Would people be concerned about not being able to use TRIM going the USB route? Does feel like the simplest and easiest to go USB but wondering about TRIM.
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Thunderbolt 2 external ssd - is there such thing?
- Thread starter Jedimindtrick
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I ended up getting a free 512 nvme .m2 ssd and bought an enclosure for it. It’s working well and is a good test. Ideally I don’t trust running my main machine like this, and left the original OS installed on the fusion drive until I’m more comfortable. Long term, i think I’m going to get a 2020 iMac, but it’s pricey to get a 1TB or a Mac mini M1/M2 and just get external drives.
would be a shame to lose the 5k display, but will see.
Me too...sigh.
Well, is a MBP 15" 2015.
The issue is connecting to the TB2 (female) ports on the computers.
As said before, there were very few native TB2 external units made.
As I understand, TB was an Intel/Apple product, and the PC world went USB.
One exception: HP made docks, but as far as I have found, not with HDD/SSD.
You need an active adaptor to convert from TB2 to TB3.
Apple sells one, but it's the wrong gender.
Is TB2 (female) x TB3 (male).
Not cheap either: £49 (I'm in UK, so in USD is around $49).
And then you need a TB2 (male x TB2 (male) cable to connect it to your computer.
Which is not so cheap either because it's rare, and I think is mainly Apple that sells it: £29 (0.5m) or £39 (2m).
So with this, you can now attach any TB3 or TB4 device to it: but it will run at TB2 speeds.
One issue (as far as I know) is the adpator does not provide power.
So anything you connect to, needs AC or USB power to drive it.
The TB2 ports on Apple computers are pretty useless.
Great idea, but Apple didn't support them very well before they moved to the next bigger & brighter thing: TB3.
Exactly the same thing happened with Firewire: in theory a good idea, but zero support for it.
So you have every computer made by Apple from 2012 (2010) to 2015 with not enough useful USB ports, and too many useless Firewire/TB2 ports.
It's even the same with >2015, except at least it's easy to get a TB3/USB-3C converter plug.
What Apple SHOULD have done is as soon as SSD NVMe came into play, they should have provided an INTERNAL port right into the logic board for a 2nd SSD.
There's space for it.
You should have separate SSD/s for refundancy: one for system, other from Data.
And let them be upgradeable.
I was running a Silicon Power Thunderbolt2 T11 SSD as my boot disk on my 27 inch Retina 2015 (late). It is a native TB2 SSD but only 250GB. REALLY fast boot but it has gotten flakey of late and deleted several programs that I didn't want deleted, so I have been looking for a replacement. Silicon Power no longer support the T11 drives or any TB2 drives. So I got a TB3 to TB2 adapter from Apple and a Samsung T7 2TB SSD. It did not work I couldn't even use the cable adapter combo to charge a USB C torch. The Apple tech says the adapter isn't compatible with the computer which belies the advertising but, ah well even my moaning still didn't make it work. I stuck the T7 into a 3.1 port in the back of the computer and it works. It is much slower than the T11 but works fine as a boot disk and hasn't eaten any more programs. However, I have recently sourced a Buffalo 2TB MiniStation™ Thunderbolt2 HDD off Amazon Australia for about US$110. A Thunderbolt 2 cable comes with it as well which is a saving because if you can find them they are in the region US$40.
All very late but I hope this helps.
Kevin
PS I may switch in an SSD depending on how quick it boots.
All very late but I hope this helps.
Kevin
PS I may switch in an SSD depending on how quick it boots.
Did you end up getting an external drive for your late 2015 imac and how did it work?
I didn't. I ended up selling the iMac for a late 2018 Mac mini to pair it with an epgu.
Thanks much for the reply. I've been trying to prop up my Mom's Late 2015 iMac. The internal drive is going agonizingly slow and I'm sure it's the source of her frustration.
Her internet connection is way faster than the stock internal drive. Which means that she'd be better off booting from the cloud than that wonky hard drive! 🙄 😉
Mac Dream --
For a 2015 iMac, why not just get one of these:
Then, plug it in, format it, and install a copy of whatever OS will install onto it.
It should give the iMac 1, 2 or even 3 more years of life.
For a 2015 iMac, why not just get one of these:
SAMSUNG T7 Shield 1TB, Portable SSD, up to 1050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen2, Rugged, IP65 Rated, for Photographers, Content Creators and Gaming, External Solid State Drive (MU-PE1T0R/AM, 2022), Blue
Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD delivers high performance on-the-go, not matter the terrain. It has an IP65 rating for water1 and dust2 resistance, with Dynamic Thermal Guard to manage heat control. Transfer huge files instantly. USB 3.2 Gen 2 and PCIe® NVMe achieve soaring sequential read/write ...
www.amazon.com
It should give the iMac 1, 2 or even 3 more years of life.
Mac Dream --
For a 2015 iMac, why not just get one of these:
Then, plug it in, format it, and install a copy of whatever OS will install onto it.SAMSUNG T7 Shield 1TB, Portable SSD, up to 1050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen2, Rugged, IP65 Rated, for Photographers, Content Creators and Gaming, External Solid State Drive (MU-PE1T0R/AM, 2022), Blue
Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD delivers high performance on-the-go, not matter the terrain. It has an IP65 rating for water1 and dust2 resistance, with Dynamic Thermal Guard to manage heat control. Transfer huge files instantly. USB 3.2 Gen 2 and PCIe® NVMe achieve soaring sequential read/write ...www.amazon.com
It should give the iMac 1, 2 or even 3 more years of life.
Thanks Fishr,
That does look like pretty good option. Beats trying to find a drive with the old Thb2 interface and it being a USGB 3.2 SSD it would still be a workable drive for future computers, as some other commenters had suggested here.
Also it's not that expensive.
Currently the iMac (late 2015) is running Monterey and I'm guessing the Samsung drive could handle that.
I don't want to upgrade to Ventura b/c I think it will just be even slower.
That might be the winner. Thanks again.
Just FYI, I did this on an even older Mac last year. Completely forgot about it, I should have mentioned it! It was for my buddy's home computer. He had a 2012 iMac and the drive completely hard drive failed on him. He only uses it to browse the web and send emails, asked if there was anything I could think of that would work. I got him a Samsung T7 and installed Catalina on it and it runs just fine! He says it seems faster.
If your late 2015 is using a HDD (not the Fusion Drive that was available) it's quite possible you'd see a performance boost as well.
Thanks. It definitely has the HDD clunker. Her computer is only getting about 67 MB/S on writes and a little higher on reads according to BlackMagic speed test (a little higher on the activity monitor). The HDD itself is only rated to 300 mb/s tops.
I assume an external SDD will improve things. Prob. won't get the 1000 MB/s that Samsung advertises, but even half that would be better than now.
I might also check if Seagate / LaCie has anything comparable to the Samsung you linked.
Another thing I'm wondering. Do you have any opinion on if I should still keep the data (files, etc) on the original internal 1TB Hard Disk or move it out to the external boot disk as well? I guess if you move it to the external, then data and system would be fighting over the external disk. But leaving data on the HDD internal would be slow, but maybe that's OK if the system is faster (on the SDD ext).
Anyway, she mainly does what your friend did: email and web surf. She also does Zoom meetings which have always worked fine, I assume b/c they are mainly dependent on the the Internet speed.
That's really up do you. If it were my computer I would want everything on the SSD. The OS, programs, files, etc. I wouldn't even use the internal HDD unless maybe for the Photos library.
"I might also check if Seagate / LaCie has anything comparable to the Samsung you linked."
I'd stick with Samsung. Fast and the price is right.
I hardly trust Seagate for anything.
I'd stick with Samsung. Fast and the price is right.
I hardly trust Seagate for anything.
My research before seeing your reply says you are correct about price!
Seagate / LaCie would be an overpay in this case.
Thanks.
I ordered the Samsung and I'll see how the performance goes.
Mac Dream wrote:
"I ordered the Samsung and I'll see how the performance goes."
Do a drive read/write speed test BEFORE you switch over to the new boot drive.
Then... do it again AFTER you're up-and-running on the new SSD.
Then...
Please come back and tell us of your experiences.
"I ordered the Samsung and I'll see how the performance goes."
Do a drive read/write speed test BEFORE you switch over to the new boot drive.
Then... do it again AFTER you're up-and-running on the new SSD.
Then...
Please come back and tell us of your experiences.
Alright, the switchover is done. I put Monterey OS, all her apps and all her data on the SAMSUNG T7 Shield 1TB, Portable SSD, which Samsung rated as up to 1050MB/s, with USB 3.2 Gen2 that fits the iMac late 2015. I used CCC to migrate the data and apps and downloaded and installed a fresh copy of the latest version of Monterey on the SSD. I want to avoid Ventura for now and maybe forever for this machine.
Attached are two BEFORE screenshots of the Black Magic disk speed test and two AFTER screenshots. The highest performance of the internal HDD (the "before") was 68MB/s writing and 84 MB/s reading. The SDD runs pretty consistently at 408MB/s writing and 410MB/s reading. So about 7 times faster, even if not up to the advertised speed.
It also passed the eye test for performance: Before when she was opening email, if she received photos, she'd have to leave and come back before they downloaded and her browser performance in Safari was very sluggish. Sometimes her email messages would never open. For the after, I sent her a video in email and she could open it and play it right away. Safari is much quicker and web pages load pretty fast. These are her two main activities on the iMac.
All in all, I'd say it was a success. An inexpensive drive, that is good enough for what is needed.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.
Mac Dream --
The t7 shield IS a USB3.1 gen2 drive with a theoretical top speed of 1,000MBps.
However...
Drives NEVER run at their "theoretical" top speeds.
On a 2018 Mini (with USBc), the t7 shield will max out around 920MBps or so, if I get that much.
But on a 2015 iMac (which has only USB3 with a theoretical top speed of 500MBps), you are getting around 411MBps.
Even though the port is slower, you are getting close to "the max" one will see with USB3.
I've seen 420-425 or so, now and then.
But "the difference" is negligible in user perception or real-world usage.
That t7 should breath "new life" into the old iMac for a while to come...
The t7 shield IS a USB3.1 gen2 drive with a theoretical top speed of 1,000MBps.
However...
Drives NEVER run at their "theoretical" top speeds.
On a 2018 Mini (with USBc), the t7 shield will max out around 920MBps or so, if I get that much.
But on a 2015 iMac (which has only USB3 with a theoretical top speed of 500MBps), you are getting around 411MBps.
Even though the port is slower, you are getting close to "the max" one will see with USB3.
I've seen 420-425 or so, now and then.
But "the difference" is negligible in user perception or real-world usage.
That t7 should breath "new life" into the old iMac for a while to come...
Oh definitely. I'm quite happy with the results.
EDIT: And good point about the port speed.
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I have a late 2015 27” iMac which I still value for its high-definition screen, but its processor is much slower than modern machines, so I have a Studio box for heavy lifting. The iMac has the original 500GB SSD which gives write speeds of about 1500 MB/s and read speeds of about 1800 MB/s. I loaded Monterey onto a spare Samsung T5 and a lot of the time start it up from that for internet browsing. In this mode the write and read speeds drop to the low 400 MB/s range, but the only practical effect is that boot-up takes about a minute instead of about 20 seconds on the internal SSD.
In the early days I got an Apple TB2-to-TB2 cable and an Apple TB2-to-TB3 adapter, intending to attach T7 SSDs via the TB2 socket, but it didn’t work – after discussing this with Apple Support it emerged that the adapter only works if it is attached to a TB3 device. So I simply used my T7s and T5s using the USB-A ports, and in practice the lower transfer speeds don’t make any discernable difference most of the time. So I’d recommend forgetting about the TB2 ports.
(The cable and adapter later came in very useful when connecting my Studio box to an old Thunderbolt Display, but that’s a different topic.)
So for those with an internal drive which isn’t pure SSD I totally endorse the recommendation to load an OS onto a T7 or T5 and boot up from that – much, much faster than a platter-based drive.
In the early days I got an Apple TB2-to-TB2 cable and an Apple TB2-to-TB3 adapter, intending to attach T7 SSDs via the TB2 socket, but it didn’t work – after discussing this with Apple Support it emerged that the adapter only works if it is attached to a TB3 device. So I simply used my T7s and T5s using the USB-A ports, and in practice the lower transfer speeds don’t make any discernable difference most of the time. So I’d recommend forgetting about the TB2 ports.
(The cable and adapter later came in very useful when connecting my Studio box to an old Thunderbolt Display, but that’s a different topic.)
So for those with an internal drive which isn’t pure SSD I totally endorse the recommendation to load an OS onto a T7 or T5 and boot up from that – much, much faster than a platter-based drive.
I also have a 2015 iMac
So what about using TB2/TB3 apple adapter into TB3/USB C hub like the OWC thunderbolt hub which Is rated for 40gbps and into the hub a Samsung T7 for example to run at near 1000MB/s speeds?
or a Plugable branded TB3 SSD which claims 2400MB/s read and 1800MB /s write speeds to reach the limits of the imacs TB2?
I have no experience of using hubs, but I wonder if using a hub as a pass-through to a non-USB3 device (eg a T7) doesn't alter the fact that the connection is not ultimately to a USB3 device; so I suspect that your second option may be the way to go. Regarding transfer speeds, even plugging my 2TB T7s into my Studio TB3 ports I can only get write speeds of about 800 MB/s and read speeds of 600 MB/s. And with my 4TB T7 I can only get read speeds of less than 300 MB/s. But I still use my 4TB T7 for my photo files because it's bigger than my internal storage, and I don't see a difference in access times between accessing my 50MB files on the T7 or my much faster internal drive (which has read and write speeds in excess of 5000 MB/s).
In practice I find, comparing my Studio box against my 2015 iMac, I definitely notice the difference in processor speeds, but not read/write speeds; but whether this matters presumably depends on what we are using our machines for.