I did the same months ago using the USB 3 interface on a iMac 2012; although I have a LaCie Thunderbolt, I opted for the USB 3, less expense and the speeds according to BlackMagic are in the high 300's (397) for write and low 400's (425) for read. No sense spending the extra $$$ to replace the internal drive and risk damaging the system. I used velcro and attached the external drive to the stand.
Thanks for sharing and I'm glad it worked for you. Yes, this is a good solution for some. Maybe not the best for everybody but it is an option that works for me and thanks for sharing your experience to help people out. Also, thanks for your continued support Eduardo.
I had to come back to say thanks! I watched about 3 videos u have as they all answered all my questions before the install. so just to let everyone know my issue, i run Logic Pro x by apple its a music production daw, I had major latency issues that I could not get fixed no matter what settings I changed .I have a fusion drive with reads that started at 400 and dropped to 120mb in black magic... I bought the 500mb inland name ssd m.2 with a ugreen enclosure from amazon... and my install was very smooth I downloaded the Catalina, then booted my new drive to from the download on my iMac where shows that step in a different video he missed it in this one ! long story short I've been running this for 2 weeks now and I'm happy to say this fixed my issue and my Mac is noticeably faster. no more latency on my music production and I still can't believe how fast this small thing is thanks Graig!!!
You are welcome and thanks for watching and hopefully you can subscribe. I appreciate the nice words and I'm glad it is working good for you. Thank you.
Hello Craig thanks for your videos. I have Imac 2017 5K as you. And I want to upgrade my computer too bcs We really like 5k Retina screen. I bought new RAM and install them. That was easy then I want to boot mac from external SSD. I saw your video but this video was 3 years ago. I am sure you use new externall ssd for boot now. There are some really expensive ssd like samsung x5 or G drive. But ı want to make DIY ssd. I want to buy M2 SSD and and enclosure. But I cant decide which one ı must buy and which one. I need your help pls
I have had really good success with Other World Computing like this one (Thunderbolt 3) - eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVXP00/ - but in the end most 10 Gbps enclosures should work fine, and since I have not done that for a little while I can only tell you that I used older OWC stuff for the enclosures before. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel If I wanted to use this as my boot drive, do I have to back everything up on my Fusion Drive? Or am I okay to just set this as the boot drive and not risk losing any of my data?
Your welcome Jon. Yes, as Apple continues to make things harder we try and find a way to help. I'll keep posting videos as I learn new things. Thanks again.
Thanks for the feedback and watching. I'll do some more tests in the future to see how much faster I can make my 2017 imac (booting off various drives) and I'll also be doing more experiments with other Apple computers and even PCs. Anyhow thanks again for watching and I appreciate the nice words.
@@everythingsamsungandiphone3251 Yes, I also have the 2011 imac and will be making some videos on that one also. They are very similar and you can apply what I cover to both systems (2017 and 2011 imacs). Anyhow, I'll do my best to mix things up for sure.
This is a very good alternative if you don't want to remove the front screen and monitor and everything involved plus not getting dust trapped between screens when you reassemble, wouldn't it be nice in this day and age if Apple put removable panels on the back of the iMacs which gave the consumer access to the HDD and SSD (if it had one) just like the memory stick location. thanks for sharing this.
Thanks for watching Neil. Yes, this is better than opening up the iMac but I agree that they should make them easy to change out. This is just a solution for a problem Apple made but at least it's an option. Thanks again.
Sir, is an external SSD already enclose will do the job as well as the one in the enclosure? Is your way of doing this is really faster than the FusionDrive? I'm ready to do the same with my 2012 iMac. Thank you so much for this video.
Yes, booting off an external SSD should be faster than the Fusion drive as the Fusion drive only has a very small portion that is SSD and can slow down from time to time.
Hey Craig, I’m just curious I have a 2011 iMac and I seen the video before this one with the Lacey external hard drive. Is it possible to use the one in this video for that same application does it come with a thunderbolt plug?
No the issue is it is not a Thunderbolt plug and the 2011 needs that in order to get enough speed out of it. The 2011 are so old they don't have fast enough USB ports to use those.
I have a Late 2013 Imac and am interested in adding an External SSD as you have done here. As you may know the 2013 Imac only has Thunderbolt 2 and I would need to get a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 USB-C adaptor to make this work. These are not cheap. Is there another way?
The 2013 have a faster USB port also. I think 5 GB/s. I would just use the USB port and try it. If you are getting anything like 300 to 400 MB/s on the external drive it will work perfect for booting off it and be way faster than the spinning drive. I have done that before also.
Looking forward to seeing the speed as a boot drive compared to the fusion drive. I wish they would just make SSD memory standard on the iMacs and get rid of the fusion drive.
I should be able to do that in the next few weeks. I should try the standard SSD first and then hopefully get to the ultra fast 3100 Mbps drive later. Thanks for watching.
I wonder if you can help - I have an Apple 27 ins iMac 2014 with Thunderbolt 2 port - I also have a Crucial X8 1TB Portable SSD which I want to use as my boot drive - However Crucial advise the X8 will only work with USB 3.0 type and not supported by the Thunderbolt mini port as it comes with USB C type with (10 gb/s) Type-C to USB-A adapter (5Gb/s), while Thunderbolt mini runs at (20 gb/s). Thus you will be not able to use Thunderbolt mini for its speed of X8 SSD My question could I place the X8 into the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini enclosure and is there a cable to connect to the Thunderbolt 2 port so I could reach the estimated transfer speed of the X8 at 1050MB/s?
I don't think that is possible as the port on the OWC would limit the speed down (if even possible). I would just find the best external enclosure (fastest) that will support the drive and run it that way. I have a few videos where I boot off an NVME drive (see under my channel) and I can get about 800 MBps speeds that way but that is on a 2017 iMac. You just need to pick the fastest enclosure and SSD that will work and then you can create a boot drive for your system at the top speed the setup will allow. Thanks for watching.
I have a 2013 Imac with the following connections. Four USB 3 ports (compatible with USB 2) Two Thunderbolt ports. Would you still recommend this upgrade as I don't have USB 3.1
Hello, Adam, I would recommend booting to an external SSD enclosure for any older system with a slow spinning drive. With a 2013 iMac, you can get something like the 10 GB/s enclosure I cover in this video - ruclips.net/video/VyZlDwV1AOY/видео.html . In that video, I show you how to make a 2011 iMac much faster and recommend the enclosure that works great. The 2011 iMac only has Thunderbolt 1 connections. You just need to make sure that the enclosure you are using is 10 Gbps or even 5 Gbps (connection type) and it should be faster than the spinning drive. If you set up a super slow external getting 100 Mbps (like USB 1) then you won't have any speed increases and it won't work good at all. So I hope that new video works good for you. Thank you.
USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 are exactly the same. Exactly. There is no difference at all. You get a theoretical maximum throughput of 5gbps. That is plenty fast enough to get really good performance from an external SSD most of which cap out at read and write speeds lower than that anyway. USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt-1 have theoretical maximum throughput of 10gbps. So if you had an SSD with one of those interfaces and the SSD itself is especially fast, you might be able to benchmark a significant difference. But in practical use, for anything that doesn't require reading and writing huge amounts of data in short amounts of time (so for 99.44% of users, anything except using the drive as a 4k video editing scratch disk), you won't notice any difference at all. Craig has a great video which shows how to cannibalize an old TB-1 drive enclosure to use with an SSD drive for an economical solution which provides great throughput. But USB 3.0 should be almost as good for almost any practical purpose.
@@craigneidel Hi Craig - I have a Mac with a Thunderbolt 2 port. I bought the M.2 and case and got adaptors to go from the Thunderbolt 2 to an adaptor and then finally to the SSD. But it doesn't seem to wrk 9doesnt show up when I pug it all in). Any suggestions?
Hi Craig. I have a late 2014 5k imac with 4 3.0 usb and 2 thunderbolt 2 ports. Will I be able to get the same speeds your getting? Which would I use. The thunderbolt 2 or USB ports?
Thanks for watching Randy. Thunderbolt 2 is going to be faster and if you can use that port you can use something like and external NVME hard drive and get even faster speeds. If you are using something like a Samsung Evo (normal sata SSD) then the USB 3.0 should be capable and provide enough throughput for the top speed of that drive. There is always some overhead so you won't get full 100% of the drive's speed but if you are using a standard SSD (not a much faster NVME drive capable of over 600 MBps) then you should be fine with either connections.
Hi Craig. Just got my OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini for USB 3.0. and the Samsung 860 QVO installed. Getting about 380 mb/s on write and 425 mb/s on the read. So far so good! Thanks again for all the help. :)
hi craig. which cable i should use for the best performance? usb c to usb c (gen2) is the best u think ? and there is any difference between type a and type c while using 500gb ssd?
I have a rule to use the highest performing cable you can with your system depending on the ports you have. So Gen 2 over Gen 1 and so on. For example, if you have a cable that can transmit 10 Gbps and one at 5 Gbps they can both work. But the 5 Gbps connection can't really get hard drive speeds over about 450 MB/s (on the SSD Drive). So if you are putting in an external drive and want the speeds to be over that like 900 MB/s you need to go with a connection type of at least 10 Gbps. With standard SSDS like a Samsung Evo (not the newer NVME drives) it may not matter but with overhead having the extra room lets the drives perform a bit better if that matters to you. Of course and external drive that even connects at 450 MB/s is about 15 times faster than those little USB flash drives most people get but since I like to boot off my external drives I always go over at least a 10 Gbps connection between the computer and external drive. Thanks again for watching and let me know how everything turns out.
@@craigneidel thank you for your answer. i am using an external drive enclosure with usb 3.0 (ugreen) and my ssd disk is (seagate barracuda 512gb 2.5"). i am testing it on my imac (2019) with black magic and get around 415 write and read speeds. What do you think? if i buy a new enclosure with type c to type c (gen 2) that could be good for my performance? becouse my system startup time is not good for me (around 30 secs) - i am using external drive as my default drive and i have deleted 1 tb fusion completely, i am using it for only storage.
@@butch888888 The shape of the connector, USB-C or USB-A, makes no difference. USB 3.2 Gen2 cables can be CC, CA, AMicroB, or any of a number of other combinations. Just be sure your cable is certified for USB 3.2 Gen2 if you are using both a drive and a computer which supports USB 3.2 Gen2. You can also use a TB-3 cable as those usb type-C connectors; they're more expensive, though, but if you have an unused TB-3 cable laying around...
Can you explain why the USB 3.1 Gen 2 is important when you are using it with a 2017 iMac with USB 3.0 ports? Is it even compatible? I have a late 2015 iMac and am looking for a fast external boot drive solution.
Hello Chobe. You should use the fastest ports on the system you have. The 2017 iMac has the 10Gbps type c ports and those will work fine. Just make sure you are using the fasted connection type to the enclosure you have and that the enclosure is capable of those speeds also. That will be the bottleneck when accessing the external OS so it's an important step to use the fasted port you have. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.
Hi Craig. I have a 2017 imac 27" (catalina), put together an extrernal NVME SSD. read 3100/mb/s & 2800mb/s write. 1tb high speed drive that I boot into externally seperately in hopes of getting a faster machine. In Black magic, when I go to select my target disk I get an error stating the test cannot be run because the selected drive is a read only drive. Is it incorrectly formatted or something? I get the same error message when I select the internal fusion HD to test. What sort of speeds should I expect fro this configuration? How much slower is it than if installed internally? Pleas inform,
Did you ever figure this out. It's hard to troubleshoot but I'm guessing if you follow one of my past videos on booting off an external drive it should help you solve the issue. Good luck Demetrios.
Hi Craig. I am having trouble formatting/erasing a Samsung T5 external hard drive to use as a boot up disk. At 6.51 on your video it shows both format and scheme. In my disc utility it doesn't show scheme when you select erase. So I can't select the scheme option as Guid partition map. Was wondering whether you might have any ideas. It doesn't make any difference which Format option i select. I have downloaded High Sierra as the OS but it won't install without having the Guid Partition map. At the point in the installation where i click show all discs the Samsung is greyed out. Thanks
Hello Paul. If you are trying to install a newer (than High Sierra) OS you might only get the Format and not the Scheme. So if you have that just name the drive and use APFS for the format if you are using a Samsung T5. Just note it will erase that drive completely and get the drive ready for the OS installation. Let me know if that answers your question and then we can go from there. Thanks.
@@craigneidel thanks its High Sierra I am trying to install to match the OS thats already on my internal hard drive.However I think I may have just found out the answer to this. In Disc Utility I need to view all devices, not just volumes. That way the scheme option shows on Erase and i can select the Guid Partition map. So now when I start to go through the process of installing High Sierra the T5 is available to me! However would cloning the internal hard drive using CCC rather than just installing the OS mean that my Apps (Lightroom Photoshop etc) would also transfer across and work? Thanks again your time is appreciated.
I did the same months ago using the USB 3 interface on a iMac 2012; although I have a LaCie Thunderbolt, I opted for the USB 3, less expense and the speeds according to BlackMagic are in the high 300's (397) for write and low 400's (425) for read. No sense spending the extra $$$ to replace the internal drive and risk damaging the system. I used velcro and attached the external drive to the stand.
Thanks for sharing and I'm glad it worked for you. Yes, this is a good solution for some. Maybe not the best for everybody but it is an option that works for me and thanks for sharing your experience to help people out. Also, thanks for your continued support Eduardo.
I had to come back to say thanks! I watched about 3 videos u have as they all answered all my questions before the install. so just to let everyone know my issue, i run Logic Pro x by apple its a music production daw, I had major latency issues that I could not get fixed no matter what settings I changed .I have a fusion drive with reads that started at 400 and dropped to 120mb in black magic... I bought the 500mb inland name ssd m.2 with a ugreen enclosure from amazon... and my install was very smooth I downloaded the Catalina, then booted my new drive to from the download on my iMac where shows that step in a different video he missed it in this one ! long story short I've been running this for 2 weeks now and I'm happy to say this fixed my issue and my Mac is noticeably faster. no more latency on my music production and I still can't believe how fast this small thing is thanks Graig!!!
You are welcome and thanks for watching and hopefully you can subscribe. I appreciate the nice words and I'm glad it is working good for you. Thank you.
Hello Craig thanks for your videos. I have Imac 2017 5K as you. And I want to upgrade my computer too bcs We really like 5k Retina screen. I bought new RAM and install them. That was easy then I want to boot mac from external SSD. I saw your video but this video was 3 years ago. I am sure you use new externall ssd for boot now. There are some really expensive ssd like samsung x5 or G drive. But ı want to make DIY ssd. I want to buy M2 SSD and and enclosure. But I cant decide which one ı must buy and which one. I need your help pls
I have had really good success with Other World Computing like this one (Thunderbolt 3) - eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVXP00/ - but in the end most 10 Gbps enclosures should work fine, and since I have not done that for a little while I can only tell you that I used older OWC stuff for the enclosures before. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel If I wanted to use this as my boot drive, do I have to back everything up on my Fusion Drive? Or am I okay to just set this as the boot drive and not risk losing any of my data?
Thanks for helping us out with Apple. My next iMac will have the T2 chip and I saw your vid on how to boot from external. Thanks again!
Your welcome Jon. Yes, as Apple continues to make things harder we try and find a way to help. I'll keep posting videos as I learn new things. Thanks again.
Fantastic! Great idea to make use of some older SSD's that I have laying around.
Thanks for watching and for the comment. Yes, you can never have enough external SSDs. My problem is managing the data on them :)
Love the videos man keep up the good work
Thanks for the feedback and watching. I'll do some more tests in the future to see how much faster I can make my 2017 imac (booting off various drives) and I'll also be doing more experiments with other Apple computers and even PCs. Anyhow thanks again for watching and I appreciate the nice words.
@@craigneidel yes but can u make some videos about the 2011 iMac I love the pass videos about them
@@everythingsamsungandiphone3251 Yes, I also have the 2011 imac and will be making some videos on that one also. They are very similar and you can apply what I cover to both systems (2017 and 2011 imacs). Anyhow, I'll do my best to mix things up for sure.
This is a very good alternative if you don't want to remove the front screen and monitor and everything involved plus not getting dust trapped between screens when you reassemble, wouldn't it be nice in this day and age if Apple put removable panels on the back of the iMacs which gave the consumer access to the HDD and SSD (if it had one) just like the memory stick location. thanks for sharing this.
Thanks for watching Neil. Yes, this is better than opening up the iMac but I agree that they should make them easy to change out. This is just a solution for a problem Apple made but at least it's an option. Thanks again.
Sir, is an external SSD already enclose will do the job as well as the one in the enclosure? Is your way of doing this is really faster than the FusionDrive? I'm ready to do the same with my 2012 iMac. Thank you so much for this video.
Yes, booting off an external SSD should be faster than the Fusion drive as the Fusion drive only has a very small portion that is SSD and can slow down from time to time.
Hey Craig, I’m just curious I have a 2011 iMac and I seen the video before this one with the Lacey external hard drive. Is it possible to use the one in this video for that same application does it come with a thunderbolt plug?
No the issue is it is not a Thunderbolt plug and the 2011 needs that in order to get enough speed out of it. The 2011 are so old they don't have fast enough USB ports to use those.
I have a Late 2013 Imac and am interested in adding an External SSD as you have done here. As you may know the 2013 Imac only has Thunderbolt 2 and I would need to get a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 USB-C adaptor to make this work. These are not cheap. Is there another way?
The 2013 have a faster USB port also. I think 5 GB/s. I would just use the USB port and try it. If you are getting anything like 300 to 400 MB/s on the external drive it will work perfect for booting off it and be way faster than the spinning drive. I have done that before also.
Looking forward to seeing the speed as a boot drive compared to the fusion drive. I wish they would just make SSD memory standard on the iMacs and get rid of the fusion drive.
I should be able to do that in the next few weeks. I should try the standard SSD first and then hopefully get to the ultra fast 3100 Mbps drive later. Thanks for watching.
I wonder if you can help - I have an Apple 27 ins iMac 2014 with Thunderbolt 2 port - I also have a Crucial X8 1TB Portable SSD which I want to use as my boot drive - However Crucial advise the X8 will only work with USB 3.0 type and not supported by the Thunderbolt mini port as it comes with USB C type with (10 gb/s) Type-C to USB-A adapter (5Gb/s), while Thunderbolt mini runs at (20 gb/s). Thus you will be not able to use Thunderbolt mini for its speed of X8 SSD
My question could I place the X8 into the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini enclosure and is there a cable to connect to the Thunderbolt 2 port so I could reach the estimated transfer speed of the X8 at 1050MB/s?
I don't think that is possible as the port on the OWC would limit the speed down (if even possible). I would just find the best external enclosure (fastest) that will support the drive and run it that way. I have a few videos where I boot off an NVME drive (see under my channel) and I can get about 800 MBps speeds that way but that is on a 2017 iMac. You just need to pick the fastest enclosure and SSD that will work and then you can create a boot drive for your system at the top speed the setup will allow. Thanks for watching.
I have a 2013 Imac with the following connections. Four USB 3 ports (compatible with USB 2)
Two Thunderbolt ports. Would you still recommend this upgrade as I don't have USB 3.1
Hello, Adam, I would recommend booting to an external SSD enclosure for any older system with a slow spinning drive. With a 2013 iMac, you can get something like the 10 GB/s enclosure I cover in this video - ruclips.net/video/VyZlDwV1AOY/видео.html . In that video, I show you how to make a 2011 iMac much faster and recommend the enclosure that works great. The 2011 iMac only has Thunderbolt 1 connections. You just need to make sure that the enclosure you are using is 10 Gbps or even 5 Gbps (connection type) and it should be faster than the spinning drive. If you set up a super slow external getting 100 Mbps (like USB 1) then you won't have any speed increases and it won't work good at all. So I hope that new video works good for you. Thank you.
USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 are exactly the same. Exactly. There is no difference at all. You get a theoretical maximum throughput of 5gbps. That is plenty fast enough to get really good performance from an external SSD most of which cap out at read and write speeds lower than that anyway.
USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt-1 have theoretical maximum throughput of 10gbps. So if you had an SSD with one of those interfaces and the SSD itself is especially fast, you might be able to benchmark a significant difference. But in practical use, for anything that doesn't require reading and writing huge amounts of data in short amounts of time (so for 99.44% of users, anything except using the drive as a 4k video editing scratch disk), you won't notice any difference at all.
Craig has a great video which shows how to cannibalize an old TB-1 drive enclosure to use with an SSD drive for an economical solution which provides great throughput. But USB 3.0 should be almost as good for almost any practical purpose.
@@craigneidel Hi Craig - I have a Mac with a Thunderbolt 2 port. I bought the M.2 and case and got adaptors to go from the Thunderbolt 2 to an adaptor and then finally to the SSD. But it doesn't seem to wrk 9doesnt show up when I pug it all in). Any suggestions?
Hi Craig. I have a late 2014 5k imac with 4 3.0 usb and 2 thunderbolt 2 ports. Will I be able to get the same speeds your getting? Which would I use. The thunderbolt 2 or USB ports?
Thanks for watching Randy. Thunderbolt 2 is going to be faster and if you can use that port you can use something like and external NVME hard drive and get even faster speeds. If you are using something like a Samsung Evo (normal sata SSD) then the USB 3.0 should be capable and provide enough throughput for the top speed of that drive. There is always some overhead so you won't get full 100% of the drive's speed but if you are using a standard SSD (not a much faster NVME drive capable of over 600 MBps) then you should be fine with either connections.
@@craigneidel Thanks Craig! I'm going to give it a try!
Hi Craig. Just got my OWC Mercury Elite Pro Mini for USB 3.0. and the Samsung 860 QVO installed. Getting about 380 mb/s on write and 425 mb/s on the read. So far so good! Thanks again for all the help. :)
Randy Rogers Hey I Just Brought A iMac Late 2014 5k Also can you walk me through on how you did yours please
hi craig. which cable i should use for the best performance? usb c to usb c (gen2) is the best u think ? and there is any difference between type a and type c while using 500gb ssd?
I have a rule to use the highest performing cable you can with your system depending on the ports you have. So Gen 2 over Gen 1 and so on. For example, if you have a cable that can transmit 10 Gbps and one at 5 Gbps they can both work. But the 5 Gbps connection can't really get hard drive speeds over about 450 MB/s (on the SSD Drive). So if you are putting in an external drive and want the speeds to be over that like 900 MB/s you need to go with a connection type of at least 10 Gbps. With standard SSDS like a Samsung Evo (not the newer NVME drives) it may not matter but with overhead having the extra room lets the drives perform a bit better if that matters to you. Of course and external drive that even connects at 450 MB/s is about 15 times faster than those little USB flash drives most people get but since I like to boot off my external drives I always go over at least a 10 Gbps connection between the computer and external drive. Thanks again for watching and let me know how everything turns out.
@@craigneidel thank you for your answer. i am using an external drive enclosure with usb 3.0 (ugreen) and my ssd disk is (seagate barracuda 512gb 2.5"). i am testing it on my imac (2019) with black magic and get around 415 write and read speeds. What do you think? if i buy a new enclosure with type c to type c (gen 2) that could be good for my performance? becouse my system startup time is not good for me (around 30 secs) - i am using external drive as my default drive and i have deleted 1 tb fusion completely, i am using it for only storage.
@@butch888888 The shape of the connector, USB-C or USB-A, makes no difference. USB 3.2 Gen2 cables can be CC, CA, AMicroB, or any of a number of other combinations. Just be sure your cable is certified for USB 3.2 Gen2 if you are using both a drive and a computer which supports USB 3.2 Gen2. You can also use a TB-3 cable as those usb type-C connectors; they're more expensive, though, but if you have an unused TB-3 cable laying around...
Can you explain why the USB 3.1 Gen 2 is important when you are using it with a 2017 iMac with USB 3.0 ports? Is it even compatible? I have a late 2015 iMac and am looking for a fast external boot drive solution.
Hello Chobe. You should use the fastest ports on the system you have. The 2017 iMac has the 10Gbps type c ports and those will work fine. Just make sure you are using the fasted connection type to the enclosure you have and that the enclosure is capable of those speeds also. That will be the bottleneck when accessing the external OS so it's an important step to use the fasted port you have. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.
Hi Craig. I have a 2017 imac 27" (catalina), put together an extrernal NVME SSD. read 3100/mb/s & 2800mb/s write. 1tb high speed drive that I boot into externally seperately in hopes of getting a faster machine. In Black magic, when I go to select my target disk I get an error stating the test cannot be run because the selected drive is a read only drive. Is it incorrectly formatted or something? I get the same error message when I select the internal fusion HD to test. What sort of speeds should I expect fro this configuration? How much slower is it than if installed internally? Pleas inform,
Did you ever figure this out. It's hard to troubleshoot but I'm guessing if you follow one of my past videos on booting off an external drive it should help you solve the issue. Good luck Demetrios.
Hi Craig. I am having trouble formatting/erasing a Samsung T5 external hard drive to use as a boot up disk. At 6.51 on your video it shows both format and scheme. In my disc utility it doesn't show scheme when you select erase. So I can't select the scheme option as Guid partition map. Was wondering whether you might have any ideas. It doesn't make any difference which Format option i select. I have downloaded High Sierra as the OS but it won't install without having the Guid Partition map. At the point in the installation where i click show all discs the Samsung is greyed out. Thanks
Hello Paul. If you are trying to install a newer (than High Sierra) OS you might only get the Format and not the Scheme. So if you have that just name the drive and use APFS for the format if you are using a Samsung T5. Just note it will erase that drive completely and get the drive ready for the OS installation. Let me know if that answers your question and then we can go from there. Thanks.
@@craigneidel thanks its High Sierra I am trying to install to match the OS thats already on my internal hard drive.However I think I may have just found out the answer to this. In Disc Utility I need to view all devices, not just volumes. That way the scheme option shows on Erase and i can select the Guid Partition map. So now when I start to go through the process of installing High Sierra the T5 is available to me! However would cloning the internal hard drive using CCC rather than just installing the OS mean that my Apps (Lightroom Photoshop etc) would also transfer across and work? Thanks again your time is appreciated.
I found the case wanting. USB connection is sketchy at best. Glad it was cheap. Looking elsewhere.
yes, all this changes over time so go with the best external enclosure you can find and you should have good results.