very slow late 2012 8GB ram 2.7 GHz Quad-Core i5 1TB HDD

[HG1]

Need some help please. The old HD is running slower by the day and will likely die soon. I do not want to open up this iMac so an external SSD drive between 250 and 500 MB seems to make sense. How do I go about doing this so that the new drive gets plugged into 1 of my 2 thunderbolt ports to get the best transfer speeds or does if not matter. I was told that using one of my 4 USB A ports is useless and I don't have a USB C port.

What type of SSD case and memory should I purchase to again get the best throughput. Cables to connect the drive to an old thunderbolt 1 port also seems very confusing to this 70 yr old dinosaur.

As always, less money spent is better.

Thank you

 

[kagharaht]

Youtube has so many video tutorials on what you want to do. I did this on my old Late 2013. External SSD. Using an External Enclosure with Sandisk SATA SSD. It was like night and day until the iMac starting having OS issues stuck in Catalina. I did it by just using the Time Machine backup I had and restored it all from there. Others use CCC or SuperDuper. It's all on YouTube.

 

[Andrey84]

<duplicate reply>

 

[Andrey84]

Need some help please. The old HD is running slower by the day and will likely die soon. I do not want to open up this iMac so an external SSD drive between 250 and 500 MB seems to make sense. How do I go about doing this so that the new drive gets plugged into 1 of my 2 thunderbolt ports to get the best transfer speeds or does if not matter. I was told that using one of my 4 USB A ports is useless and I don't have a USB C port.

What type of SSD case and memory should I purchase to again get the best throughput. Cables to connect the drive to an old thunderbolt 1 port also seems very confusing to this 70 yr old dinosaur.

As always, less money spent is better.

Thank you

I found this thread which has the same problem as yours, but it has lots of real suggestions. It's quite old from 2020 though: External SSD for late 2012 iMac (Thunderbolt 1?)

Apparently, all these topics now live in the Early Intel Macs section, so you should ask & continue your search there, should this article be insufficient.

In my limited understanding, you can just get any USB-A (which is a normal USB) external SSD. You need it to be USB 3.0 or above. USB 3.0, which you luckily have, has a very solid transmission speed of 500MB/s. Make sure it's USB-A, not USB-C.

On Amazon, just search "samsung portable ssd", make sure the size is right and it has a USB-A connector, and go for it. For example, this one (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-T7-Portable-SSD-MU-PC1T0T/dp/B087DFLF9S/