My 2012 iMac was taking about five minutes to boot up and longer still to be usable. Apps like Photoshop would take 2 - 3 minutes to boot up and again, a little longer to actually be usable. I re-installed OSX on the base hard drive and upgraded my RAM to 16GB and there was only the mildest of improvements. Finally I bit the bullet and bought a Samsung T-5 SSD and linked it up via USB3 and installed my computer on it. The change is nothing short of breathtaking. The Mac boots in less than 30 seconds apps like Photoshop launch in under 5. It's like getting a new machine. I only hope Apple continue to support it with OS updates, as I've gone from needing a new Mac to wanting to keep hold of this one for as long as possible!
@@divyangrathod9667 500GB would do it for sure and yes, you can then use the internal drive however you'd like. I personally use it to store all my iTunes media and it seems fast enough for that at least.
Can you answer these 3 questions? 1. Can't you just clone the internal HD to the external SSD, then boot from external SSD? 2. How do you move all the apps and files to the extSSD? 3. Can you now use the internall HD for storage?
@@thomaswright3104 Yeah man no problem the answer to all of those questions is basically yes yes and yes. Just make sure you're using the good cloner and it boots right up and yes your internal hard drive can now be renamed and used and used as the storage..
Yes, but many don't want to risk taking the seal off or voiding the warranty on the system. If you are pretty technical or are handy it can be done quite easily but many don't want to risk that or even scratching the screen etc. and using the external SSD is so easy. So both work good. Thanks for watching.
Upgrading to an SSD on a 2017 iMac using and external drive might seem weird but it works good. If you want to run your OS off an external ssd on newer macs it's easy and doesn't harm anything so give it a try. Let me know about your experience booting off an SSD.
I had to use Catalina by the time I discovered your video because Mojave was not supported anymore. The boot time is not much faster than the fusion but the computing time is way faster. Thanks for making this money saving and headache saving video. By the way I found that the firewall is turned off.
@@tibionetes Yes, it will work fine with the late 2015 iMac. You don't need an NVME if you want to save money and just use a Samsung T5. Or you can build your own which I like to do.
Well, you don’t really need 10 gbps speed with a SATA ssd like an 860, anything Imac that have usb 3.0 and faster will be fast enough because the ssd will not be able the send data faster than 450-500 MBps. So if you got something like a 2013 Imac with a slow 5400 rpm drive and apprx 60 MBps speed, you can use an external ssd and get 400+ MBps speed, it will make huge difference. If you’ve got a newer Imac with usb 3.1 and 10 gbps, then you can get a external M.2 drive and perhaps get 800-900 MBps speed.
For sure. It all comes down to math and with standard sata ssds usb 3 should allow the throughput. If you have extra then use it but this is true unless you use an external nvme drive capable of higher speeds. Thanks for watching.
A bit late to the party here, but I discovered this video at a time where my 2017 21.5 iMac was getting really sluggish (Feb 2023). After watching, did the upgrade using a T7 Samsung SSD and Ventura. Works a treat. Oddly, there is some 'bleed' from programs on the old fusion internal drive: for example, on a right click menu, I still get 'scan with AVG' even though I don't have AVG on the new install. Not too much of an issue, just odd.
That is odd and have never seen that before. When you install a new external SSD it should not even be accessing the older apps etc. Anyhow I'm glad it works good other than that and thanks for sharing.
Hi Craig. Thanks for the informative video. What will happen to the fusion drive? Will I be able to access it? What will happen to my installed software? Do I need to reinstall all of them?
You can leave the fusion drive alone and re-boot into that like a different Mac. I would do that until you know everything works like you want it to. When you boot into the new SSD drive you can see the fusion drive and it comes up as another place to store files (like extra HD) but you can't boot apps from it. So the new SSD is a brand new Mac basically. So one issue is you would need to license software on that like another Mac.
Using a 500GB NVMe with a USB C enclosure, giving me 800MB/s on my iMac 2017. Thank God I don't have to open up the machine and forever wonder when the screen is going to fall off. OS takes a teeny bit longer to load probably due to the motherboard looking for the drive but then everything seems snappier. Only had it for a few days but well impressed. I have also installed a 500GB ssd and 16GB of Ram in a friend's 2011 MacBook Pro. He was about to chuck it and now it's like new for him, lol.
Another question. Could I do this to make my Mac "portable", I mean, If I travel or go to friends house could I boot to MY Mac from the SSD, or will only work on the iMac where I've set everything up?
In theory yes but I may do a video on that in the future to confirm. It would need to be on MACs that are both don't have the T2 security chip like a 2013 iMac to 2017 iMac or to a Mac Mini etc. In theory you should be able to disconnect the drive and boot it from another mac (boot to that drive) and it should work. Since everything on Macs are controlled it makes it much more possible than something like a PC. In any case in the next month or two I plan on doing a video like this and confirming. Thanks for watching and please subscribe if you have not.
I didn't know that the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive that Apple shipped with the 2017 iMacs was only 32gb. My 2012 Mac Mini came with a "1tb Fusion Drive" which has a 128gb SSD and a 1tb HDD, I see a formatted volume of 1.12tb. I guess 32gb is enough for the system and the most commonly-accessed applications but it seems really silly to not put in something a bit larger. With 128gb my Mac Mini is basically always operating at SSD speeds, pretty much the only thing sitting on the HDD portion of my Mini's Fusion Drive are big files like saved movies and TV shows and whatever applications I haven't touched in a while. Anyway, yes, with Thunderbolt 3 an external SSD is certainly easier than opening up today's Macs which are becoming less and less accessible. Also much less expensive to add for storage rather than configuring a new Mac at time of purchase, especially for SSD storage: Apple uses extremely fast (and extremely expensive) SSDs in their new Macs, changing that from the base of 128gb or 256gb to 1tb or 2tb is outrageous. Better to purchase with the minimum internal SSD (even 128gb is enough for the system and most or all of the applications you'll use) then add an external unit for file storage or even for your entire home folder. Even a "slow" and cheap external SSD is better than a HDD, even one connected with the fastest internal interface.
Thanks for sharing the information and watching John. Yes, for some reasons the fusions on the iMacs don't have too much SSD cache so you get more spinning drive after just a short time. So upgrading with the SSD (via external drive) that can run the OS makes the systems faster. If you have the money it's maybe best to get it installed when you buy it but Apple charges so much for just a little SSD space that this is certainty a good option for some people. Thanks again.
Awesome video. Thank you so much. I have a question, my iMac is late 2015. Is it really faster and safe to run Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Lightroom, and the whole system through USB 3.0 connection? Is the USB port really that stable? I really want to do this upgrade, but I would like to make sure that an USA connection really can handle everything like the internal connections. Than you so much.
I run everything including video editing on my 2017 27" iMac using a 10 Gbps external USB enclosure and Samsung QVO drive. It's been solid for 5 years now.
@@craigneidel that's awesome. But, my iMac is late 2015. 27". It only had USB 3.0. And the fastest speed is 5Gbps. I am afraid of running a computer through an USB 3 port.
@@wastedtalentusa it's fine. I only get like 400 MB/s and a 5 Gbps enclosure can do that. I'm using 2.5 SATA SSD. So it will still work great. Plus just try it and it takes less than hour. You can boot back to old drive if you don't like it.
@@craigneidel Thank you so much for your answer. I will definitely do that. I heard that Lightroom works better on ssd. And I still use the old drive. I just saw that it has Thunderbolt 2. So it should be faster than USB 3. I just need to find the SSD with Thunderbolt 2. I am in Brazil. It is harder to find and a lot more expensive ssd over here. Thanks again!
Hi Craig, nice channel! I like your videos. Do you think I will benefit a lot in terms in speed if I switch from a FusionDrive iMac 27 Late 2013 to an external Samsung T5 SSD and make the T5 my boot drive and the FusionDrive as mass storage for videos and documents? Much appreciated!
Yes, I do think if you are doing tasks that can tax the drive it will be much faster. The Fusion drives really slow down when you reach the 32 GB cache and with the T5 you would not have that issue. I do think it would be faster.
Just earned a subscriber. I’m just wondering if it then would be possible to somehow boot the MAC os external SSD from a pc? If so would you need to download certain applications to your pc?
Thanks for watching and i wish you the best. You cant boot external ssd from a PC because the os on external drive needs mac hardware to run. You can though run windows on mac using something called bootcamp. Anyhow thanks again.
If you are using a 2017 with the SSD then APFS is correct. Note that MacOS will actually change it to AFPS for you in you select Journaled Extended with and SSD but for the purpose of this question I would APFS. Thanks for watching.
Hello friend, your videos are very good, I appreciate your contribution, however I want to ask you how to do it or what the procedure would be like to only install PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 How to clone the HDD to PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2, of course INTERNALLY, what would those steps be before and after opening my iMac Late 2015 27 inc, I will be attentive. Thank you.
I would do a search for that online as I'm sure there have been a few videos on that done. It might be easier then me trying to explain that in a post. Thanks for watching the channel and I hope the video helped move you in the right direction.
Thanks for the video. Is there an option to boot to an external ssd os from recovery mode? Currently using the os on the fusion hd but I'm stuck at the boot screen. Thanks!
Great video, if i boot from a new external ssd will all my info and photos still be there when i boot up or will it be a complete clean install with nothing ? thanks
If you setup an external boot drive it will be a brand new computer basically. You can leave your older drive there and boot back into that at any time you need to boot back into it. That older drive will also be visible to pull files off it as long as you don't erase anything.
hello great review ... i have an imac 2017 where i connected a ssd thunderbolt3 samsung x5 ... have you ever noticed disc disconnection problems? in your opinion is it a reliable system over time? thanks
Thanks Luca. I have not noticed any disconnects when booting off the external drives. I tend to use a quality drive and external enclosure that has no issues running off of power from the usb and so far no issues. I can see it could be possible but just have never experienced it yet and run a few systems for about 2 or 3 years off the external ssds now.
Thanks. In 12 minutes I will know whether your video saved me over $400 by not going to an authorized Apple partner store to install an internal SSD drive. I am in the last couple of minutes of the restart phase of your instructions using a WD SSD with the blue USB connection. Wish me luck.
It is working, but is not 'fine'. Still requires over 2.5 minutes to boot or restart. But, once in, it is quicker when moving around or starting an app from the dock.
Loving these videos. I’m relatively new to this as just moved away from a 2009 iMac with 2tb, and bought the base model M1 MacBook Pro with only 256gb. Ordered a 1tb Sandisk ssd 10gbps external so thinking of making that my boot drive. I know you have already done this video but if you can do one that addresses any new issues that would be great. Ie what’s the reason for apfs compared to Mac OS extended journaled. For formatting on the new m1 macs?
Hello and thanks for the nice words. Note that when I booted from MACs in my videos they were older MACs without the T2 chip. You may need to look for videos on doing that with computers with the T2 security chip as the process is different. Also, I have not yet tried that on Apple's new silicon but if I pick one up later this year I might give that a try and will post it.
HI Craig, thanks for taking the time and posting. I have a painfully slow iMac late 2013 running Catalina with a 1TB drive. Just got a crucial external SSD and will follow you directions. Quick question. Should i format the SSD in APFS or Journaled. Seems to be a lot of debate online about that. IS it worth enabling trim? Thanks in advance.
Hello Dwayne. Yeah, it's a touch call with the older mac. Both will work fine in my opinion (APFS or Journaled). I have used both and get similar speeds on the external. If it allows then maybe APFS but only if you don't have really old software or other items you want to load on the new OS. Thanks for watching and let us know what you decided.
@@craigneidel HI Craig. Just wanted to followup with you and say thanks. I ended up using a 1TB Crucial external SSD I picked up at Costco. OMG. What a difference. Been running now for just over 2 months and a total game changer. Wish I had done this sooner. Thanks again for all your help with this.
The SSD is slightly quicker on boot up by a few seconds. I have not done a video on that but it can start up very quickly with the external SSD. Note that it seems some external enclosures can boot faster than others with the exact same SSD in them since they are higher quality devices and my iMac can see them faster (or have external power sources). The fusion drive can hold its own for small tasks since it has that 32 GB cache, but once you get through that it really can slow down. So the SSD is faster with real-world tasks from my experience for sure.
The video was actually really interesting. Having an Imac 2017 I was taking some information about this External SSD thing. You gave me a lot of information. I'd like to ask you if you boot a Time machined information on another HD on the SSD.. in your opinion are we able to restart all with what it was on the Time Machine? This said I subscribed to your channel. I have a small RUclips Channel and so I am a fellow RUclipsr who knows how important it is to have subscribers. So here I am! Thank you for the video.
Thanks for the Sub and I will need to check out your channel. I have not tried the Time Machine item you describe but heard others do that successfully. The issue is you need a full OS that you can boot into on that drive. I just have not tried that and always did a fresh install on the external SSD and never restored from Time Machine. If anybody else has please post here. Thank you.
@@craigneidel It would be awesome to know if it is possible to use the time machine from another hd to the ssd. Thank you if you'll help me with my channel by subscribing. Still you already helped me a lot with this video. For real!
Hi, excellent video, very well explained! I have a question, I have a late 2015 iMac retina 27 with an internal HDD (1 TB, 7,500 RPM) and I would like to replace this HDD with an SSD. I have 2 options, either go to a repair store and do an internal SSD upgrade (I cannot do this on my own under any circumstances. Also they will charge 270 euros in total, work plus the SSD) OR do an external SSD upgrade like you did in this excellent video. The problem is that my iMac has only 3.0 USB ports so I will not be able to get the faster SSD speeds of 3.1 or 3.2 USB, or, even worse, the Thunderbolt 3 SSDs. (mine has thunderbolt 2 ports and there are no such SSDs anymore). Internally the connection protocol is SATA III (6gb per sec). So the question is: will I get significantly worse speed results if I go for the external SSD solution compared to the internal one? Or, to put it differently, will the external SSD upgrade be a tangible upgrade compared to what I have now (the HDD)? Thank you in advance! Gary.
If you haven’t upgraded already: from what i’ve seen external ssd with usb 3.0 got around 5 seconds more boot up time than the internal one, but if you’re upgrading from hdd basically any form of ssd is a huge performance jump.
Thanks for the video worked excellent. I’m using Samsung T7 iMac 2017 connected using c usb. Would be quicker on c usb or the other connections? Thanks
You are Welcome Riz. Yes, if you use a faster connection like Thunderbolt it should be a little quicker. But, you should notice a big difference either way.
@@craigneidel thanks for the advice. I’m looking to upgrade my ram from 8gb to 32gb. Does it matter if I use different manufacturers of rams as I can pickup cheaper on eBay? Thanks
@@MrRiz157 I believe it's best to install Ram in pairs. So you could have two pairs of identical RAM, i.e 2 x 4GB and 2x8GB or so. Good question regarding different manufacturers. I'm not sure it matters. Maybe do some more research and look at websites such as crucial. I think not all RAM is equal. Might be best to pay a little more for better components unless you have a bargain machine and just looking to improve it as cheaply as possible.
My big question is. Do I NEED an enclosure for the SSD? I've been using the "StarTech.com USB C to SATA Adapter" and the SSD velcro'd to the back of the computer. Since it's a stationary computer, what's the benefit of an enclosure?
The short answer is if that is working for you and you ar booting off that SSD (on back of computer) then you don't need the enclosure. The reason for the enclosure is if you want to use something like Thunderbolt 1 on older iMacs etc. to get 10 Gbps to the SSD. Of course a direct SATA connection is about 6 Gbps so it comes down to is it working. When you do a Black Magic test how fast is your drive when connected that way? If you can get upwards of 480 MBps then you are getting all of the speed on the SSD already. If you upgraded to something like an NVME SSD that is much faster then it might be worth it to upgrade but with a SATA SSD it should work fine. I hope that helps.
I would say no. The difference going from spinning drive to external SSD using usb is massive even if only 480 MBps. Of course if you have the money then go for it but at that point depending on costs I say set that aside for new iMac in coming year or two.
I have a 2017 iMac as well. Funny when I selected larger test file size in black magic disk test, it slows down to a crawl. It works best only in 1 GB test. Anything above that, it’s no good. SSD portion seems to be filled up, which seems like it. I got about 800 MB/sec write and 1300 MB/sec read. I tested using RAM disk and got 3300 MB/sec and 4400 MB/sec. Biggest con it’s only 4 GB. I don’t want to use too much or I would have less memory to play with. I plan to get a external SSD soon.
I'll see if I can find anything but I'm not experiencing the same issue. I only have 8 GB of ram on one of my machines and one with 16 GB. On the machine with 16 I have had zero crashes and on the one with 8 GB very limited (maybe normal number any machine might get). So adding more ram is one option but I just have not see that happen yet. I'll see if I can find anything on that and if I do let you know. Thanks for sharing.
running catilina. My ssd isn't split into two drives like the internal one was during the catalina install. Also the ssd is read only. so still reading and writing data files onto internal drive. i only discovered this when i ran black magic and thought it was slow. changed the target drive to external and test won't run because its read only.
Thanks for sharing. Make sure you are booting to the external drive after loading the OS on the external drive. I have not had any issues and the system runs very quick from the external SSD drive.
Craig Neidel I drilled out the security screws of my Mac mini and mounted the drive I’d setup for external use. I then did a fresh install twice from usb stick installer. It seems the issues I’m having are to do with Catalina itself.
Great easy and helpful video. Just got myself a 21inch 2017 2.3ghz boost to 3.6 imac for a steal of just $200 but only thing it thats its a duo core. Will only be doing browsing, email abd casual video watching so it should be ok. Only other let down is that it comes with a fusion drive. So wanted to boot of an ssd. Only question i had was..... Once i set up and boot up from external ssd. What happens to the OS installed in the fusion drive? Won't it default back and load from the fusion drive every time i reboot? Would it be a good idea of just erasing both drives the ssd part and the hdd drive of the fusion drive? I also wanted to use the internal hdd as a spare drive to put my files on. I know you explained it on the video but just didnt want the mac to be wasting time figuring out what os /hdd to boot off and then boot up.
You can set the boot drive in "startup disk" inside of MacOS system settings. So it will boot up to the disk you have selected there. The OS will stay on the older drive and you can boot back into that drive using startup disk and selecting the older drive. I would just keep both for now until you know everything works great and then you can boot back to the older drive if needed. You should still see the older drive when you boot to the newer external SSD and can use it to store items.
Craig, thx a lot, used it to upgrade my 2013 machine, machine is all new and fresh ! did i miss the part in which you talk about accessing the old files & documents? or is there another video ?
Your older drive should be visible in Finder and you can drill down into that to get older files. You can also boot back into the older drive (like second computer) by going to preferences and start disk and changing back to boot to older drive. But you should see the older drive in Finder if you booted to SSD and your files should be there.
@@rajkamalin you can boot back into old os and copy files you need then bring them over once you boot into ssd again. Use flash drive or storage drive if you have one.
Hi Graig please advice , I downloaded Mojave to install it on my new X5 SSD but it tells me this copy of the “Install macOS “ application is to old to be opened on this version of macOS, I’m running Catalina , how to fix this ? Thx in advance ....
A fav to ask.. when you transfer ALL system from "old" SDD onto a "new" SDD, can I delete half of the apps in both (just for simple as website, study, etc, and the "new" for the photoshop and fincal cut pro?
When you boot off an external SSD the Mac thinks it's a new Mac so you would need to install all apps on the new external SSD like it was new. You can always boot back into the older hard drive if you ever wanted to as long as you don't delete files or applications from it.
Hi Craig I have a end 2015 27” 5K iMac and I used your video as reference. Question? After I finish installation and restart my Mac I boot from sad Samsung eco 860 my boot time is very slow slower than fusion drive boot. I Al so, checked my speed of the new drive it reads and writer 30gb per s. So slow Do you know what is the problem I forgot to tell you that I use satechi enclosure usb-c to mac’s USB. Any help greatly appreciate. You Chantal is awesome.
I'm not sure I understand but it should be an OS that works on the computer. I just tested with Mojave but don't think that's a limiting factor. I might try it on the M1 machines soon.
I have had an experience where an external disk drive ran faster using the old file system: Journaled Extended. Now I have seen Juraj Benak's video where he says that the APFS system is required for booting the OS on SSD drives. It probably is irrelevant that the external spinning disk was faster on the old file system. Can you comment on this? If relevant, this is my system: Model Name: iMac / Model Identifier: iMac15,1 / Processor Name: Intel Core i5 / Processor Speed: 3.5 GHz / Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4 Will this system boot OK from the external SSD presumably formatted in APFS? I may be looking at getting a newer iMac...
If your iMac is 15,1 then it appears to be a 27" 5K iMac from 2014. That should have 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports @ 20 Gbps each. So if you find an enclosure for those ports boot off the SSD will be very fast. This model also has 4 x usb 3 ports which are only 5 Gbps. Those can still work Ok for sure since it should provide about 500 Mbps on the SSD but if you can use the Thunderbolt 2 connection to a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure with SSD that is best. Also, when you format the drive you should use the Journaled Extened format. Then when the OS is loaded on the external SSD it might then change to APFS but that is done internally when loading the newer OS(s) like Mojave etc. In any case in all of my experiences using the APFS on and SSD is way faster than an spinning drive on Jorunraled Extended. Also, since you can try this without removing your older OS and spinning drive's setup you can always test and then boot to whatever disk you want to boot to. The key to all of this is making sure that the connection from the iMac to the SSD is fast and that means using an external enclosure of at least 5 Gbps but for best performance the 20 Gbps. That difference may not be as noticeable on a SSD that is only capable of 500 Mbps writes but when you install something like an NVME it can help for sure. In any case I only did one example in my video and there are countless ways to do this. So the best way is to try it and don't remove your older OS until you prove it works good for you. Then you can let everybody know your setup and how it worked. Thanks for watching.
Yes, I'm not from Canada but have been to Quebec City a number of times and that used to be one of my favorite teams behind the Blackhawks (I'm in Chicago). They had the best logo in sports also. Thanks for watching the Apple videos and good luck in Canada as I can only assume that is where you are writing from.
It was the base model iMac of that 27-in. When I got it it only had eight gigs of RAM but I upgraded a 24 gigs later I think I can't remember exactly when but either way it works great if you boot off an external SSD on the 2017 27-in iMac
Thanks much for doing this! I have almost the same situation, however my internal fusion drive is 3TB and I cannot afford to buy an external SSD that will hold everything that is on my fusion drive. I am not certain how to run two drives - do I move OS and applications to SSD? Or maybe OS and data to SSD? Got any advice on running fusion drive and the external SSD in a way that gets the best performance? I also worry about having two versions of the OS…seems like that they could get out of sync or otherwise cause my a problem.
Hello Tom. Yeah, if you have a 3 TB fusion you really cannot clone to the new external SSD. The process is quite simple to boot off an external as you can see so you can always setup a 1 TB external to boot OS from and leave your current 3 TB alone. Give it a try and see if you like the process first. You would essentially have 2 different systems at that point and you just boot to the one you want to use. It does make management more difficult but at the same time you can maybe use each one for different things like video editing (on faster ssd) vs. writing documents. The other option would be to just use the new SSD external for your boot drive and move over all essential files and reinstall essential applications. Then always boot from external and use the fusion more for storage. You can still access files on the fusion drive if you boot into the SSD since that drive will still show up. I would say you can try it and see what works best but it's easy to try but just make sure you backup everything first just in case you formatted wrong drive or something like that.
Hi, I just watched your video. Let me explain my situation and see if your method is going to work for me. I have an iMac late 2012 running High Sierra. I have a software which is an embroidery digitizer app and can't run on anything higher than what I have. That app was very expensive can't afford to buy another app. If I get an external SSD can I run Catalina (latest OS) and switch between Catalina and High Sierra? On this video you showed you were running the same OS. Next question, I think I am understanding this external drive is like another computer Im just using the same monitor, keyboard and any other external stuff I have attached to my main desktop. Therefore if I want to run the external OS I would have to install all the apps I want to run on the external? Also I know this is a lot but accessing my documents from the main desktop will I be able to access those files when Im running the external OS? I am also new to this youtube accessing. How will I know when you respond to me? I did subscribe. Thank you.
Hello and thanks for watching. 1). Yes, if you run Catalina on the external SSD you can boot back into your High Sierra older drive at any time as long as you don't erase that. You simple go to system preferences and select startup disk. The change the startup disk back to the older hard drive (or OS running High Sierra). It acts like two different computers but just don't erase the older one. 2). Yes, you really need to install all the apps to the new external SSD running the new OS as it's just like a new computer setup and walks you through that as if a brand new system. I have heard of people doing a time machine backup to the external drive and making a mirror copy that is bootable but if you did that then you need to remove the older system as they share too many things and it will screw up items. So I don't recommend that. 3). Finally let's say you install the OS on an external SSD drive and boot into that. Your other drive (running High Sierra) will still be visible in Finder so you can pull files from that as needed or save to that. Again, just don't reformat the first (older drive) and leave as is and you will be able to access it or boot back into it as any moment you need to. As always just make sure you have a good backup before doing anything as that is always a good first step. Thank you.
This is an older upload but asking a question anyway....I have a 2017 iMac with Intel processor that is running incredibly slowly. I bought a Crucial 1T SSD for Mac. I formatted it to APFS with the GUID partition map, downloaded Ventura from the App Store and installed it on the external drive. In system preferences I have selected the external drive as the startup disk but when I try to restart I get error 104. Any suggestions? Thanks
Did you follow the video exactly or did you just install the OS to the external separately. It's hard to trouble shoot individual setups as you can imagine but if you follow the exact steps in order of the video is should work. Maybe start over and go through the steps as it only takes about an hour and see if you get the same error.
I would just use a drive with a high TBW level like the DC Intel series of disks and for a home system you won't have any issues even if Trim is not used. They are like 5000 TBW which most people will never do. Thanks for watching.
Hi Graig, I have a Samsung X5 external SSD , now on my Mac is Catalina installed as also I have Timemachine running for backups on a external Gdrive, my question is as follow, when I install Mohave on the X5 SSD to boot from can I use my Timemachine backups from Catalina to install programs back to the Samsung X5 SSD and run them from there.? I guess that it is not possible to access the Mac HD with Catalina as also my programs from the Samsung X5 SSD or would that be possible ? The reason that I want to boot from Mohave is that I have 32 bits software I can not run from Catalina. Thanks for helping me out on this , cheers...
Yes but it will be slower than if the HDD was in the computer. So crazy slow. I would only do it with ssd. It's so much faster and worth a few bucks for sure.
I would not. Yes it would be possible but be slower than anything and not worth it. I would just pick up 30 buck SSD and 10 enclosure and it's world of difference.
I have heard this is possible from a few users but have not tried it myself. Maybe I can make a video on that in the near future. Thanks for watching and good luck with everything.
No because of the speed on those is usually like 50 MB/s at best. You need a fast connection and fast enclosure (on top of a fast drive). You want an enclosure capable of like 10 Gbps which can then handle SSDs etc. So it would be really slow in most cases but there could be a super fast thumb drive but my guess it would be super expensive so why not just do the enclosure and drive. Thanks for asking and watching.
@@cameraman655 Yes those will work as long as you have a new enough iMac or Apple computer. If you only have usb 2 like on a 2011 imac then those won't work but on all newer systems they work good.
Craig Neidel I’ve a 2012 iMac with fusion drive, it’s fast enough but I’d still like to have the option of the ssd drive. Will the SandDisk Extreme portable boot on my 2012 iMac . I’m about to purchase but I’m fairly confused now. Thanks John
Good question. I may need to test that but I'm guessing the OS might be tied to the computer internals and it might have an issue. This might make a good video since I have two 2011 iMacs that I boot off external drives from. I might be able to test that.
It will speed it up. Yes, don't delete the internal drive and when you boot to the external SSD you will still see the internal drive and can store or retrieve files from that drive. Just don't format that old drive unless you want to. You can always just boot back into the older drive also as long as you keep MacOS on the older drive too.
@@craigneidel thanks a lot mate I saved up for months to buy myself an IMac after my old MacBook was broken. Bought a second hand 2017 one online which is all fine but it’s horrendously slow ( think there’s ram issues, even tho it’s got 8gb and 1tb storage it performs awful. I’ve ordered a Samsung t7 external drive and will give it a go hopefully you’ve saved me from wasting all my hard earned savings. Thanks a lot for getting back to me!
IT works incredibly and I just did this and I see I could have done this a longg time ago. I did this 3 days ago and the startup was fast and everything was super fast....until this morning when I turned on the mac cause i had left it off because of a storm. It took over 4 minutes to get to the home screen and once it was there it was fast again. I need this to load faster in case of emergency power loss to get into my work fast as I am an English teacher. Any ideas PLEASE and THANK YOU
@@craigneidel Does it load fast in one of your 2017 Imacs ..... I used aRocket NVME PCIe M.2 2280 SSD and the atolla case....is there anything I can do to make it faster when I restart ....🙃
Hi Graig. I have a 2019 2TB fusion drive mac iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019) 3.7 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5 40 GB 2667 MHz DDR4 Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB I have a 2TB Crucial SSD USB 3 running through a usb 3 to Thunderbolt adapter running my current OS Big Sur. I have it formated to APFS. I boot to it and works great. My problem is when I try to do a Blackmagic speed test I get a popup that says It's read only, and on looking in DU the mount point is (/private/tmp/msu-target-LtLJSQTc). I'm going to erase the SSD and start again with a fresh install off the OS followed by a migration/backup from Time Machine . What can I do formatting wise to allow me read write access, and have its mount point as a /Volume/ like all the rest of my drives. I hope I've explained it good enough.
Thanks for sharing. You can imagine if I try and troubleshoot items there are so many factors involved and I don't want to mess up anybody's system. I wish you the best of luck and if I do think of anything I'll do my best to post here. Thanks for watching the channel.
Hey! Thanks for the video! In a same situation. I’m just wondering could I use the internal hdd which is a part of fusion drive as a TimeMachine if I split a fusion drive and format the hdd? And forgets about 128Gb nvram pci-e Apple ssd forever 😊
I think that maybe possible but have not split the fusion drive like that. I know that people have reformatted the internal drive and made it into a time machine drive so I think it should be possible. I usually leave my internal drives alone so I can boot back into them but I also use them as file-level storage (move files there) since they can be accessed from the external OS and make a good backup drive. Let us know how everything goes and thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel Just be aware that Time Machine will only back up to HFS+ not APFS. If you want to be able to boot from your internal drive in the future as Apple begins to deprecate HFS+ it would be better to leave it as APFS. You can still back up to it, just not with Time Machine. In any case, unless you have some pretty specific purpose in mind or one of the two physical components of the Fusion Drive is causing problems, there is no special benefit in splitting it.
Hi Craig, great video. I'm running iMac 27" late 2014 model with 3TB + 128GB SSD as fusion drive. The SSD is failing me & corrupt and I've been getting the run around from everyone about replacing it. I'm interested in running the boot disk and mac OS with this external setup in your video (samsung 860); however, my cpu only supports thunderbolt 2 and usb 3.0. HOw do you recommend I set this up? I'm having trouble finding an enclosure kit with a thunderbolt 2 port? unless i'm losing my mind haha. Or is my only option to use a slower transfer rate with USB 3.0? thanks in advance.
Hi Jeff, I'm in exactly the same situation with exactly the same computer, Seems like booting externally via the USB 3 with the Samsung T5 ssd is probably the only option, Just wondering how fast this would be compared to booting from the internal mechanical hhd? I haven't tried it yet, Just wondered if you have & what the result was. Good luck mate.
@@jamesemery6495 hey James, I ended up opening up my computer myself and replacing the 3tb hdd with a 1tb Samsung 860, leaving the on-board ssd that failed alone.. The 3tb hdd was still good so I threw it in an enclosure and use it as a backup drive. The new internal ssd is a speed demon and i wish I did that upgrade a while ago. I am a photographer/videographer and before putting the ssd in it would struggle keeping up w/ video editing. Now everything is lightning speed. Honestly felt like I got a new computer it was a huge difference for me. I don't think u could go wrong either way - an ssd is much faster
@@itzlilpo Thanks for the reply Jeff, Not sure if I'm brave enough to pop the screen out & replace the 3tb hhd, Well done mate. I suppose I know a external ssd will bottle neck it's own performance via usb3, Just wondered whether this external ssd option would be vastly better than booting from the 3tb hhd. Thanks for your time
@@jamesemery6495 ha, it's definitely intimating but honestly it wasn't very difficult to do. But I have past experience with cell phone screen repairs so that prob helped my confidence level lol... I think running an ssd externally will still be significantly faster than the internal hhd. Did ur hhd crap out or the on-board ssd?
@@itzlilpo Hey Jeff, I used Drive dx to test the health/lifespan of my internal hhd & 128 ssd on a well looked after late 2014 imac I've recently purchased & the result was my 128 internal ssd was a bit over half its lifespan 46% average & my 3tb hhd was 99% ok, So rather than risking internal ssd failure further down the line I thought a better option would be a larger external ssd to to run Logic Pro X & the vast amounts of synths/plugins ect which would of never fit on the 128 ssd anyway. That's where I'm at Jeff.
Hi Craig, I'm about to purchase a SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB Up to 550 MB/s Read, mainly to boot MacOS from an external drive. I've 2012 iMac, Fusion drive while boots in about 30 seconds. It's a fairly good machine. Blackmagic speed test has it around 230 MB/s write and 380 read. Which I think is fairly good for its age. Will the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB improve on that booting from an external drive please. If not, can you let me know why not please. Thank you
You should just make sure the connection to and from iMac is fast enough to get 550 MB/s but it should be fine and I'm guessing it is. The fusion drives only have like 32 GB of SSD in them (rest is slow spinning drives) so they tend to slow down under any load. I do think you might see a faster load time but that is not where you should be concerned. You should really see a speed improvement for everything else once you are using Apps, browsing, video editing, and the like. So it should be a good upgrade and one you will notice. Thanks.
@@craigneidel Thank you Craig. I will try the Sandisk. Like I said I'm happy with my iMac but id just like the option of the second drive. Just out of curiosity will I need to keep my same password.
@@beeret110 it will be like fresh os install and different mac. Just don't delete anything on old drive since you can boot right back into old hard drive at any time if you need to go back to old setup for any reason.
Just make sure you don't select your current hard drive when installing the copy of MacOS and it won't. When you do this you are basically installing MacOS to boot off the external drive. That means that this version of MacOS is brand new and basically a totally different computer. So your other hard drive will be there and you can boot back to that drive by changing your boot drive (in mac software). I have a few videos on this but basically you need to reinstall all your new programs to the new external SSD because it acts as a brand new install. You can always boot back to your original hard drive (as long as you don't delete that) and you are back to the way you were. So if you do this correctly you aren't really taking a risk and just creating a new bootable MacOS system on the external drive. I hope that helps. Thanks for watching.
This disk doesn’t use the GUID partition scheme. Use disk utility to change the partition scheme.select the device contains the disk,click the erase button,select the volume scheme And then click erase ? HELP
I'm not entirely sure about your questions. I think you can use APFS also on an ssd. If you can provide more info I'll see if I can help but I wasn't sure I fully understand where you are stuck.
Thanks Craig. I'm looking at a new 27‑inch iMac. If I go from 8 to 32GB of memory it adds $600. To upgrade to 2T of SSD storage adds another $700. I've looked and believe I can add 32GB easily for aboug $146 and then have 40 GB (see www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/apple/imac-(retina-5k--27-inch--2019)-imac-19-1). I plan to be working in Logic Pro and would like to also work off an SSD drive. Does the method you describe function as a replacement for the internal drive and will it work as fast and well as if I had bought the SSD as part of the package from Apple? Also, do you agree as to my memory thought? Just need to save money where I can. Thanks again for your information and helpful videos. Tim
Yes, buy the memory after market and you will save a ton. I think you plan makes sense. As for the external drive it works great but will be slower than if you just purchased the internal drive SSD. The reason is you need to connect using the external enclosure and that adds some overhead. I have a video where I use an external NVME drive and it helps narrow the gap but it will be slower than the SSDs that come with the systems but way faster than an spinning drive (10 times faster) if you have a spinning drive in the system. With a new iMac (which I have not tried this with) should work the same but also has very fast connection like Thunderbolt 3 and fast USB ports so finding a fast external enclosure should be easy. I would see if you can find more data on how the new iMacs work with the external drives (speed) since I have only done this with a 2011 iMac and 2017 iMac and both had spinning drives. Anyhow good luck and thanks for watching.
Yes, it would work fine all the way back to a 2012 with usb and even a 2011 iMac if you use the Thunderbolt port. But this would work fine with 2015 iMac.
Soo there is no downsides of this solution? I have a iMac 2017 too with (sad face) a fusiondrive. I thought just that I wanna buy a Samsung T5 or even better a samsung x5.Then I would upgrade my ram... But I am not going to pay for ppl to install an Internal SSD if that is that much better... What is your opinion? Thanks for any answer. Have a great day!
Hello Jonas. It's hard to say what is better but it's just easier to install your OS onto an external drive (1 hour time or less) than open up the screen and potentially damage the unit. Plus if you don't like it you can just boot back old OS and fusion drive. A Samsung T5 will work just like the drive I used in my example and for the 2017 you have a bunch of options. I'm going to do a video soon where I boot to an external enclosure running a hard drive that is capable of 1 Gbps (2 x speed of the Samsung QVO). In any case it's just easy to do so give it a try and if you don't like it you can reformat the external and use the T5 as a backup drive or for storage. I have had great experiences booting form externals (see my video on my 2011 iMac also). Let us know what you decide. Thanks.
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. When you follow the process in my video you will erase the external drive and format it. When you do that you are erasing what is on the external drive so yes I guess you can do that but you first erase the drive. Thanks.
Yes check out my older video of doing this on 2011 27 inch imac using thunderbolt 1 connection. It can be done but you need to use that fast connection to the ssd.
Awesome video and really helpful. Just a question: If I switch to an external SSD drive will I be able to search fo my documents and applications as I did before or will I have to transfer those documents again and redownload the applications.Thank you!
If you change to the External SSD it's like a brand new install so apps and data need to be moved if you want them on that drive. But, if you leave your first (internal) drive alone you can still see it in Finder and pull files from it just like an attached drive. You can also boot back into it using the Startup Disk in Preferences and then you have your old Mac back at any time. So doing this and leaving your first drive alone is great as you can access it a number of ways.
You can either try to use restore in disk utilities to clone your internal drive to your external drive or use a time machine backup to install on the external drive, both would allow you to have the exact same system on the external drive, I did mine with time machine.
My 2012 iMac was taking about five minutes to boot up and longer still to be usable. Apps like Photoshop would take 2 - 3 minutes to boot up and again, a little longer to actually be usable. I re-installed OSX on the base hard drive and upgraded my RAM to 16GB and there was only the mildest of improvements. Finally I bit the bullet and bought a Samsung T-5 SSD and linked it up via USB3 and installed my computer on it. The change is nothing short of breathtaking. The Mac boots in less than 30 seconds apps like Photoshop launch in under 5. It's like getting a new machine. I only hope Apple continue to support it with OS updates, as I've gone from needing a new Mac to wanting to keep hold of this one for as long as possible!
Thanks for sharing and watching. I love hearing the stories like this. Yes this can really change a machine and its crazy how much.
how much storage do we need? is 500gb enough? and can we use fusion drive as storage?
@@divyangrathod9667 500GB would do it for sure and yes, you can then use the internal drive however you'd like. I personally use it to store all my iTunes media and it seems fast enough for that at least.
Can you answer these 3 questions?
1. Can't you just clone the internal HD to the external SSD, then boot from external SSD?
2. How do you move all the apps and files to the extSSD?
3. Can you now use the internall HD for storage?
Excellent questions ….would to hear answer also
@@thomaswright3104 Yeah man no problem the answer to all of those questions is basically yes yes and yes. Just make sure you're using the good cloner and it boots right up and yes your internal hard drive can now be renamed and used and used as the storage..
I just opened up my iMac 27 inch 2019 model and installed a SSD WD Black 1 TB internally. A lot easier than most might think.
Yes, but many don't want to risk taking the seal off or voiding the warranty on the system. If you are pretty technical or are handy it can be done quite easily but many don't want to risk that or even scratching the screen etc. and using the external SSD is so easy. So both work good. Thanks for watching.
Upgrading to an SSD on a 2017 iMac using and external drive might seem weird but it works good. If you want to run your OS off an external ssd on newer macs it's easy and doesn't harm anything so give it a try. Let me know about your experience booting off an SSD.
I had to use Catalina by the time I discovered your video because Mojave was not supported anymore. The boot time is not much faster than the fusion but the computing time is way faster. Thanks for making this money saving and headache saving video. By the way I found that the firewall is turned off.
Craig, one question bro. Does it work with iMac late 2015 can’t change de internal due to cracked glass. Thanks!
@@tibionetes Yes, it will work fine with the late 2015 iMac. You don't need an NVME if you want to save money and just use a Samsung T5. Or you can build your own which I like to do.
@@peterhuang8196 yes just like this
Well, you don’t really need 10 gbps speed with a SATA ssd like an 860, anything Imac that have usb 3.0 and faster will be fast enough because the ssd will not be able the send data faster than 450-500 MBps. So if you got something like a 2013 Imac with a slow 5400 rpm drive and apprx 60 MBps speed, you can use an external ssd and get 400+ MBps speed, it will make huge difference. If you’ve got a newer Imac with usb 3.1 and 10 gbps, then you can get a external M.2 drive and perhaps get 800-900 MBps speed.
For sure. It all comes down to math and with standard sata ssds usb 3 should allow the throughput. If you have extra then use it but this is true unless you use an external nvme drive capable of higher speeds. Thanks for watching.
this video has helped me two times now. Once when I first did it and now today when I got the circle with a slash on bootup. Had to reinstall.
Thanks and good luck with everything
A bit late to the party here, but I discovered this video at a time where my 2017 21.5 iMac was getting really sluggish (Feb 2023). After watching, did the upgrade using a T7 Samsung SSD and Ventura. Works a treat. Oddly, there is some 'bleed' from programs on the old fusion internal drive: for example, on a right click menu, I still get 'scan with AVG' even though I don't have AVG on the new install. Not too much of an issue, just odd.
That is odd and have never seen that before. When you install a new external SSD it should not even be accessing the older apps etc. Anyhow I'm glad it works good other than that and thanks for sharing.
Hi Craig. Thanks for the informative video. What will happen to the fusion drive? Will I be able to access it? What will happen to my installed software? Do I need to reinstall all of them?
You can leave the fusion drive alone and re-boot into that like a different Mac. I would do that until you know everything works like you want it to. When you boot into the new SSD drive you can see the fusion drive and it comes up as another place to store files (like extra HD) but you can't boot apps from it. So the new SSD is a brand new Mac basically. So one issue is you would need to license software on that like another Mac.
Using a 500GB NVMe with a USB C enclosure, giving me 800MB/s on my iMac 2017. Thank God I don't have to open up the machine and forever wonder when the screen is going to fall off. OS takes a teeny bit longer to load probably due to the motherboard looking for the drive but then everything seems snappier. Only had it for a few days but well impressed.
I have also installed a 500GB ssd and 16GB of Ram in a friend's 2011 MacBook Pro. He was about to chuck it and now it's like new for him, lol.
Not bad at all and thanks for sharing. Good luck in the future with everything and thanks for supporting the channel Peter.
Another question. Could I do this to make my Mac "portable", I mean, If I travel or go to friends house could I boot to MY Mac from the SSD, or will only work on the iMac where I've set everything up?
In theory yes but I may do a video on that in the future to confirm. It would need to be on MACs that are both don't have the T2 security chip like a 2013 iMac to 2017 iMac or to a Mac Mini etc. In theory you should be able to disconnect the drive and boot it from another mac (boot to that drive) and it should work. Since everything on Macs are controlled it makes it much more possible than something like a PC. In any case in the next month or two I plan on doing a video like this and confirming. Thanks for watching and please subscribe if you have not.
INCREDIBLE! Thank you brother!
Thanks for watching.
Good job Sir. Useful video and I'll likely try this soon. 👌🏻
Thanks for the nice words Gee Whiz
I didn't know that the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive that Apple shipped with the 2017 iMacs was only 32gb. My 2012 Mac Mini came with a "1tb Fusion Drive" which has a 128gb SSD and a 1tb HDD, I see a formatted volume of 1.12tb. I guess 32gb is enough for the system and the most commonly-accessed applications but it seems really silly to not put in something a bit larger. With 128gb my Mac Mini is basically always operating at SSD speeds, pretty much the only thing sitting on the HDD portion of my Mini's Fusion Drive are big files like saved movies and TV shows and whatever applications I haven't touched in a while.
Anyway, yes, with Thunderbolt 3 an external SSD is certainly easier than opening up today's Macs which are becoming less and less accessible. Also much less expensive to add for storage rather than configuring a new Mac at time of purchase, especially for SSD storage: Apple uses extremely fast (and extremely expensive) SSDs in their new Macs, changing that from the base of 128gb or 256gb to 1tb or 2tb is outrageous. Better to purchase with the minimum internal SSD (even 128gb is enough for the system and most or all of the applications you'll use) then add an external unit for file storage or even for your entire home folder. Even a "slow" and cheap external SSD is better than a HDD, even one connected with the fastest internal interface.
Thanks for sharing the information and watching John. Yes, for some reasons the fusions on the iMacs don't have too much SSD cache so you get more spinning drive after just a short time. So upgrading with the SSD (via external drive) that can run the OS makes the systems faster. If you have the money it's maybe best to get it installed when you buy it but Apple charges so much for just a little SSD space that this is certainty a good option for some people. Thanks again.
Awesome video. Thank you so much. I have a question, my iMac is late 2015. Is it really faster and safe to run Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Lightroom, and the whole system through USB 3.0 connection? Is the USB port really that stable? I really want to do this upgrade, but I would like to make sure that an USA connection really can handle everything like the internal connections.
Than you so much.
I run everything including video editing on my 2017 27" iMac using a 10 Gbps external USB enclosure and Samsung QVO drive. It's been solid for 5 years now.
@@craigneidel that's awesome. But, my iMac is late 2015. 27". It only had USB 3.0. And the fastest speed is 5Gbps. I am afraid of running a computer through an USB 3 port.
@@wastedtalentusa it's fine. I only get like 400 MB/s and a 5 Gbps enclosure can do that. I'm using 2.5 SATA SSD. So it will still work great. Plus just try it and it takes less than hour. You can boot back to old drive if you don't like it.
@@craigneidel Thank you so much for your answer. I will definitely do that. I heard that Lightroom works better on ssd. And I still use the old drive. I just saw that it has Thunderbolt 2. So it should be faster than USB 3. I just need to find the SSD with Thunderbolt 2. I am in Brazil. It is harder to find and a lot more expensive ssd over here. Thanks again!
Good luck and it's fun to see where people are from.
Hi Craig, nice channel! I like your videos. Do you think I will benefit a lot in terms in speed if I switch from a FusionDrive iMac 27 Late 2013 to an external Samsung T5 SSD and make the T5 my boot drive and the FusionDrive as mass storage for videos and documents? Much appreciated!
Yes, I do think if you are doing tasks that can tax the drive it will be much faster. The Fusion drives really slow down when you reach the 32 GB cache and with the T5 you would not have that issue. I do think it would be faster.
Just earned a subscriber. I’m just wondering if it then would be possible to somehow boot the MAC os external SSD from a pc? If so would you need to download certain applications to your pc?
Thanks for watching and i wish you the best. You cant boot external ssd from a PC because the os on external drive needs mac hardware to run. You can though run windows on mac using something called bootcamp. Anyhow thanks again.
So helpful! Thank you! 🙏
Your welcome and I hope you can sub if you have not. Thanks for letting me know Deni.
What format does SSD need to be? Mac Journaled extended or APFS
If you are using a 2017 with the SSD then APFS is correct. Note that MacOS will actually change it to AFPS for you in you select Journaled Extended with and SSD but for the purpose of this question I would APFS. Thanks for watching.
Hello friend, your videos are very good, I appreciate your contribution, however I want to ask you how to do it or what the procedure would be like to only install PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2
How to clone the HDD to PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2, of course INTERNALLY, what would those steps be before and after opening my iMac Late 2015 27 inc, I will be attentive. Thank you.
I would do a search for that online as I'm sure there have been a few videos on that done. It might be easier then me trying to explain that in a post. Thanks for watching the channel and I hope the video helped move you in the right direction.
Thanks for the video. Is there an option to boot to an external ssd os from recovery mode? Currently using the os on the fusion hd but I'm stuck at the boot screen. Thanks!
You might be able to but I have not done that. If you have the OS on the external you can try that.
Great video by the way!
Thanks James. I appreciate the nice words.
Great video, if i boot from a new external ssd will all my info and photos still be there when i boot up or will it be a complete clean install with nothing ? thanks
If you setup an external boot drive it will be a brand new computer basically. You can leave your older drive there and boot back into that at any time you need to boot back into it. That older drive will also be visible to pull files off it as long as you don't erase anything.
hello great review ... i have an imac 2017 where i connected a ssd thunderbolt3 samsung x5 ... have you ever noticed disc disconnection problems? in your opinion is it a reliable system over time? thanks
Thanks Luca. I have not noticed any disconnects when booting off the external drives. I tend to use a quality drive and external enclosure that has no issues running off of power from the usb and so far no issues. I can see it could be possible but just have never experienced it yet and run a few systems for about 2 or 3 years off the external ssds now.
Thanks. In 12 minutes I will know whether your video saved me over $400 by not going to an authorized Apple partner store to install an internal SSD drive. I am in the last couple of minutes of the restart phase of your instructions using a WD SSD with the blue USB connection. Wish me luck.
It is working, but is not 'fine'. Still requires over 2.5 minutes to boot or restart. But, once in, it is quicker when moving around or starting an app from the dock.
Loving these videos. I’m relatively new to this as just moved away from a 2009 iMac with 2tb, and bought the base model M1 MacBook Pro with only 256gb. Ordered a 1tb Sandisk ssd 10gbps external so thinking of making that my boot drive. I know you have already done this video but if you can do one that addresses any new issues that would be great. Ie what’s the reason for apfs compared to Mac OS extended journaled. For formatting on the new m1 macs?
Hello and thanks for the nice words. Note that when I booted from MACs in my videos they were older MACs without the T2 chip. You may need to look for videos on doing that with computers with the T2 security chip as the process is different. Also, I have not yet tried that on Apple's new silicon but if I pick one up later this year I might give that a try and will post it.
HI Craig, thanks for taking the time and posting. I have a painfully slow iMac late 2013 running Catalina with a 1TB drive. Just got a crucial external SSD and will follow you directions. Quick question. Should i format the SSD in APFS or Journaled. Seems to be a lot of debate online about that. IS it worth enabling trim? Thanks in advance.
Hello Dwayne. Yeah, it's a touch call with the older mac. Both will work fine in my opinion (APFS or Journaled). I have used both and get similar speeds on the external. If it allows then maybe APFS but only if you don't have really old software or other items you want to load on the new OS. Thanks for watching and let us know what you decided.
@@craigneidel HI Craig. Just wanted to followup with you and say thanks. I ended up using a 1TB Crucial external SSD I picked up at Costco. OMG. What a difference. Been running now for just over 2 months and a total game changer. Wish I had done this sooner. Thanks again for all your help with this.
really thorough explanation, have you done any side by side timing of your fusion vs ssd from bootup/login?
The SSD is slightly quicker on boot up by a few seconds. I have not done a video on that but it can start up very quickly with the external SSD. Note that it seems some external enclosures can boot faster than others with the exact same SSD in them since they are higher quality devices and my iMac can see them faster (or have external power sources). The fusion drive can hold its own for small tasks since it has that 32 GB cache, but once you get through that it really can slow down. So the SSD is faster with real-world tasks from my experience for sure.
The video was actually really interesting. Having an Imac 2017 I was taking some information about this External SSD thing. You gave me a lot of information. I'd like to ask you if you boot a Time machined information on another HD on the SSD.. in your opinion are we able to restart all with what it was on the Time Machine?
This said I subscribed to your channel. I have a small RUclips Channel and so I am a fellow RUclipsr who knows how important it is to have subscribers. So here I am! Thank you for the video.
Thanks for the Sub and I will need to check out your channel. I have not tried the Time Machine item you describe but heard others do that successfully. The issue is you need a full OS that you can boot into on that drive. I just have not tried that and always did a fresh install on the external SSD and never restored from Time Machine. If anybody else has please post here. Thank you.
@@craigneidel It would be awesome to know if it is possible to use the time machine from another hd to the ssd. Thank you if you'll help me with my channel by subscribing. Still you already helped me a lot with this video. For real!
Hi, excellent video, very well explained! I have a question, I have a late 2015 iMac retina 27 with an internal HDD (1 TB, 7,500 RPM) and I would like to replace this HDD with an SSD. I have 2 options, either go to a repair store and do an internal SSD upgrade (I cannot do this on my own under any circumstances. Also they will charge 270 euros in total, work plus the SSD) OR do an external SSD upgrade like you did in this excellent video. The problem is that my iMac has only 3.0 USB ports so I will not be able to get the faster SSD speeds of 3.1 or 3.2 USB, or, even worse, the Thunderbolt 3 SSDs. (mine has thunderbolt 2 ports and there are no such SSDs anymore). Internally the connection protocol is SATA III (6gb per sec). So the question is: will I get significantly worse speed results if I go for the external SSD solution compared to the internal one? Or, to put it differently, will the external SSD upgrade be a tangible upgrade compared to what I have now (the HDD)? Thank you in advance! Gary.
If you haven’t upgraded already: from what i’ve seen external ssd with usb 3.0 got around 5 seconds more boot up time than the internal one, but if you’re upgrading from hdd basically any form of ssd is a huge performance jump.
Thanks for the video worked excellent.
I’m using Samsung T7 iMac 2017 connected using c usb. Would be quicker on c usb or the other connections?
Thanks
You are Welcome Riz. Yes, if you use a faster connection like Thunderbolt it should be a little quicker. But, you should notice a big difference either way.
@@craigneidel thanks for the advice. I’m looking to upgrade my ram from 8gb to 32gb. Does it matter if I use different manufacturers of rams as I can pickup cheaper on eBay?
Thanks
@@MrRiz157 I believe it's best to install Ram in pairs. So you could have two pairs of identical RAM, i.e 2 x 4GB and 2x8GB or so. Good question regarding different manufacturers. I'm not sure it matters. Maybe do some more research and look at websites such as crucial. I think not all RAM is equal. Might be best to pay a little more for better components unless you have a bargain machine and just looking to improve it as cheaply as possible.
Okay I will do that and I will let you know how it goes. I will follow your video 👍🏿
Good luck with everything.
thanks for this video. One question, if the SSD is not plugged in, will the iMac boot automatically from the internal drive?
It might error out since you need to set the boot drive in MacOS first. But I have not tried that so not sure how it would react.
My big question is. Do I NEED an enclosure for the SSD? I've been using the "StarTech.com USB C to SATA Adapter" and the SSD velcro'd to the back of the computer. Since it's a stationary computer, what's the benefit of an enclosure?
The short answer is if that is working for you and you ar booting off that SSD (on back of computer) then you don't need the enclosure. The reason for the enclosure is if you want to use something like Thunderbolt 1 on older iMacs etc. to get 10 Gbps to the SSD. Of course a direct SATA connection is about 6 Gbps so it comes down to is it working. When you do a Black Magic test how fast is your drive when connected that way? If you can get upwards of 480 MBps then you are getting all of the speed on the SSD already. If you upgraded to something like an NVME SSD that is much faster then it might be worth it to upgrade but with a SATA SSD it should work fine. I hope that helps.
Is it worth it spending the extra money for a thunderbolt compatible SSD rather than a regular USB one? Thunderbolt can transfer up to 40gbs.
I would say no. The difference going from spinning drive to external SSD using usb is massive even if only 480 MBps. Of course if you have the money then go for it but at that point depending on costs I say set that aside for new iMac in coming year or two.
I have a 2017 iMac as well. Funny when I selected larger test file size in black magic disk test, it slows down to a crawl. It works best only in 1 GB test. Anything above that, it’s no good. SSD portion seems to be filled up, which seems like it. I got about 800 MB/sec write and 1300 MB/sec read.
I tested using RAM disk and got 3300 MB/sec and 4400 MB/sec. Biggest con it’s only 4 GB. I don’t want to use too much or I would have less memory to play with. I plan to get a external SSD soon.
Thanks. It works. The only PROBLEM is that it does not use it for SWAP RAM. So, when all RAM is used by apps, my IMAC crashes. What can I do?
I'll see if I can find anything but I'm not experiencing the same issue. I only have 8 GB of ram on one of my machines and one with 16 GB. On the machine with 16 I have had zero crashes and on the one with 8 GB very limited (maybe normal number any machine might get). So adding more ram is one option but I just have not see that happen yet. I'll see if I can find anything on that and if I do let you know. Thanks for sharing.
@@craigneidel I finally found a solution. I had to insert some codes in TERMINAL. I found some info on a FORUM. Thanks.
@@herisson207 thanks. Can you post link. I might do video
@@craigneidel apple.stackexchange.com/questions/318266/mac-os-x-is-not-creating-a-swap-file
In the link there are about 3 ways of solving it. I tried two of them, and it works. But I don't remember whitch one worked for me, on Mojave.
running catilina. My ssd isn't split into two drives like the internal one was during the catalina install. Also the ssd is read only. so still reading and writing data files onto internal drive. i only discovered this when i ran black magic and thought it was slow. changed the target drive to external and test won't run because its read only.
Thanks for sharing. Make sure you are booting to the external drive after loading the OS on the external drive. I have not had any issues and the system runs very quick from the external SSD drive.
Craig Neidel according to startup it is.
Craig Neidel I drilled out the security screws of my Mac mini and mounted the drive I’d setup for external use. I then did a fresh install twice from usb stick installer. It seems the issues I’m having are to do with Catalina itself.
Great easy and helpful video. Just got myself a 21inch 2017 2.3ghz boost to 3.6 imac for a steal of just $200 but only thing it thats its a duo core. Will only be doing browsing, email abd casual video watching so it should be ok.
Only other let down is that it comes with a fusion drive. So wanted to boot of an ssd. Only question i had was.....
Once i set up and boot up from external ssd. What happens to the OS installed in the fusion drive?
Won't it default back and load from the fusion drive every time i reboot?
Would it be a good idea of just erasing both drives the ssd part and the hdd drive of the fusion drive?
I also wanted to use the internal hdd as a spare drive to put my files on.
I know you explained it on the video but just didnt want the mac to be wasting time figuring out what os /hdd to boot off and then boot up.
You can set the boot drive in "startup disk" inside of MacOS system settings. So it will boot up to the disk you have selected there. The OS will stay on the older drive and you can boot back into that drive using startup disk and selecting the older drive. I would just keep both for now until you know everything works great and then you can boot back to the older drive if needed. You should still see the older drive when you boot to the newer external SSD and can use it to store items.
We have two iMacs in the house I will try to open one we abandoned and I pray that I don't break something 🙏
Why do you need to open it up. Boot from external SSD.
Craig, thx a lot, used it to upgrade my 2013 machine, machine is all new and fresh ! did i miss the part in which you talk about accessing the old files & documents? or is there another video ?
Your older drive should be visible in Finder and you can drill down into that to get older files. You can also boot back into the older drive (like second computer) by going to preferences and start disk and changing back to boot to older drive. But you should see the older drive in Finder if you booted to SSD and your files should be there.
@@craigneidel had two users , and for some reason can access only one users doc via finder
@@rajkamalin you can boot back into old os and copy files you need then bring them over once you boot into ssd again. Use flash drive or storage drive if you have one.
@@craigneidel thank u , much appreciated,
Hi Graig please advice , I downloaded Mojave to install it on my new X5 SSD but it tells me this copy of the “Install macOS “ application is to old to be opened on this version of macOS, I’m running Catalina , how to fix this ? Thx in advance ....
A fav to ask.. when you transfer ALL system from "old" SDD onto a "new" SDD, can I delete half of the apps in both (just for simple as website, study, etc, and the "new" for the photoshop and fincal cut pro?
When you boot off an external SSD the Mac thinks it's a new Mac so you would need to install all apps on the new external SSD like it was new. You can always boot back into the older hard drive if you ever wanted to as long as you don't delete files or applications from it.
Hi Craig
I have a end 2015 27” 5K iMac and I used your video as reference.
Question?
After I finish installation and restart my Mac I boot from sad Samsung eco 860 my boot time is very slow slower than fusion drive boot.
I Al so, checked my speed of the new drive it reads and writer 30gb per s. So slow
Do you know what is the problem
I forgot to tell you that I use satechi enclosure usb-c to mac’s USB.
Any help greatly appreciate.
You Chantal is awesome.
2023, here’s does it has to be Mojave the Os that needs to installed?
I'm not sure I understand but it should be an OS that works on the computer. I just tested with Mojave but don't think that's a limiting factor. I might try it on the M1 machines soon.
I have had an experience where an external disk drive ran faster using the old file system: Journaled Extended. Now I have seen Juraj Benak's video where he says that the APFS system is required for booting the OS on SSD drives. It probably is irrelevant that the external spinning disk was faster on the old file system. Can you comment on this? If relevant, this is my system: Model Name: iMac / Model Identifier: iMac15,1 / Processor Name: Intel Core i5 / Processor Speed: 3.5 GHz / Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4
Will this system boot OK from the external SSD presumably formatted in APFS? I may be looking at getting a newer iMac...
If your iMac is 15,1 then it appears to be a 27" 5K iMac from 2014. That should have 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports @ 20 Gbps each. So if you find an enclosure for those ports boot off the SSD will be very fast. This model also has 4 x usb 3 ports which are only 5 Gbps. Those can still work Ok for sure since it should provide about 500 Mbps on the SSD but if you can use the Thunderbolt 2 connection to a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure with SSD that is best. Also, when you format the drive you should use the Journaled Extened format. Then when the OS is loaded on the external SSD it might then change to APFS but that is done internally when loading the newer OS(s) like Mojave etc. In any case in all of my experiences using the APFS on and SSD is way faster than an spinning drive on Jorunraled Extended. Also, since you can try this without removing your older OS and spinning drive's setup you can always test and then boot to whatever disk you want to boot to. The key to all of this is making sure that the connection from the iMac to the SSD is fast and that means using an external enclosure of at least 5 Gbps but for best performance the 20 Gbps. That difference may not be as noticeable on a SSD that is only capable of 500 Mbps writes but when you install something like an NVME it can help for sure. In any case I only did one example in my video and there are countless ways to do this. So the best way is to try it and don't remove your older OS until you prove it works good for you. Then you can let everybody know your setup and how it worked. Thanks for watching.
Hey, you wear a Nordiques de Québec hat !
Yes, I'm not from Canada but have been to Quebec City a number of times and that used to be one of my favorite teams behind the Blackhawks (I'm in Chicago). They had the best logo in sports also. Thanks for watching the Apple videos and good luck in Canada as I can only assume that is where you are writing from.
@@craigneidel From Montreal actually, the greatest opponent team (Canadians) to Quebec at the time. Blackhawks have the nicest logo, in my opinion.
Which CPU and speed did this iMac 2017 model have and how much RAM was in it when running the rest?
It was the base model iMac of that 27-in. When I got it it only had eight gigs of RAM but I upgraded a 24 gigs later I think I can't remember exactly when but either way it works great if you boot off an external SSD on the 2017 27-in iMac
Thanks much for doing this! I have almost the same situation, however my internal fusion drive is 3TB and I cannot afford to buy an external SSD that will hold everything that is on my fusion drive. I am not certain how to run two drives - do I move OS and applications to SSD? Or maybe OS and data to SSD? Got any advice on running fusion drive and the external SSD in a way that gets the best performance? I also worry about having two versions of the OS…seems like that they could get out of sync or otherwise cause my a problem.
Hello Tom. Yeah, if you have a 3 TB fusion you really cannot clone to the new external SSD. The process is quite simple to boot off an external as you can see so you can always setup a 1 TB external to boot OS from and leave your current 3 TB alone. Give it a try and see if you like the process first. You would essentially have 2 different systems at that point and you just boot to the one you want to use. It does make management more difficult but at the same time you can maybe use each one for different things like video editing (on faster ssd) vs. writing documents. The other option would be to just use the new SSD external for your boot drive and move over all essential files and reinstall essential applications. Then always boot from external and use the fusion more for storage. You can still access files on the fusion drive if you boot into the SSD since that drive will still show up. I would say you can try it and see what works best but it's easy to try but just make sure you backup everything first just in case you formatted wrong drive or something like that.
@@craigneidel I appreciate your response. I guess that I may have to give it a try...
Hello Craig, alternatively you could buy Samsung T5 - 1TB External Ssd Drive. It's a little over $ 140, of course. :)
For sure. Those work great too if you have the ports on newer gen imacs. Thanks for watching
It will be far slower than a SSD in an enclosure
Configuration Nine A Samsung T5 IS an SSD in an enclosure...
@@craigneidel ruclips.net/video/6x6ke1yPKcU/видео.html
Hi, I just watched your video. Let me explain my situation and see if your method is going to work for me. I have an iMac late 2012 running High Sierra. I have a software which is an embroidery digitizer app and can't run on anything higher than what I have. That app was very expensive can't afford to buy another app. If I get an external SSD can I run Catalina (latest OS) and switch between Catalina and High Sierra? On this video you showed you were running the same OS. Next question, I think I am understanding this external drive is like another computer Im just using the same monitor, keyboard and any other external stuff I have attached to my main desktop. Therefore if I want to run the external OS I would have to install all the apps I want to run on the external? Also I know this is a lot but accessing my documents from the main desktop will I be able to access those files when Im running the external OS? I am also new to this youtube accessing. How will I know when you respond to me? I did subscribe. Thank you.
Hello and thanks for watching. 1). Yes, if you run Catalina on the external SSD you can boot back into your High Sierra older drive at any time as long as you don't erase that. You simple go to system preferences and select startup disk. The change the startup disk back to the older hard drive (or OS running High Sierra). It acts like two different computers but just don't erase the older one. 2). Yes, you really need to install all the apps to the new external SSD running the new OS as it's just like a new computer setup and walks you through that as if a brand new system. I have heard of people doing a time machine backup to the external drive and making a mirror copy that is bootable but if you did that then you need to remove the older system as they share too many things and it will screw up items. So I don't recommend that. 3). Finally let's say you install the OS on an external SSD drive and boot into that. Your other drive (running High Sierra) will still be visible in Finder so you can pull files from that as needed or save to that. Again, just don't reformat the first (older drive) and leave as is and you will be able to access it or boot back into it as any moment you need to. As always just make sure you have a good backup before doing anything as that is always a good first step. Thank you.
@@craigneidel Thank you very much for your quick response. I will have to try it.
This is an older upload but asking a question anyway....I have a 2017 iMac with Intel processor that is running incredibly slowly. I bought a Crucial 1T SSD for Mac. I formatted it to APFS with the GUID partition map, downloaded Ventura from the App Store and installed it on the external drive. In system preferences I have selected the external drive as the startup disk but when I try to restart I get error 104. Any suggestions? Thanks
Did you follow the video exactly or did you just install the OS to the external separately. It's hard to trouble shoot individual setups as you can imagine but if you follow the exact steps in order of the video is should work. Maybe start over and go through the steps as it only takes about an hour and see if you get the same error.
What about TRIM on the external drive....needed or will there be a problem after a while? Any experience?
I would just use a drive with a high TBW level like the DC Intel series of disks and for a home system you won't have any issues even if Trim is not used. They are like 5000 TBW which most people will never do. Thanks for watching.
but boot time is slow in external ssd ( 45 sec) than Fusion Drive (33sec)
It all depends on enclosure and SSDs being used. My SSD is faster.
Hi Graig, I have a Samsung X5 external SSD , now on my Mac is Catalina installed as also I have Timemachine running for backups on a external Gdrive, my question is as follow, when I install Mohave on the X5 SSD to boot from can I use my Timemachine backups from Catalina to install programs back to the Samsung X5 SSD and run them from there.? I guess that it is not possible to access the Mac HD with Catalina as also my programs from the Samsung X5 SSD or would that be possible ? The reason that I want to boot from Mohave is that I have 32 bits software I can not run from Catalina. Thanks for helping me out on this , cheers...
Hi Craig can I use external HDD to boot my 2013 IMac I know that SSD r faster but if that all I want to do will External HDD do
Yes but it will be slower than if the HDD was in the computer. So crazy slow. I would only do it with ssd. It's so much faster and worth a few bucks for sure.
I would not. Yes it would be possible but be slower than anything and not worth it. I would just pick up 30 buck SSD and 10 enclosure and it's world of difference.
Could I just make the drive with time machine and boot off it that way?
I have heard this is possible from a few users but have not tried it myself. Maybe I can make a video on that in the near future. Thanks for watching and good luck with everything.
When you go to recovery mode you can definitely install the drive from a time machine image.
Think this might work with a high capacity Thumb drive?
No because of the speed on those is usually like 50 MB/s at best. You need a fast connection and fast enclosure (on top of a fast drive). You want an enclosure capable of like 10 Gbps which can then handle SSDs etc. So it would be really slow in most cases but there could be a super fast thumb drive but my guess it would be super expensive so why not just do the enclosure and drive. Thanks for asking and watching.
@@craigneidel Thanks Craig, so what about a Samsung T5 or Sandisk Extreme SSD?
@@cameraman655 Yes those will work as long as you have a new enough iMac or Apple computer. If you only have usb 2 like on a 2011 imac then those won't work but on all newer systems they work good.
@@craigneidel Thanks again Craig, I have a 2017 27in on the way replacing my 2011.
Craig Neidel I’ve a 2012 iMac with fusion drive, it’s fast enough but I’d still like to have the option of the ssd drive. Will the SandDisk Extreme portable boot on my 2012 iMac . I’m about to purchase but I’m fairly confused now. Thanks John
did you do APFS or mac os extended journaled?
You can use both and it should work. Apfs is good for newer mac's.
i have two imac, can i use the external ssd to boot from when i needed? on any of the machine!
Good question. I may need to test that but I'm guessing the OS might be tied to the computer internals and it might have an issue. This might make a good video since I have two 2011 iMacs that I boot off external drives from. I might be able to test that.
@@craigneidel yes that would be very helpful
If I boot off sad but use my internal harddrive for storage. Will this slow my Mac down? Can I access the internal drive when booting off ssd?
It will speed it up. Yes, don't delete the internal drive and when you boot to the external SSD you will still see the internal drive and can store or retrieve files from that drive. Just don't format that old drive unless you want to. You can always just boot back into the older drive also as long as you keep MacOS on the older drive too.
@@craigneidel thanks a lot mate I saved up for months to buy myself an IMac after my old MacBook was broken. Bought a second hand 2017 one online which is all fine but it’s horrendously slow ( think there’s ram issues, even tho it’s got 8gb and 1tb storage it performs awful. I’ve ordered a Samsung t7 external drive and will give it a go hopefully you’ve saved me from wasting all my hard earned savings. Thanks a lot for getting back to me!
IT works incredibly and I just did this and I see I could have done this a longg time ago. I did this 3 days ago and the startup was fast and everything was super fast....until this morning when I turned on the mac cause i had left it off because of a storm. It took over 4 minutes to get to the home screen and once it was there it was fast again. I need this to load faster in case of emergency power loss to get into my work fast as I am an English teacher. Any ideas PLEASE and THANK YOU
I haven't seen that before but it does load slower with the newer OS version.
@@craigneidel Does it load fast in one of your 2017 Imacs ..... I used aRocket NVME PCIe M.2 2280 SSD and the atolla case....is there anything I can do to make it faster when I restart ....🙃
@@craigneidel yes it loads slower with the newer OS version
@@craigneidel shit I hope thats not the case
@@digitalaidreamers try rebooting again as doesn't seem normal to take minutes
Hi Graig. I have a 2019 2TB fusion drive mac iMac
(Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019)
3.7 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5
40 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB
I have a 2TB Crucial SSD USB 3 running through a usb 3 to Thunderbolt adapter running my current OS Big Sur. I have it formated to APFS. I boot to it and works great. My problem is when I try to do a Blackmagic speed test I get a popup that says It's read only, and on looking in DU the mount point is (/private/tmp/msu-target-LtLJSQTc). I'm going to erase the SSD and start again with a fresh install off the OS followed by a migration/backup from Time Machine . What can I do formatting wise to allow me read write access, and have its mount point as a /Volume/ like all the rest of my drives. I hope I've explained it good enough.
Thanks for sharing. You can imagine if I try and troubleshoot items there are so many factors involved and I don't want to mess up anybody's system. I wish you the best of luck and if I do think of anything I'll do my best to post here. Thanks for watching the channel.
don't forget to enable trim!
Yes, thanks for providing that and for watching.
Hey! Thanks for the video! In a same situation. I’m just wondering could I use the internal hdd which is a part of fusion drive as a TimeMachine if I split a fusion drive and format the hdd? And forgets about 128Gb nvram pci-e Apple ssd forever 😊
I think that maybe possible but have not split the fusion drive like that. I know that people have reformatted the internal drive and made it into a time machine drive so I think it should be possible. I usually leave my internal drives alone so I can boot back into them but I also use them as file-level storage (move files there) since they can be accessed from the external OS and make a good backup drive. Let us know how everything goes and thanks for watching.
Craig Neidel Thank you for the answer! Yep, I’ll try this way and let it know. 😊
@@craigneidel Just be aware that Time Machine will only back up to HFS+ not APFS. If you want to be able to boot from your internal drive in the future as Apple begins to deprecate HFS+ it would be better to leave it as APFS. You can still back up to it, just not with Time Machine. In any case, unless you have some pretty specific purpose in mind or one of the two physical components of the Fusion Drive is causing problems, there is no special benefit in splitting it.
Hi Craig, great video. I'm running iMac 27" late 2014 model with 3TB + 128GB SSD as fusion drive. The SSD is failing me & corrupt and I've been getting the run around from everyone about replacing it. I'm interested in running the boot disk and mac OS with this external setup in your video (samsung 860); however, my cpu only supports thunderbolt 2 and usb 3.0. HOw do you recommend I set this up? I'm having trouble finding an enclosure kit with a thunderbolt 2 port? unless i'm losing my mind haha. Or is my only option to use a slower transfer rate with USB 3.0? thanks in advance.
Hi Jeff,
I'm in exactly the same situation with exactly the same computer,
Seems like booting externally via the USB 3 with the Samsung T5 ssd is probably the only option,
Just wondering how fast this would be compared to booting from the internal mechanical hhd?
I haven't tried it yet,
Just wondered if you have & what the result was.
Good luck mate.
@@jamesemery6495 hey James, I ended up opening up my computer myself and replacing the 3tb hdd with a 1tb Samsung 860, leaving the on-board ssd that failed alone.. The 3tb hdd was still good so I threw it in an enclosure and use it as a backup drive. The new internal ssd is a speed demon and i wish I did that upgrade a while ago. I am a photographer/videographer and before putting the ssd in it would struggle keeping up w/ video editing. Now everything is lightning speed. Honestly felt like I got a new computer it was a huge difference for me. I don't think u could go wrong either way - an ssd is much faster
@@itzlilpo Thanks for the reply Jeff,
Not sure if I'm brave enough to pop the screen out & replace the 3tb hhd,
Well done mate.
I suppose I know a external ssd will bottle neck it's own performance via usb3,
Just wondered whether this external ssd option would be vastly better than booting from the 3tb hhd.
Thanks for your time
@@jamesemery6495 ha, it's definitely intimating but honestly it wasn't very difficult to do. But I have past experience with cell phone screen repairs so that prob helped my confidence level lol... I think running an ssd externally will still be significantly faster than the internal hhd. Did ur hhd crap out or the on-board ssd?
@@itzlilpo Hey Jeff, I used Drive dx to test the health/lifespan of my internal hhd & 128 ssd on a well looked after late 2014 imac I've recently purchased & the result was my 128 internal ssd was a bit over half its lifespan 46% average & my 3tb hhd was 99% ok,
So rather than risking internal ssd failure further down the line I thought a better option would be a larger external ssd to to run Logic Pro X & the vast amounts of synths/plugins ect which would of never fit on the 128 ssd anyway.
That's where I'm at Jeff.
Hi Craig,
I'm about to purchase a SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB Up to 550 MB/s Read, mainly to boot MacOS from an external drive.
I've 2012 iMac, Fusion drive while boots in about 30 seconds. It's a fairly good machine.
Blackmagic speed test has it around 230 MB/s write and 380 read. Which I think is fairly good for its age.
Will the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD 500 GB improve on that booting from an external drive please.
If not, can you let me know why not please.
Thank you
You should just make sure the connection to and from iMac is fast enough to get 550 MB/s but it should be fine and I'm guessing it is. The fusion drives only have like 32 GB of SSD in them (rest is slow spinning drives) so they tend to slow down under any load. I do think you might see a faster load time but that is not where you should be concerned. You should really see a speed improvement for everything else once you are using Apps, browsing, video editing, and the like. So it should be a good upgrade and one you will notice. Thanks.
@@craigneidel Thank you Craig. I will try the Sandisk. Like I said I'm happy with my iMac but id just like the option of the second drive. Just out of curiosity will I need to keep my same password.
@@beeret110 it will be like fresh os install and different mac. Just don't delete anything on old drive since you can boot right back into old hard drive at any time if you need to go back to old setup for any reason.
Is it gonna erase my old data in hdd?
Just make sure you don't select your current hard drive when installing the copy of MacOS and it won't. When you do this you are basically installing MacOS to boot off the external drive. That means that this version of MacOS is brand new and basically a totally different computer. So your other hard drive will be there and you can boot back to that drive by changing your boot drive (in mac software). I have a few videos on this but basically you need to reinstall all your new programs to the new external SSD because it acts as a brand new install. You can always boot back to your original hard drive (as long as you don't delete that) and you are back to the way you were. So if you do this correctly you aren't really taking a risk and just creating a new bootable MacOS system on the external drive. I hope that helps. Thanks for watching.
This disk doesn’t use the GUID partition scheme.
Use disk utility to change the partition scheme.select the device contains the disk,click the erase button,select the volume scheme
And then click erase ?
HELP
I'm not entirely sure about your questions. I think you can use APFS also on an ssd. If you can provide more info I'll see if I can help but I wasn't sure I fully understand where you are stuck.
@@craigneidel hi thanks for replying but sorted now
Thanks Craig. I'm looking at a new 27‑inch iMac. If I go from 8 to 32GB of memory it adds $600. To upgrade to 2T of SSD storage adds another $700. I've looked and believe I can add 32GB easily for aboug $146 and then have 40 GB (see www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/apple/imac-(retina-5k--27-inch--2019)-imac-19-1). I plan to be working in Logic Pro and would like to also work off an SSD drive. Does the method you describe function as a replacement for the internal drive and will it work as fast and well as if I had bought the SSD as part of the package from Apple? Also, do you agree as to my memory thought? Just need to save money where I can. Thanks again for your information and helpful videos. Tim
Yes, buy the memory after market and you will save a ton. I think you plan makes sense. As for the external drive it works great but will be slower than if you just purchased the internal drive SSD. The reason is you need to connect using the external enclosure and that adds some overhead. I have a video where I use an external NVME drive and it helps narrow the gap but it will be slower than the SSDs that come with the systems but way faster than an spinning drive (10 times faster) if you have a spinning drive in the system. With a new iMac (which I have not tried this with) should work the same but also has very fast connection like Thunderbolt 3 and fast USB ports so finding a fast external enclosure should be easy. I would see if you can find more data on how the new iMacs work with the external drives (speed) since I have only done this with a 2011 iMac and 2017 iMac and both had spinning drives. Anyhow good luck and thanks for watching.
@@craigneidelMuch appreciated Craig.
will this work on a 2015 imac 21.5?
Yes, it would work fine all the way back to a 2012 with usb and even a 2011 iMac if you use the Thunderbolt port. But this would work fine with 2015 iMac.
Soo there is no downsides of this solution? I have a iMac 2017 too with (sad face) a fusiondrive. I thought just that I wanna buy a Samsung T5 or even better a samsung x5.Then I would upgrade my ram... But I am not going to pay for ppl to install an Internal SSD if that is that much better... What is your opinion? Thanks for any answer. Have a great day!
Hello Jonas. It's hard to say what is better but it's just easier to install your OS onto an external drive (1 hour time or less) than open up the screen and potentially damage the unit. Plus if you don't like it you can just boot back old OS and fusion drive. A Samsung T5 will work just like the drive I used in my example and for the 2017 you have a bunch of options. I'm going to do a video soon where I boot to an external enclosure running a hard drive that is capable of 1 Gbps (2 x speed of the Samsung QVO). In any case it's just easy to do so give it a try and if you don't like it you can reformat the external and use the T5 as a backup drive or for storage. I have had great experiences booting form externals (see my video on my 2011 iMac also). Let us know what you decide. Thanks.
can u upgrade over another macos on a external ssd drive
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. When you follow the process in my video you will erase the external drive and format it. When you do that you are erasing what is on the external drive so yes I guess you can do that but you first erase the drive. Thanks.
i am booting from a external ssd drive can i upgrade from El Capitan to macos mojave
And this will work with an older iMac as well :)
Yes check out my older video of doing this on 2011 27 inch imac using thunderbolt 1 connection. It can be done but you need to use that fast connection to the ssd.
Stopped watching after he said "basically" for the 10th time. Short answer is that it's a safe upgrade from the fusion drive.
Wow trying to help people and people leave comments like this. Why leave comment
Awesome video and really helpful. Just a question: If I switch to an external SSD drive will I be able to search fo my documents and applications as I did before or will I have to transfer those documents again and redownload the applications.Thank you!
If you change to the External SSD it's like a brand new install so apps and data need to be moved if you want them on that drive. But, if you leave your first (internal) drive alone you can still see it in Finder and pull files from it just like an attached drive. You can also boot back into it using the Startup Disk in Preferences and then you have your old Mac back at any time. So doing this and leaving your first drive alone is great as you can access it a number of ways.
You can either try to use restore in disk utilities to clone your internal drive to your external drive or use a time machine backup to install on the external drive, both would allow you to have the exact same system on the external drive, I did mine with time machine.