Late 2012 iMac - External SSD Upgrade Q's

[blueprint1983]

Hey guys, I searched around and need some clarification on this process.

A few things - I do not want to open up my iMac to do the internal upgrade because it's a bit much for me. I've done a RAM upgrade but obviously that's easier.

Mac info:
27 iMac (Late 2012)
Model: MD096LL/A
Ram: 16 gb

More details: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-i5-3.2-27-inch-aluminum-late-2012-specs.html

Anyways, questions:

1 - Can you run time machine on the old, internal hd or would that slow things down?

2 - Would it be better to do a fresh install of the OS onto the SSD or clone it?

3 - I just purchased both a 1 tb and 2 tb T5 Samsung external SSD. I purchased the 1 tb one and then got the 2 tb one because I've already used 750 gb on my internal hd and figured I should upgrade to 2 tb. So the 1 tb is probably going to be returned.

4 - I've noticed people buying internal SSD drives and putting them in a case and using them externally, what is the advantage vs buying a T5 portable drive?

5 - What is the best way to divide up the internal and external drives? I was thinking I move *everything* over to the 2 tb SSD and keep *everything* as is on the old drive until everything is working for a month or so but then what should I do with the internal?

Mechanical Drive (1 tb):
Option 1 - I was leaning towards the Time Machine but afraid it might slow down things.
Option 2 - Use it as an archive for media files like music, photos, documents?

SSD Drive (2 tb):
Option 1 - New Operation System and basically start fresh.
Option 2 - Clone the entire old drive.


FWIW - I use this machine strictly for audio production.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Would it be better to do a fresh install of the OS onto the SSD or clone it?"

Try cloning it over first.
That may be "all you need".
If it doesn't work out to your satisfaction, just erase the SSD and start over with a clean install.

"I've noticed people buying internal SSD drives and putting them in a case and using them externally, what is the advantage vs buying a T5 portable drive?"

Some folks (like me) just prefer to "do it themselves".
That's about it.

"What is the best way to divide up the internal and external drives?"

I would set things up this way:
- EXTERNAL SSD (see above)
- Internal drive -- after the SSD is up-and-running, I'd use it as "the cloned backup" of my external boot drive. This way, you always have an IMMEDIATELY-ACCESSIBLE SECOND BOOT SOURCE if the external SSD won't boot.

 

[blueprint1983]

I think I'll keep the internal drive untouched as a back-up for a month or even permanently. Especially since I got 2 TB on the external SSD - I won't be running out of space anytime soon. I've used 750 gb on my current internal drive fwiw.

Would running time machine on the internal be a bad idea? (since it would keep the internal drive up to date with the SSD) I'm concerned that could slow things down because its' write speed is so slow and also because I would surpass the 1 tb amount in a matter of months.

 

[MSastre]

Best practice is to keep at least 15-20% free space on your system drive.

 

[blueprint1983]

Do I format the external drive to Mac OSX Journaled - GUID or APFS? My current HD is APFS.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you're using Mojave or Catalina, use APFS.
If it's High Sierra or earlier, use Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.

GUID in ALL cases.

 

[blueprint1983]

I'm using Catalina so APFS it is. Any other settings aside from GUID?

I'm reading about other Macrumors users having issues with a clean install and recommending doing a clone via Carbon Copy Cloner. This is due to a clean install not having the recovery partition?

 

[3SQ Machine]

I ran my late 2013 off an external USB SSD (AngelBird 256GB in that case) before upgrading to a 2019. NIGHT AND DAY. Felt like a new machine.

I kept the internal HDD "as is" and did a clean install of Mojave on the external SSD and migrated the files I thought necessary to the (much smaller) SSD. I used an external NVME drive for other files. This, for me, was "easier" but UGH the BUGS drove me nuts and I swatted them for months. Part of this was because I was using the rig for audio production and MY GOD does Apple make it impossible to find all the relevant Logic Pro X preferences files, preset settings, loops, user patches, etc. etc. I kept detailed notes in case I ever have to do that painful exercise again.

But enough of me reliving that. The user I created THEN is the user I have NOW on my 2019 iMac. I kept the old user for a few more months but eventually realized that I had "moved on" from my old 2013 HDD user and "started fresh" with a new love.

With my 2013 the internal HDD was just there as a "just-in-case" boot drive. It was an incredible waste of space but I was becoming concerned about the HDD's health so I thought it was an unreliable storage source anyway.

I continued to use my external 4TB WD HDD as my time machine backup for my "new" user. I would NOT use an internal HDD as a Time Machine backup because you can't boot from it and if it fails you're SOL.

Anyway, I can go on and on. I basically did what you're doing. It worked and I'm glad i did it. However, I never could shake that one day that external SSD was just going to get disconnected and die on me and days of misery would ensue. I traded in my 2013 for more money than I thought it was worth and snagged a base model iMac that has surprised me with its speed, but more so for its screen.

 

[Fishrrman]

Like I mentioned above, try CCC first.
If you're not satisfied, just erase the drive and try something else.

It couldn't be any easier.

 

[blueprint1983]

I'm listening and doing it today Fishrrman. I've seen your posts on this topic in other threads and am following your advice.

 

[||\||]

Opening up 2012 and later iMacs to switch out the SATA drive is no big deal. I am not all that mechanically inclined and it worked out just fine for me. All you need is an $8 tape and pizza cutter combo kit, a torx 10 driver, and about 20-30 minutes of time. An extra set of hands helps.

 

[blueprint1983]

Not for me and not today. Maybe when i get a new iMac I'll tinker with this one.

 

[blueprint1983]

So just finished and using it as I type.

1 - "Feels" around 30% faster.
2 - Black Magic HD write and read speeds were around 80-90 on the spinning drive, now is around 410-420 with the SSD (no surprise here).

Installation was relatively uneventful (remember I'm using Catalina on a late 2012 iMac)
1 - Formatted APFS on the 2 TB Samsung T5. I actually did Mac OS Journaled GUID but then did it again with APFS because I couldn't find the APFS convert setting at first.
2 - Ran Carbon Copy Cloner overnight.
3 - Everything worked perfectly this morning - but still testing.

Macrumors with the correct info on this (See Fishrrman's post on this topic).

For info on my machine look at the first post.

 

[||\||]

So just finished and using it as I type.

1 - "Feels" around 30% faster.
2 - Black Magic HD write and read speeds were around 80-90 on the spinning drive, now is around 410-420 with the SSD (no surprise here).

Writes are probably going to settle in the 200-300 MB/sec range over time. TRIM support insures full speed in reading and writing to the drive. This is the reason why people install internally (SATA) or boot via Thunderbolt (PCIe) over USB.

 

[blueprint1983]

Which is fine. I just am trying to think of what to do with the internal drive. Probably nothing and just leave it as is unless you guys have some awesome idea.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I just am trying to think of what to do with the internal drive."

Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper (both are FREE to download and try for 30 days) to turn the internal drive into a bootable cloned backup.

This way, you always have an "immediately-accessible second boot source" available if anything were to go wrong with the external SSD (but that will never ever happen, right...?).

Update the cloned backup once or twice a week.
That will be "all you need".

Other than that, you'll have to get used to a "second drive icon" always sitting there on the desktop.
So what?

 

[blueprint1983]

Just an update, everything is still running great. I do hear the internal spinning up every now and then. I sometimes wonder why even tho it's not in use.

 

[Fishrrman]

Every now and then, the OS seems to "poll" the busses.
It can "wake up" sleeping drives, even if you're not accessing them.

Something you could try:
a. Boot externally as you normally do
b. install a small, free menu bar app named "Semulov".
c. Use Semulov to "dismount" the internal drive.
No promises, the Mac could still "touch" the internal now and then anyway.

 

[3SQ Machine]

Hey Blueprint, you get any odd issues with your audio production? When I was running my '13 off USB (getting about the same reads), I found a few minor recording issues like being unable to use mic controls within logic itself (I could always manually do it on the audio interface). It was only when running the OS off USB but not internal. Honestly it wasn't that big of a deal as everything else was better.

Regarding the internal, since it's a 7200 RPM it would actually be sufficient for reading/recording audio if you wanted to partition a portion of it for a scratch disk, if you have room. Agree though that you should absolutely keep a working copy of the OS on there just in case.

 

[blueprint1983]

Hey Blueprint, you get any odd issues with your audio production?

None. The only inconveniences I've had was from Carbon Copy Cloner and that is rescanning plug-ins (vst, au, etc..) but that was expected.

Regarding the internal, since it's a 7200 RPM it would actually be sufficient for reading/recording audio if you wanted to partition a portion of it for a scratch disk, if you have room. Agree though that you should absolutely keep a working copy of the OS on there just in case.

I'm not touching it because the 1 tb drive only had about 200 gigs free left, so I'm going to use CCC to copy my external SSD drive over to the internal 7200 rpm drive as a back-up until I get over 1 tb. Then I'll do something different like use Time Machine on another external. That's down the road tho, not now.

 

[3SQ Machine]

Good plan, yeah less than 200 gbs would bog that down extreme. I'm so paranoid of losing my audio that I have 3 copies of all my projects on 3 different drives + one on the cloud. Not only that, but I have like 10 copies of each individual project because I've found audio files get corrupted over time (digital degradation). Not very space efficient, but very, very safe.

Syncing 100s of gbs of data took DAYS, but was well worth it. If there's ever a fire or theft I'll still have my music!

 

[dysmedia]

Hate to revive this quasi-zombie thread, but I ran across it will looking for advice regarding my 2012 Mac Mini. A question, if anyone's still around: why do you all seem to agree that it's best to boot from an external SSD, and leave the internal drive as a cloned backup? I set it up the other way around, because I assumed that the internal SATA interface would be much faster than anything I could set up externally. Is this not the case? I opened it up and installed a 1TB Samsung 870 EVO, and it's now unbelievably fast for a nine-year-old machine. What am I missing here?

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Because this is an iMac forum, and +2012 iMacs requiring cracking open and re-sticking after opening and an external SSD is much, much quicker than any machine fitted with a slow old platter drive.

 

[dysmedia]

Er, thank you. Sorry: my bad. Google took me here with a "Mac Mini" search, so I didn't notice that it was an iMac forum. (Google's getting good that way: they pay attention to random bits of your search, and ignore others.)

 

[n8mac]

Hijacking thread as its same question basically…

i have a Mac Pro 5,1 and it runs good with upgrades, but its time to retire it i think. Too slow and runs sierra. I cant afford the latest Mac Pro as i dont make any money from the machine. Looking into a 27” iMac from 2017.

Storage wise i have…
500gb x 2 SSDs
500gb HDD
1tb HDD

Is there a case that i can put them in and use thunderbolt 2 to boot from? Or would it be more economical to buy a similar amount of external SSD storage? Do not want to use fusion drive as boot long term. I have an external 2tb HDD as backup on the Mac Pro.

Another question is what is a good second 27” monitor to get that is similar to the iMacs screen? Not worried about color correction stuff, just something that can adjust to the same height with same resolution.