computer, and prefer always being SAFE than SORRY.
Question: ¿Is this a nice setup for backup and security?) should I use one more backup for the SSD portion in case??
thanks in advance, but information is important, even for a home computer, and prefer always being SAFE than SORRY.
mcfraga -
You back up a computer running from an external SSD pretty much as you would back up any other Mac.
Only now, you have to back up the external drive, too.
That means... get another drive, or backup to a partition on your backup drive.
You back up a computer running from an external SSD pretty much as you would back up any other Mac.
Only now, you have to back up the external drive, too.
That means... get another drive, or backup to a partition on your backup drive.
I have the same problem with Mojave.
After some investigation, I found that my Mac freeze when the RAM is full. At this point, the Mac tries to use the Virtual Memory (swap) but it do not work.
I solved the problem by increasing the RAM.
In any case I see in different forum that a lot of people have this kind of problem ....
On my 2017 5k iMac I’m using an external U32 Shadow Dura 1TB USB-C (3.1 Gen 2) Rugged Portable SSD.
I reformatted it (can’t remember to what) and then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the internal start-up disk to the new SSD.
Everything works fine.
Only drawback I find is initial computer start-up seems a little long. On the other hand I rarely shut it down.
[doublepost=1568372528][/doublepost]
‘I am. No issues.
I reformatted it (can’t remember to what) and then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the internal start-up disk to the new SSD.
Everything works fine.
Only drawback I find is initial computer start-up seems a little long. On the other hand I rarely shut it down.
[doublepost=1568372528][/doublepost]
‘I am. No issues.
So once you set up your external SSD as your new boot drive, what do you do with your IMac internal hard drive? Does it become just a storage Drive? Can you format it? Or does it have to have an operating system on it to remain viable integrated hard drive?
katboy asked:
"So once you set up your external SSD as your new boot drive, what do you do with your IMac internal hard drive? Does it become just a storage Drive? Can you format it? Or does it have to have an operating system on it to remain viable integrated hard drive?"
You should keep a bootable-to-the-finder copy of the OS on it (and whatever else you wish).
You always always ALWAYS want to have "a second bootable copy" of the Mac OS quickly available at all times.
How are you going to get booted and running if the external SSD boot drive suddenly won't boot...?
"So once you set up your external SSD as your new boot drive, what do you do with your IMac internal hard drive? Does it become just a storage Drive? Can you format it? Or does it have to have an operating system on it to remain viable integrated hard drive?"
You should keep a bootable-to-the-finder copy of the OS on it (and whatever else you wish).
You always always ALWAYS want to have "a second bootable copy" of the Mac OS quickly available at all times.
How are you going to get booted and running if the external SSD boot drive suddenly won't boot...?
With Internet Recovery, or one of the 6 thumb drives I have lying around with various versions of macOS and Linux.... That's how I do it anyway. Or from one of my other Macs' install through a Thunderbolt cable and Target Disk Mode
casperes wrote:
"With Internet Recovery, or one of the 6 thumb drives I have lying around with various versions of macOS and Linux.... That's how I do it anyway. Or from one of my other Macs' install through a Thunderbolt cable and Target Disk Mode"
Sounds good, but a question:
How many of those will boot TO THE FINDER ...?
"With Internet Recovery, or one of the 6 thumb drives I have lying around with various versions of macOS and Linux.... That's how I do it anyway. Or from one of my other Macs' install through a Thunderbolt cable and Target Disk Mode"
Sounds good, but a question:
How many of those will boot TO THE FINDER ...?
Hi there! First time poster here. But was inspired!! After three days struggling with Apple support and a rather unhelpful Authorised Apple Dealer...have learned more in this thread in the last 20 minutes!
So basically am a freelance video editor so speed is important and have a 27” 2017 iMac with a 2TB fusion HDD (and 120GB SSD) which is getting slower and slower... And running on the latest Mojave.
After being told it would £750+ to upgrade my internal drive to an SSD I looked into external...and this seems to be the way to go!
Although pretty new to this so just wanted to check steps as can’t afford to be without my iMac next week when I have a bunch of scary editing deadlines!
so to clarify, this is what I think I’ve learned from the above:
1. get an external ssd (samsung x5)
2. Go into recovery mode and format it into HSF+
3. Then install Mojave onto in recovery mode? Whilst trying to boot with it?
4. Then download carbon copy and copy my (roughly 750Gb of data on my fusion drive) to it
5. Then boot off the ssd
6. Then partition the fusion drive to two 1tbs?
7. Use 1tb as optional back up space and then use 1tb as a carbon copy clone of the ssd which will be bootable?
8. Then always time machine everything as backups
9. Bish bash bosh...quicker iMac?
hopefully this is correct but just wanted to run it by you Pros first! And if it's right, I’ll do it and report back all progress and speed tests! And hopefully that’ll help the next me who comes across this thead!
really appreciate the help! Thank you!!
So basically am a freelance video editor so speed is important and have a 27” 2017 iMac with a 2TB fusion HDD (and 120GB SSD) which is getting slower and slower... And running on the latest Mojave.
After being told it would £750+ to upgrade my internal drive to an SSD I looked into external...and this seems to be the way to go!
Although pretty new to this so just wanted to check steps as can’t afford to be without my iMac next week when I have a bunch of scary editing deadlines!
so to clarify, this is what I think I’ve learned from the above:
1. get an external ssd (samsung x5)
2. Go into recovery mode and format it into HSF+
3. Then install Mojave onto in recovery mode? Whilst trying to boot with it?
4. Then download carbon copy and copy my (roughly 750Gb of data on my fusion drive) to it
5. Then boot off the ssd
6. Then partition the fusion drive to two 1tbs?
7. Use 1tb as optional back up space and then use 1tb as a carbon copy clone of the ssd which will be bootable?
8. Then always time machine everything as backups
9. Bish bash bosh...quicker iMac?
hopefully this is correct but just wanted to run it by you Pros first! And if it's right, I’ll do it and report back all progress and speed tests! And hopefully that’ll help the next me who comes across this thead!
really appreciate the help! Thank you!!
A customer with a dead imac containing his 2tb sata ssd bought a new 2019 imac with 1tb fusion drive. I did not want to open a brand new machine under warranty, even though i have done many disk swaps on 2013 etc thin imacs. Since he has TB3 ports, I put his SSD in a USB3.1gen housing from ebay and connected it via the TB3 port, and booted off the external. Speeds were nearly 500mb/s which is faster than the sustained fusion drive speeds (when the spinner kicks in) . No problems really , but I had to update his external to 10.14.6 and that converted it to apfs. I suppose the boot was slower than i expected but once your in its great . The housing was only about $20au . also, i did not think to check the status of trim, ill do that next time.
So in summary I dont think there is any advantage to opening up the imac (a TB3 model) unless the internal fails, or you are going to fit an nvme ssd via adapter directly to the motherboard. Now that would be faster...
So in summary I dont think there is any advantage to opening up the imac (a TB3 model) unless the internal fails, or you are going to fit an nvme ssd via adapter directly to the motherboard. Now that would be faster...
Hi all,
I too want to try this option. Forgive me, treat me like I know n-o-t-h-i-n-g and you won't go far wrong! I just want to check something. I can't upgrade my iMac to Catalina because of the hardware (see specs below). If I use an external SSD as a boot drive the hardware in my iMac is no longer an issue, correct? Processor won't interfere with anything? I believe it's the processor which prevents me from upgrading this iMac.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i3
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 12 GB
I have a feeling that it can't possibly be as simple as booting from an external drive, but only because using an external drive will be about £1,800 cheaper (depending on which one I buy) than the iMac spec I've been eyeing up; seems too good to be true.
Is there anything in particular that I need to look for in the external drive? Any little gizmo (CPU, if that's the correct term?) that it needs to have for my money-saving scheme to work?
I too want to try this option. Forgive me, treat me like I know n-o-t-h-i-n-g and you won't go far wrong! I just want to check something. I can't upgrade my iMac to Catalina because of the hardware (see specs below). If I use an external SSD as a boot drive the hardware in my iMac is no longer an issue, correct? Processor won't interfere with anything? I believe it's the processor which prevents me from upgrading this iMac.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i3
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 12 GB
I have a feeling that it can't possibly be as simple as booting from an external drive, but only because using an external drive will be about £1,800 cheaper (depending on which one I buy) than the iMac spec I've been eyeing up; seems too good to be true.
Is there anything in particular that I need to look for in the external drive? Any little gizmo (CPU, if that's the correct term?) that it needs to have for my money-saving scheme to work?
so to clarify, this is what I think I’ve learned from the above:
1. get an external ssd (samsung x5)
2. Go into recovery mode and format it into HSF+
3. Then install Mojave onto in recovery mode? Whilst trying to boot with it?
4. Then download carbon copy and copy my (roughly 750Gb of data on my fusion drive) to it
5. Then boot off the ssd
6. Then partition the fusion drive to two 1tbs?
7. Use 1tb as optional back up space and then use 1tb as a carbon copy clone of the ssd which will be bootable?
8. Then always time machine everything as backups
9. Bish bash bosh...quicker iMac?
hopefully this is correct but just wanted to run it by you Pros first! And if it's right, I’ll do it and report back all progress and speed tests! And hopefully that’ll help the next me who comes across this thead!
really appreciate the help! Thank you!!
Mostly correct. Your 2TB Fusion drive is really a single 2TB standard HDD and a small SSD that are merged in software. So you could I merge them and have a uselessly small SSD and a dumb hard drive. Personally I would just leave them as a Fusion Drive and use it for data that doesn’t need a lot of performance. Like music and photos for example.
No. The CPU is unrelated to the hard drive and booting externally doesn’t change it. If your iMac doesn’t support Catalina that doesn’t change with an external SSD.