What I really appreciate about this is that you didn’t monetize this podcast. Thank you for not doing that. I know it costs you money to do these. It does on my channel as well. But taking the extra step to not monetize it help others I think it’s very special. Well done my friend. Larry de K7HN
Ok wow I can't thank you enough for this!!! My iMac feels 10x faster, I was becoming so unproductive waiting for every single click to load so this has totally changed my workflow. Thank you SO MUCH, GENIUS!
Thanks Emile for sharing how it worked. Yes, they do speed up the systems for sure and it's nice to hear how it is working for people who watch the videos. Thanks.
Hi Craig. Thank you for your video. Im thinking to create external boot to my iMac 2012 (with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 ports). In my case, would you suggest NVME over the normal SSD? do I need to find casing with thunderbolt 2 cable instead of USB3? Will it achieve full potential of NVME performance?
If you are going with USB3 (5 Gbps) then the hard drive can really only go up to 5000 Mbps/8 (bytes/bits) = 625MB/s in theory. But with overhead about 550 is as fast as you can get out of that connection. Going that way with a normal SSD 3.5" would really improve performance massively over a spinning drive. No need for an NVME here since you cannot get enough speed on the line. If you do go with a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure you should be able to be about double that speed but of course that type of an external enclosure is very expensive. You just need to decide if the extra speed is worth the cost. You may not notice it too much in real world use.
Craig, as usual, you have created a "most excellent" (this comment brought to you by the current Bill & Ted craze) tutorial that millions of people could benefit from across the world. Of course, I already learned from you almost two years ago, so this video serves as a confirmation to me that my (your) methods are still intact. Nevertheless, I still watch your vids because I enjoy seeing you do this. You're an excellent teacher and it shows. I even let all your commercials play out as a way to support your channel. Be excellent my friend and party on, dude!
Thanks for the nice words and for watching and supporting the channel. I love making the videos and while not the best production quality I hope people get something from them. I wish you the best and thanks again for watching all my Apple videos and videos on other tech. I'll keep making them and if I had more people support me like you do it would really help.
Hello. I used USB3.1 Generation 2 TYPE-C connection and plugged into the type C port on the 2017 iMac . Here is a link to the inexpensive enclosure I used - www.aliexpress.com/item/32913145106.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.436637fcCMUehb&algo_pvid=f3bc6d39-fc13-44bb-8cc0-27e2e7233b7b&algo_expid=f3bc6d39-fc13-44bb-8cc0-27e2e7233b7b-12&btsid=5105873e-7f5f-470d-9df9-c348f679f2e7&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3,searchweb201603_52 . There are some better ones that will do the same thing but you just need to make sure the connection between the enclosure and your computer is 10 Gbps. This one takes about 4 weeks to get in the mail and I was just trying to keep cost under $100 but later I found a few on sites like Newegg and Amazon that are about the same cost. The drive is super fast and you can pick them up at Microcenter. In fact, they also have a 1 TB NVME M.2 drive there for about $99 you can find. Thanks for watching and please subscribe and I should have some giveaways in the future.
Oh, yeah, here is a link to the 500 GB NVME drive - www.microcenter.com/product/600420/512gb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive . It went up a few bucks but is usually on special for about $50 every now and then.
So I just found your video after making one of my own asking for help- and you seem to know what you are doing. I have a 2014 MacBook Pro with usb3.0 drives. I’m only getting about 420mb/s read/write from a Samsung nvmeevo I placed in an enclosure and tested externally in that usb 3.0 port. the same as a Samsung t5. I was expecting faster. Any reason why?
@@Samlol23_drrich USB is slow, 2014 iMacs have usb 3 which is limited to 640 MBps... these NVME drives aren't meant to be used this way, an m.2 port on a motherboard can have read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,700 MB/s.
Thanks a lot for this video! Worked perfectly, was really easy esp with time machine. Used a Sandisk Extreme Pro 500GB and it's waaay faster. Crazy how the fresh out of the box Mac takes 30 seconds to load each single App vs this.
Thanks Alfred. I hope it helps. I'm glad when people can improve their systems without spending a ton of money and they can get a few more years from them. I wish you the best.
Thanks! However, I'm getting slower speeds on an external NVMe compared to an external SSD, both connected via USB-C Thunderbolt. Boot time on the external SSD is about 59 sec.s while the NVMe boot time is 03:37.xx minutes. Once I Finally am able to log in, usage seems to be similar to the SSD. Using blackmagic speed test the avg. NVMe W 883.5 / R 484.5 while on the SSD it is W 484.5 / R 519. Ventura installed from scratch on both. I tried the other thunderbolt connector on the iMAC. I used a different USB-C cable. Formatted the internal HD to get it totally out of the equation. 2017 iMac 21.5 / HD / 3Ghz Core I5, 8GB RAM, Radeon Pro 555 2GB. SSD = Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB and enclosure. NVMe Crucial P3+ M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x 4 2280 and enclosure RTL 9210B. 1 - Shouldn't the blackmagic numbers be higher for the NVMe? 2 - What could be causing the super delayed startup? Thanks
I have not heard of that and I used an NVMe on my 2017 and it was much quicker. Might be an issue with the enclosure not powering on before the system boots or something else. If you checked the speeds it's weird that it would be booting slower etc. when it is benchmarking faster. Mine boots in about 35 seconds with the NVMe but it could depend on what you have on the system and the OS you are running so that won't be exact. My guess is it has something to do with the enclosure and not the NVMe drive.
Very helpful! I am planning to work around with a late 2013 27 inch iMac with a 1TB HDD. Booting from an external Samsung T5 500GB. In order to get a faster machine. Maybe a silly question: can you use the external SSD for storage as well or only for booting and running applications? Moreover, what should I do with older internal SSD's that I have laying around. Is there a way to turn them into external SSD drives? Is that even advisable. Point being I do not want to open te screen of the 2013 model and rather work around with external drives. And upgrading the RAM of course. Thanks a lot!
Thanks for watching. If you set up an external enclosure to boot from (with an SSD) it acts like a brand new Mac. So you can run the OS and store any files on it just like it was an internal SSD. When I do this I just leave the internal drive in the system and then if I ever want to boot back into that drive it's as easy as just changing a quick setting and you can boot right back to the older drive (internal). Even if you boot from the external drive you will see the internal drive in Finder and can save files there and vise-versa if you boot into internal drive. My advice is just leave the internal drive alone until you make sure everything works good with the external drive. Since you can boot into either one it's like having two different Mac computers. Thanks for watching.
Funny, I agree. Because they can I guess but nobody should really buy one with a 5400 RPM drive. Of course, unless you just upgrade it right away without paying the Apple tax. It is crazy they ship these things and they can be crazy expensive. I think the best deal is the 27" 5K though since you can pick one up for around $1300 with a 5K screen that would normally cost $1000 for the screen. So that is the only one I think is worth the cost but of course, they have an incredible marketing department and that is why they can charge so much.
Very well explained videos, very useful indeed. I have a late 2015 21.5 inch imac, very slow internal drive. If I use a Thunderbolt 3 dock and an external NVME SSD as boot device, will I get some extra speed, or can I connect the external NVME SSD directly to the USB-C port with the same results? Thanks.
What I tell people is to connect an external SSD that gets at least 400 to 500 MB/s in speed and then you will see some gains for sure. So either might work but you need to see how fast the external drive is. It's easy to test and just test it out. Just don't delete your older drive and you can boot right back into the older drive at any time like nothing happenend.
Great video. With a late 2013 imac 27, would I be better off inserting ssd inside, adding pcie to board or both while it's open, or just booting from external SSD?
Hello and thanks for watching. If you have a 2013 that means the screen is sealed up. So it's much harder to get inside of that than a 2011 that used magnets for the screen connection. If you are comfortable with that it's always better to put inside but you run the risk of issues. But, it is best. If you don't want to do that then booting off an external SSD works good. That is the second best option but just make sure you keep original drive in place so you can boot back to it and do backups. Since you have much faster USB ports on the 2013 than the 2011 you also should be able to use them instead of the thunderbolt port. Something like a Samsung external ssd would work good but in any case good luck with everything.
Hi Craig, great video! It worked perfectly in my case. We bought a 2017 iMac 21.5 inch, it was in perfect condition and at a very good price, but it was running quite slow. After evaluating several options, I came to your video, and it was the salvation. I bought a 500gb Samsung NVME M.2 SSD and installed a thunderbolt 3 enclosure I picked up for 90 bucks. Now the iMac flies. It's really like a new machine. I'm only wondering if is it worth using the thunderbolt 3 instead of a USB-c? The speed increase is noticeable? Regards!
Great to hear it worked good. Yes it's like night and day when you boot off external SSD. I think you will get better performance out of nvme for sure.
Hey Juan. If you're talking about using a USB-C vs. Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with your NVME drive, you'll want to continue using the Thunderbolt enclosure. I have both, and can verify that I'm averaging 1000MB/s read and write speeds on the USB-C, while I'm averaging 1400MB/s write and 1500MB/s read on the Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Hope this helps!
Yes, you should be able to do this on any Mac that doesn't have the T2 security chip and even then I have a video for how to get around that (need to disable one setting). Although if your Mac already has an internal SSD and not a spinning drive (like a 7.2K drive) then I'm not sure you will see any speed benefits. If you have a spinning drive in the laptop then you should see speed increases for sure. If you just want to be able to boot to another drive with a fresh OS and go back and fourth it should work fine also. There are other reason besides speed people like to do this. But I guess to answer your questions yes this should work on any setup since they are all basically the same. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel hi Craig. Great information. I have a 2017 iMac. Does my new external need to have Mojave? Or can it run Catalina when I set it up? What cable should I use ?
I took the risk and disassembled my 27” 2017 imac, and upgraded: - 3.4ghz i5 to 7700k-i7 4.2ghz - 1tb fusion to 512gb Samsung evo 870 Pro NVme (with the sintech adapter) - 8gb ram to 64gb ddr4. Final result, 2300+ mb/s write, and 3000+ mb/s read - and in Geekbench 5 this little iMac beats some of the higher tier 2019 models. you’ll save a lot - and it’s performs better - compared to buying a new from Apple!
Thanks for sharing and helping everybody out. This is a good option if you know what you are doing. There is some risk but the results look good for sure. Thanks for watching.
Tu Tran sorry for the late reply! yes I used the wheel cutter - and yes it is quite scary but if you take it slow and carefully cut it with the wheel it will be fine :-)
Craig Neidel thank you for the reply Craig! Yes it is definitely worth it - and a lot cheaper!! But I ran into some issues at first, with improper seating of the new cpu and then the need for updating the firmware of the Nvme drive before installing it into the Mac. But still now, I don’t understand how my ‘Franken-mac’ performs better than apple’s own i7.
Thank you Craig, this video inspired me not to trade in my 2017 iMac-i5 and to give it a try. That we have newer OS available nowadays, does the OS version makes a difference in the process? Or, regardless of the OS, should the same process work??? Do you have an experience or particular suggestions with the later OS versions?
You can only upgrade to Ventura on the 2017 but I normally start with the OS it came with and then upgrade that to highest version. It should work the same no mater the OS but of course Sonoma won't work on the 2017. I would just give it a try and don't erase your normal drive because you can always boot back into that later if you wanted to (and don't delete that). It's it's easy to try and takes about an hour. Just make sure you have an external SSD around 500 MB/s for the best results (or faster). Thanks.
external tb3 nvme for mac os, another one for bootcamp, serperate the fusiondrive into hdd / ssd and use the hdd part as "time machine" :) best investment - imac 2019 1tb fusion 32gb ram
Hi, I got a new 4K 21,5 inch iMac back in October 2019. It all went south quickly... my iMac slowed down really fast and I still don't know why. Me and a friend reinstalled Catalina a few months ago, but to no avail. Things started to drag again gradually. And I'm talking basic stuff like opening a Finder window, System Preferences, Music app, Safari. The Messages app is a different story: sometimes it opens rapidly, sometimes it keeps 'bouncing' and gets stuck on opening. Even the Contacts and Calendar app can take up to 10 'bounces' to load. The system takes 70 seconds to boot, and an equal amount of time after login. It keeps running for up to 30 seconds after I click to shut down. I have few third party apps installed and lots of free space but... a 5400rpm HDD. I keep thinking I should have opted for at least a fusion drive or invested a little bit more for a proper SSD. So the only solution I can think of is getting an external ssd, connect it and reinstall Catalina on that. What do you think? Please, I'm a technology dummy and my IT friend says SSDs have some downsides, mainly in the durability department. But to me, as a layman, I have all my money on an external SSD. Please let me know!
I really want to thank you for your advice I have brought 2013 IMAc 21 inch with 1tb Fussion drive I would be using IMAc for dj and I am thinking about booting of Extrenal drive.I know you said that hdd are slow and I have watched your videos every day 🙌🙌🙌 if you are not doing video editing or playing games r they still a good investment. I just really want to thank you for your video and I can’t wait for more video.Thank you 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Thanks for the nice words and for watching. I have a few videos if you search my channel on booting off an external SSD. I did that on my 2017 27" iMac. Good Luck DJ Deep65.
Dear friend, tks for share it with us. I follow all steps and was happy with my “new mac” 2017 27 5K 40gb and main drive ssd (7500Mbps speed write and read) using acasis 40GBps enclousure adaptar, but today I have a new update from mac os, I was update and boom, system reboot in my fusion drive, I trying go back to ssd drive but doesnt work. If you know how solved it please talk to me, thank you and best regards :)
Thank you for the useful video. I have 5k iMac 2017 and its too slow now. It takes 1 minute to open Chrome :( I want to know which is better solution- 1. Booting up from new nvme ssd with enclosure. In this case, where are the macos updates are installed? 2. Adding up extra RAM modules of 32GB. Also, I use Adobe photoshop, Lightroom and Davinci Resolve heavily. Which is the ideal solution for me?
I would do both. Yes the updates are installed. If you boot from an SSD and install ram (I would say 48 GB) it flys and can do most things for sure. You can get ram for cheap at OWC and a bit ago I think I got the 48 GB for about $70 but I'm sure that might have changed a bit.
Craig a QUESTION. Firstly thank you for a great video, subscribed! I have a functioning 2011 macbook (high sierra) and an dead 2016 iMac (big sur) where the fusion drive just died. Could I go through that process on my functioning macbook and then take that external drive and plug it into my dead imac to boot it up and bring it back to life? If that does work then presumably when I unplug the external drive from my macbook I’d need it to revert to booting off the internal drive next time…. Or would it just default to that anyway once the external drive is removed? Thanks again, props from the UK :)
How do you know you’ve booted from the SSD ? What about your internal iMac drive ? Is they a place you can see both operating systems at once ? Then choose which to boot from ? I’ve done this install, but seems exactly the same as my old system
It would boot to a new computer and not be any of your old data. That is how you would know. Or check "Startup Disk" in your settings and see what is selected as that will be the drive it's booting to.
3 things need to line up - port, cable and drive. So if you have a thunderbolt 3 (tb3) port on your mac, and use a tb3 cable with tb3 rated ssd, you're gonna get the full 40gbps speeds. The overall speed of the connection will be the slowest of these three things. If you use a tb3 ssd with a tb3 port, but use a cable that's rated for usb 3.1 gen 2, expect 10gbps, because that's the limit of cable. Most NVMe drives these days are usb3.1gen2, so don't waste money on buying costly tb3 cable. Something like Samsung x5 is tb3, but also several times more expensive than usb3.1g2 drives.
Thanks for sharing the additional info. You are correct. You need to get the best of all three your system can handle. The only other thing is is you build your own external SSD for the boot drive make sure the enclosure is quality and so is the drive (both). In any case I have 3 systems booting off external drives and they all work very good for me. Thanks again for the info and sharing Akash.
@@craigneidel Thanks for making this video! I switched from an internal fusion to a Samsung T7 a couple of days ago, and so far the system feels much faster. Gonna have to wait and use this more for work before calling it a success, but excited by what I'm seeing!
@@AkashAgrawal03 Thanks Craig for the video firstly. Akash I would like to hear the long term review in short about your set up. I have just purchased a used iMac 27 inch 2017 with 1TB fusion drive and also have the T7 500GB SSD bought earlier. Looking to boot from this T7.
Thanks for supporting channel and for letting me know. I just got 2012 mac mini im going to play with so look for some more videos and please subscribe. Thanks again.
Hey Craig! So I followed your instructions and everything went great. I only have one problem. It seems I'm not allowed to use the old Mac HD disk. Not even to copy files as storage. Do you know why and how can a solve it? Is it safe to format it?
That drive should be visible so that you can still use it. You should be able to boot back into it when you need it also. I normally keep it so that I can boot back just in case I ever need to boot back into it. If you don't see it make sure you didn't reload the OS on that.
I really like this, USB C opens up a lot of bandwidth and it allows a noninvasive approach to drive upgrades for imac. Do you have to do anything special to designate the External as the primary boot and can you safely erase the fusion drive after?
Thanks for watching. Yes, you need to make this drive the boot drive by going to system preferences and then go to startup disk. In there you can select what disk you want to boot from when you reboot your system and it will stay that disk until you change it back. You can erase the fusion later but I normally leave it since you can boot back to that drive when you want to and even store files to it when on the external SSD since it still shows up as a drive. Once you feel 100% confident you don't need it you can remove it and format it later as a storage drive but I recommend keeping it bootable to keep options open or if you have any issues later. Thanks again for watching.
@@craigneidel I'm looking at the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures, since it supports a greater Bandwidth. I've built two of these so far with a WD and a Kingston NVME. Work just fine but it would be cool to push them on those Mac's above that 10gbps. Good bit of a price different on the T3 enclosures though.
Thanks Craig for your video. Quick question, I already have a external SSD (Samsung T5) with 400/500MBps, do you think and new NVME external SSD that give me around 800/900MBps will be a big difference in loading programs? I know in testing is double but this is more for transfer big files when take it importance, but to turn on the iMac and load programs I really don't know if it is a real difference in order to make an additional investment. Thanks in advance
Welcome - yeah it's a tough one. I actually boot a 2017 iMac off a 2.5" Samsung EVO 1 TB and it's loads everything super quick. Will you notice a difference loading apps - maybe not. But you should notice things like video editing or SSD intensive tasks with the additional 400 MB/s speed. It should be faster but maybe not a ton.
I used Samsung T5 USB 500GB. Cloned my old internal drive using Carbon Copy. From hitting the power button to login screen 42 seconds. From login to full desktop 7 seconds. Open Final Cut Pro 2 seconds or less to open.
I was up all night trying to figure out what your TH-cam video demonstrated today. Recently my iMac 12,1 (2011) 27" HDD failed. I was thinking about trying NVME M.2 as the bootable drive. Instead of wasting money from OWC on thermal sensor to upgrade internal HDD to SDD, your option makes more sense. If I use external NVME with thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 adapter will this configuration work? If it works then I will change the internal failed HHD with new 4TB HDD without need of thermal sensor. Then this internal 4GB HDD can be my storage and time machine drive. Can you do a video on your 2011 iMac and this NVME SSD external drive? Also the Blackmagic speeds? Thanks, I love your videos.
Hello and thanks for watching. Please subscribe if you have not already to help me out. Your in luck because I already did a video on adding an external boot drive to a 2011 27" iMac. In that video I show how you can boot off an external SSD but you can't use the NVME M.2 drive and instead you need to get a Lacie Drive (see model in video). On your 2011 iMac the only port that is fast enough is the Thunderbolt 1 port and I'm not sure they make those that go to a NVME enclosure since Thunderbolt 1 is much older. So you need that very specific enclosure that I cover in that video (see model number in video) so you can get really good speed to the drive. Then you can add any good SSD to the enclosure and I show you how to buy the enclosure and remove the stock drive and replace with an SSD. I is a process but very easy. I get speeds then about 350 to 450 MB/s which is way better than the spinning drive. It's also in the real world maybe 10 times as fast. Please note that if you look on Ebay you can usually get these enclosures for about $80 (new they are much more). Just buy a used one - remove the spinning drive and put in a Samsung Evo or something similar. Note that you need to buy the one I show you as many of the other ones don't have the true Thunderbolt 1 connection you need to load the MacOS off the spinning drive. Once you do this on any iMac (boot from external drive) you will see how easy it is. In fact on all my iMacs I boot to various drives. In your case if you get it to work you can reformat the original internal drive or add a larger one and use for storage but I sometimes leave it so I can boot back into that drive if I need to. In any case here is the video for the 2011 that might help you. th-cam.com/video/VyZlDwV1AOY/w-d-xo.html - link to video. Thanks for watching and good luck. Just remember it's easy to boot to external drives. Always back up but experiment as needed.
@@craigneidel I saw your video using the Lacie SSD. Loved it!!! I thought the Apple thunderbolt to thunderbolt 3 adapter would work with your NVME. You would need to use a thunderbolt male to male cable ---> to the Apple thunderbolt to thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cable ----> to your NVME external enclosed drive. This should allow up to 10Gb/sec data transfer. Thoughts??? I already subscribed. If this works, you need to sell this on Amazon as a kit. I would buy it.
@@kentc1020 Thanks Kent. It might work but I would need to get a cable and try it out. Also the standard ssd is sata and the NVME is different so it might have an issue with the OS. I'm not sure how much overhead there would be also in the cable but if it works it should provide about 850 Mb/s on the 2011 iMac. Just note that even with the Lacie (with Samsung EVO) it is night and day over the spinning drive. Everything loads super fast and in the real world it seems as fast as the NVME setup. Thanks again for watching.
There might be several consequences to running a replacement drive without the sensor. First, your system fan might run at full speed all the time. Second, the ambient light sensor might not work and the screen backlighting will be at max all the time. If you can live with those consequences, OK. But it might be better to leave the dead drive inside, ignore it, and use a second external drive for your bulk storage. You can avoid all the hassles involved with popping off the cover glass etc. that way, too - there’s hardly anything easier than just plugging in an external drive.
Hi Craig, I'm a fan of your channel. I changed my startup disk using external nvme. But i experience a slow down during the startup. Can you help me out? Im using imac 27 inch 2019 with fusion drive, and my external ssd is 1 tb
You can imagine I can't troubleshoot individual setups as I get hundreds of requests. I would test speed od external and make sure all connections and cables are good. Make sure your booting to correct drive too.
If I buy an external ssd and boot my Mac OS on it and have 4gb RAM in my iMac, will upgrading ram be useless? Does ssd have its own ram? Will it ignore the ram in the computer?
Upgrading the ram on a system is independent from the external hard drive project and will always help with system performance. Ram is not stored on the SSD so it has no direct relationship with this project. So if you upgrade your ram it will always help your overall system and if you add a fast external SSD to boot the OS that will also help but in a different way. You just need to make sure you use the correct ports and a fast enclosure and SSD drive so that you get good performance to the disk. Thanks for watching.
Great video! Could you use your Time machine to copy your old drive and OS and then use it to boot on the SSD drive instead of downloading a new os to the ssd?
Thanks for watching. I heard you can do that but I have not tried it yet myself. I always do a fresh install of the OS on the external and leave my primary drive along just in case I need to reboot to it later. I'll maybe try this in the future and if I do make a video.
I ended up following your instructions and then later updating my new boot drive with Time machine. Worked out perfect! Thanks again for your well informed videos.
Thank you for your video, what if you are exchanging your ssd to a better ssd. It would have to be off and go through safe mode. Am I right ? Or completely lost? I just want to use the same enclosure for my older SSD and put in the new ssd, then .......... Any ideas!
Hey Craig love the vids, I got stuck not being able to get the Catalina install icon on the computer even with the Samsung 2tb nvme set up but eventually got it, I have 64gb of ram coming hopefully it is quick. Thanks for the tips 👍 Subscribed
Such great Stuff !!... I have learned so much from your videos, my head is spinning!!... May I throw in a new question? : Nvme Housing and their connections ...which Housings would you recommend to max the speed: My Older iMacs (late 2013 and late 2015) have often also those ethernet 1000base-T,...then thunderbolt 2....then USB 3.0 ...... I cannot figure out what housing to search for, with your suggested bootable Nvme SSD's. ( I would boot from those SSD , as You do).
For TB2 connections, you need the LaCie externals that have the TB2 port housing. They will come with an HDD inside. You will have to take it apart, remove the HDD then mount the new SSD (not available with NVME Drive, SATA port only), then reassemble. Craig has a video on this, I think it was from last year sometime. The LaCie "take-apart" is fairly simple, but you need to take your time so you don't damage vital components. I did this with my 2011, then copied my 2011 HDD to the new SSD inside the LaCie, then started booting from it. It's now blazing fast (325r/300w). Good luck, Akos.
Subbed! Dumb question: can you accidentally eject the drive that runs the OS? Or how does the mac respond if the cable comes off from the ssd drive? 🙈 I'm getting my very first imac tomorrow, it's a 27" 2017 model with the fusion drive, and I'm very interested of doing this ssd upgrade.
If the cord comes undone you can always hold down the correct keys while booting and then select the correct drive to boot from (after reattaching). I should not mess anything up if it comes undone accidentally. I always leave my original boot disk operational and you can always boot into that also. From my experience booting from an external SSD has been extremely reliable for me. I assume it might depend on the external enclosure and drive you choose also but for me it has always worked good. Thanks for watching.
I would use an NVME style drive for that. My latest iMac is the 2017 iMac but just buy the fast external drive, ssd, and connection you can and it should be all that you need.
Boot times should only take about 20 seconds but it depends on the external enclosure and drive etc. They are about 5 to 7 times faster than booting off the HDD. Thanks.
@@craigneidel finally done tonight. Boot up takes about a minute but that’s still faster than what it was. Everything once it’s running is so much smoother and responsive.
@@anthonypollifrone6376 Thanks for posting and glad everything worked out. Yes, it should make a very big difference when using the system and opening up apps etc. Nice.
Great video! I am new to mac and have a question. After doing the install to ssd external are any of the programs or data from the original fusion drive available and if not is there a process to migrate them without loss. Also is there any difference in performance putting the new drive inside the computer. (I know it will be a major production however) thanks in advance Ernesto
If you leave the older drive alone (don't delete anything) you can always boot back into the older drive at any time. So the new external SSD is basically like a brand new Mac and if you boot back into your older drive using (Preferences --- Startup Disk) it will be like you are back to the old computer in a few minutes. If you put the new drive in the computer you will get slightly better performance for sure but it's a process with the seals etc. so this is a quicker fix.
For sure that would work. That would allow even more throughput to the drive and your numbers would be faster (read, writes) depending on the drive you select. I always say use the fastest drive you can use for this and the fastest connection to the enclosure which would be Thunderbolt 2. Thank you.
Craig Neidel Thanks for your quick reply. With a PCIe enclosure do you know if there are specific chips that have to be on the expansion card to get it to boot from PCIe? Or will a basic $10 PCIe to NVME work from Amazon? There’s not a lot of documentation.
@@paulolson1920 The only EXT chipsets that I could find that would bus into TB1&2 are SATA, and they are the LaCie EXT's and the OWC toasters. The OWC's are really expensive too. There were no PCI's, nor any conversion cables. TB1 and 2 ports are being phased out of the aftermarket supply chain because of the demand for USB-C/TB3 ports.
So, what do you think about using a thunderbolt thunderbolt enclosure for NVMe? I have 2017 Imac 27” and want to run a DAW Ableton with softwares synths and audio samples. Would also like my project to be saved on ssd NVMi too
Just make sure the Thunderbolt enclosure you buy is the same as the Thunderbolt speed on the 2017. No reason buying Thunderbolt 4 if the 2017 can't support it. But, with that said it should work fine and you would get a bit more speed. You might just need to worry about heat more so make sure you cool it good and use good heat tape.
Thanks for this Craig! Very interesting. A question: What's the connection between this new, fast, SSD boot up and all the data that is sitting on the Macintosh HD? Suppose I've got a 1TB SSD ready to go as is seen at the end of this video. The reason I've done it is that my Fusion 2TB Macintosh HD was running very slow. After repopulating all my non-OS software and adding in my bookmarks etc to this new drive, can I simply click on the Macintosh HD and have easy access to that over 1 TB of data; all those Word, Excel, .txt, .pdf, audio and movie files that are sitting on the other (Macintosh HD) drive? Can I also now delete all the files in "System", Library", & "Applications" that are sitting on the Macintosh HD to save space on my 2TB drive? What I'd like to do is have all that space (2TB) available for data only, and have the fast 1TB SSD used for housing only the OS. Is that possible?
You need to get the fasted external enclosure you can to move the data to the external SSD. Once you setup your Mac to boot off the external SSD that is basically like a brand new Mac so everything needs to be reloaded on the external drive (you basically setup as a new Mac setup). Eventually you could reformat the older drive for storage once you are comfortable using the external or just leave it and boot back into the old drive when needed. Thanks.
Just found your channel. I have a 2017 iMac and I was using a Samsung T7 but the read/write speeds are terrible. I am sending it back and need to find an alternative 2tb drive. How fast does your iMac boot now? The Samsung T7 takes over 2.5 minutes.
I used Samsung 3.5 inch SSD in external enclosure from ocw. It only takes 20 seconds to boot and works great now for over 2 years. Maybe give that a shot. Good luck and thanks for feedback.
Great video! Did you experience any issues whilst running MacOS off the external drive? I'm really thinking of doing this upgrade but, I've boot camped Windows from an external drive before and had all sorts of issues with running programs and compatibility stuff - wondered if you experienced anything like that in MacOS off of the external drive? Thanks so much! 🤙
Hi James. I actually am running a 2017 27" iMac and one 21.5 and one 27 2011 iMacs wit external SSDs. They work great and I have not experienced any issues that I can think of. I would also say about 500 people have actually done this based off the video and have had a good experience. Plus, just don't erase your primary drive and you can test it out first (boot to the new external SSD) and if it doesn't work boot back to the older drive. Thanks for watching.
Yes, depending on drive etc. you can do that also. I have a few iMacs that I boot off SSDs with an they all work very good. Just make sure you get quality enclosures (that don't turn off) and good SSD drives. But, as long as you don't delete your original drive's contents you can boot right back into that after testing if you need to.
Hi Craig, I have a 2017 i-Mac and I wonder buying an external SSD to boot on in order to make it faster. But I don't want an SSD without cooling system or a fan because this should damage it ? I saw in another video of yours that you bought an external SSD for your 5K 2017 i-mac. Do you have a brand, a model to provide for me ? thanks
To be honest I use a Samsung 2.5" SSD (only about 500 Mbps) and use an OWC external enclosure now for 5 years on my 2017 iMac. Works incredible and I have edited 550 4K videos on that machine. You can check out my most recent video for the parts (video is about M1 iMac vs intel imac) and in the description I list some items for the boot drive and disk. I would just use a normal Samsung 2.5" disk instead of the QVO (use black one not gray) and you will see even a little better performance. Of course you can also use M.2 drives but this setup is a workhorse and never get's hot.
Great videos after watching don't know what else I can do. I have two imacs. One 2017 it died (it said the drive was bad and can't be fixed). One 2007 but it cant download a operating system from apple store they say to old. I was trying to get operating system on the 2007 then transfer to SSD drive to install on 2017 imac. How can I get "Ventura??? operating system to 2017 (thats what it had)". Do they sell SSD's with the operating system installed already on the SSD? If not, that would be a way to make money right, buy and just install? Do you sell SSD's like what I need?
I don't do that but see if you have a friend or somebody you know that might have a Mac and download it that way. Not sure but the 2007 isn't going to be much of a help. Here is a link that might help but just do research on Google of people in a similar situation and there will be info - support.apple.com/en-us/102662
This was super helpful, thanks. I do have a question. I cloned my iMac onto an external SSD enclosure Drive and booting off of that. It works great, but since I have been running my machine that way, my iCloud isn’t syncing with my documents and desktop folders, which are located on my internal Drive is this happening because I am running the operating system off the boot disk? if so, do you know of a way to force the sink between iCloud in my internal hard drive?
This video was a while back so I'll need to do some research on that and get back to you. I don't remember having this issue. It might come down to how you set it up. When you clone a drive it's a duplicate computer basically. When you install the OS from scratch on the drive it acts a brand new Mac so it might then not have the same issue with iCloud.
ok, thank you. Yeah, I wasn't having the sync issue before I cloned it. It started right after I started booting from the external SSD. I have a failing flash drive on my fusion drive in the iMac. It was regularly shutting down on me and taking an hour to boot. This is a bandaid fix until my new MacBook Pro arrives next week. I just want to make sure that my iCloud and internal hard drive is synced before I do a time machine migration. @@craigneidel
Thanks for sharing. Those are maybe best way to go since pre-build and pretty fast. I think those are around 500 MBps. The make the system much faster for sure. Thanks.
@@nealkurz6503 T/he Samsung T5 and T7 I are standard SSD drives and the one I recommended was an NVME. The NVME is going to be slightly faster but in real world use it will be hard to tell in most cases. I would try it and see what you think and just don't delete anything as you can always boot right back into your older drive and OS. I just show people how to do it but there are so many combinations of drives and enclosures out there. The key is going with the fast combo of Drive and connection to the drive you can do and you should be fine. Thanks Neal.
Hi Dennis your vedios are really helpful. Just a question regarding the installation. If I select restore from time machine option while booting to the new SSD, would I be able to get all data I have in the internal hard disk copy to SSD? Or is there another way to do it?
Hello Manu. My name is Craig not Dennis but no worries. I have not tried that but heard it could work. Sorry but since I have not restored time machine to the external SSD I really don't know for sure but I think there is some info out their on TH-cam for that answer. Thanks for watching again.
@@craigneidel sorry for that wrong name, however, I have installed mac os in an external nvme SSD and it's working incredibly fast and also I have migrated all the files to the SSD.
Always use the fasted connection you have so Thunderbolt 3 is best but usb 3.1 would work good also. The system works very well and I have had no issues for a few years on all types on Macs that don't use the T2 chip.
3 things need to line up - port, cable and drive. So if you have a thunderbolt 3 (tb3) port, and use a tb3 cable with tb3 rated ssd, you're gonna get the full 40gbps speeds. The speed of the connection will be the slowest of these three things. If you use a tb3 ssd with a tb3 port, but use a cable that's rated for usb 3.1 gen 2, expect 10gbps, because that's the limit of cable.
hey I have I Mac 2017 21inch 1 tb fusion drive I am video editor . Liam using final cut pro full day . I want know this nvme ssd methods is good to speed my Mac like is there any problem if I run final cut pro for 7 to 8 hour
I didn't see any issues with video editing and it helps to speed the iMac up over the fusion drive. Just make sure you get an enclosure and SSD (NVME) that is quality and have the connection speed high enough for the NVME drive and you should be fine. It seems like it only helps and you can also boot back to your fusion drive at any time if you want to so trying this is a good option to see if it works good. Thanks for watching.
Yes, you can do that for sure. It depends on how you want to use it of course. You can leave your other drive alone and boot back to it from time to time and access older apps or just reinstall them on the new disk. It will think it's a new Mac though so for items like Photoshop with licensing it thinks it's a second computer. I normally leave my first OS alone and boot back to it later if I need it and I can still use for storage from the new OS if I need to later. So I would say it's like 50/50 when it comes to reinstalling apps but in any case it's up to the user. Thanks for watching and please subscribe if you have not so we can make more videos.
On the 2017 you have a few ports. Thunderbolt (up to 40Gb/s) USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s). Even the 3.1 Gen 2 is 10Gbps which when divided by 8 (bytes to bits) you get 1,250 MB/s. Of course with overhead you won't get that with an external drive but you are good both ways. Since this drive is capable of over 2000 MBps using the USB-C Thunderbolt connection to a Thunderbolt enclosure (both sides) would be even faster but way more expensive for that enclosure.
Hi Craig!!! I've been running my iMac since last year off an 512gb NVME external drive I built thanks to you.. But recently, it's going super slow... I have 400 something space on the nvme, why I'm a getting the beach ball now? Thank you!
Hello, I have a number of systems running off externals and have not had any issues so it could be hard to troubleshoot. My 2 guesses is the SSD is having an issue or over-heating maybe or you are running a new application causing system issues. I wish I would be of more help but it would be hard for me to troubleshoot a system with so many variables. I think one of those 2 items could be something to look into and I hope that helps a bit. Thanks Yary.
Hi Craig, I need advice and information. 2017 I have imac computer, I want to make a boot disk like you do.I want to boot everytime with External NVME SSD, Is this enough to select the disk once to boot? thank you in advance for your answer
Here is a good link for this - support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796 . Yes, once you change it here it should continue to boot from the same drive every time until you change it back. So no need to change it back until you want to boot from older boot up drive. Thanks for watching.
I have done this with a mid level 2019 5k iMac 1TB fusion and 40GB ram. My first attempt I used a 1TB NVME like you showed here in a usb 3.1 case. Speed was better but it seemed to be slow to reboot whenever I needed a e start. So I got a newer 970EVOplus 2 TB NVME and a Thunderbolt 3 case. Faster still when booted but it takes 15-30 minutes to restart even if no other drives are connected. The progress bar moves normally to half way then stops for an inordinately long time. Then it suddenly completes and the login screen is presented. Any ideas why this iMac is so slow with an external NVME boot drive?
I don't know why it would do this off hand. I have not tried this though with any Macs that have the T2 chip which could be causing an issue. I'll let you know if I can think of anything but maybe see if there are dedicated videos on this for your specific year (model) since I know the 2017 iMacs don't have the T2 chips etc. and that could be a difference.
@@craigneidel Thanks. I think it may be at the system level, as a new user account still has the slow boot with long pause. This machine didn't have the T2 yet, so it could be some other issue. Booting off a clean install from the internal 1TB Fusion drive is not an issue. I've found many many similar complaints on the forums. It may be some technical issue booting from USB-C under certain hardware conditions. I may not find a solution short of letting this iMac go to my wife, where the Fusion drive will suffice, and get myself one of the newer Apple Silicon systems.
I have a late 2015 21.5 inch imac with 1920 x 1080 resolution with a i5 processor with 8 gb of ram with a 1tb internal HDD, i do video editing and not heavy stuff just some light stuff like adding in Broll footage, a couple of cuts and such and i was wondering if getting this or a 256 or 500 gb external ssd to use ad my main drive will drastically improve the speed of my iMac, i use DaVinci to edit btw.
Hello and thanks for watching. I found that in all my systems that I had a spinning drive when I booted off an external SSD I saw major improvements. You just need to make sure you use your fastest port (5 Gbps or 10 Gbps is best) for the enclosure and a good SSD. For example I have a video I did this on a 2011 27" iMac and it's about as fast as my 2017 27" iMac for basic tasks and just a little slower for video editing on 1080p. Anyhow Ram also makes a big difference but I only had 8 Gb on each system when testing and it ran way faster. Just make sure you have the right enclosure and drives and you will notice it. Thanks again .
With an SSD you can use either one and AFPS is more for the SSDs but can have some issues on older Macs. So I just used Mac OS Extended so it would work with more viewers systems and it will still work good with SSDs. So that would be the only reason.
Can I use 256GB NVME drive for boot up my old 2017 iMac or do I need more then 1000 GB drive for just boot up iMac since I am already using an external drive for time machine backup. Can you please let me know?
You can easily use a 256 GB for a boot drive. Most new Macs only ship with a 256 GB drive so no issues on loading the OS. I will provide you with about 210 GB left give or take.
Enjoyed your video! I understand the steps, mostly. Here’s where I’m a little fuzzy… Once the MacOS is installed & booted from the Thunderbolt external NVME, is new, saved data & new applications automatically saved on the Thunderbolt external NVME drive, too? Also, could I restore from Time Machine to this Thunderbolt external NVME drive and not have to reload user profiles & applications already loaded? If so, how do I ensure all new activity always goes to the Thunderbolt external NVME, and no longer to the internal Fusion drive? (I’m too leery of popping off the monitor & physically removing it/them.) Thanks again for your video. RB
Hello, and thanks for watching. In MacOS settings there look for "Start Up Disk". If you set your system to boot into the new SSD it always will boot to the new SSD and that is basically a totally different computer as it then boots from that disk. You can always go back and set this up to boot from the original disk if you don't erase that. So Start up disk is what you are looking for and make sure the new disk is the start up disk. Finally, I have not tried resorting from Time Machine but think that could work. There might be some videos on that on TH-cam etc. but I do think that could work but I have not tired it yet.
@@craigneidel Again, thank you for your videos and for your response. After much Google searching, I learned I may also have a macOS driver issue on macOS Ventura with my new Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD in an external case. The post I read said the 980 Pro wasn't compatible on newer macOSes and recommended the WD Black SN850X. So, I ordered a 1TB one. Upon its arrival (maybe tomorrow?), using an external case, I will again try to Erase/Partition it, download macOS Ventura onto it, (per your TH-cam video guidance) choose it in "Start Up Disk" and try to use it as my new boot/applications/data drive on my 2017 iMac 27". I will try to remember to post that progress (or not) back here. My Samsung 980 Pro in an external case failed during the macOS Ventura install and NEITHER my 2017 iMac 27" desktop nor 2019 Macbook laptop would recognize it (both macOS Ventura). I had to resort to various commands in macOS Ventura "Terminal" mode and also various commands in Windows 10 "Command Prompt" mode on a Windows PC. But, I finally got the 980 Pro back to being a Windows NTFS, free healthy data drive. At first, my Windows 10 PC wouldn't display the 980 Pro, but "Command Prompt", "diskpart", then "list disk" would show it, but it had 0 free space. Ultimately, I got it converted, wiped and reformatted in a Windows 10 PC. P.S. The external cases I tried were the UGREEN, Model CM559 (aluminum and black silicon) and the UGREEN Model CM578 (gray plastic and also black silicon); both purchased at Amazon. The plastic CM578 is easier to open, but I like the ruggedness of the CM559 model. So far, these external cases have worked very well on my Windows PC. Once the, hopefully compatible, WD Black SN850X arrives, I'll see how it fares in an external case with macOS Ventura on it and, hopefully, be able to use it as my primary boot/applications/data drive on my 2017" iMac 27". P.S.S. If a 2017 iMac Fusion drive ever displays as two drives (mine did as a 28GB SSD and 1TB HDD; my fault when I erased it and renamed the two drives), then one has another whole host of headaches! Using Google searches, eventually I was able to get it reset as ONE, "Macintosh HD" drive. Fortunately, a Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant saved me!
Craig, today, all went well. Successfully loaded the latest macOS Ventura onto a WD Black SN850X 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD in a Ugreen CM578 external enclosure connected to my 2017 iMac 27” (Intel i5 3.4 ghz / 40 GB RAM: 8 GB + recent 32 GB upgrade). Could NOT have accomplished this without your TH-cam video! Thank you!!! After the install, I shut it down several times and timed each boot up. Each try, it took about 1 minute 40 seconds from the Apple logo at power up to the log on screen. I’m not sure if I should expect a faster boot up or not…? Regardless, I am super happy to be off of the original, 6 year old Fusion Drive (it has been my experience that most HDDs die or become unstable after about 5 years). I’ve ordered an Intel certified Thunderbolt 3/4 cable and I’m researching possible better (re: faster) external enclosures. Maybe this could improve things even more…??? [I’m thinking of a Thunderbolt 3 dual bay M.2 external enclosure and maybe getting a 2TB WD Black SSD for the Time Machine backups to go with today’s 1TB boot SSD. Too early to know just yet.] I don’t really work this iMac all that hard, but I really want reliable (& fast) components for it. Again, thank you for your help. RB
Overall, I am very happy that my 2017 iMac 27" now boots off of an SSD in an external enclosure (thanks, Craig!). I'm just a little disappointed that its boot time still seems just a little sluggish, at least compared to my somewhat similar Windows 11 PC: - 2017 iMac 27: about 1 minute 40 seconds from power up to logon screen - - macOS Ventura, Intel i5 3.40GHZ. 40GB RAM, WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD in Ugreen CM578 enclosure (up to 10gbps), plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port using an Intel certified Thunderbolt 4 cable - 2019 Dell Inspiron desktop: about 15 seconds from power up to logon screen - - Windows 11, Intel i5 2.80GHZ, 16GB RAM, Crucial CT250MX5 250GB SSD in the motherboard I know I'm comparing apples to oranges, but it makes me question if there might be something else I need to do to my iMac, as that's about a 1 minute 25 seconds difference...??? Might the difference in boot times mainly be that my Windows 11 PC's SSD is on the motherboard?
So if I do this, when I install applications like Microsoft Office and Photoshop, would I install on my internal HDD or the SSD? Also, for documents and music files, which drive would be best to install? Thanks!
You set the Mac to boot from the new external drive so all files are on the external. You old drive will show up as a drive for storage but the faster external is best place for apps. Don't delete old drive and you can always boot back into that drive using settings.
Thank you for the video! I connected a Samsung T5 ssd to my late 2015 21.5 inch iMac and cloned my internal hard drive to the ssd using disk utility. It gave my Mac new life!! The only problem I have is that it takes around 20 seconds while booting the computer for the apple logo to appear even though I've selected the ssd as the Startup Disk in system preferences. I'm running Mac OS Big Sur and my ssd is formatted to APFS. Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?
Hello.. 20 seconds is way faster than it would be with a spinning drive and you said the Mac has new life. So it appears that it worked. It could maybe be you have FileVault on which needs to unencrypt your files when it loads on the newer versions of MacOS and that usually takes a little while. But 20 seconds to load a Mac is shorter than it would be on a spinning drive. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel What I mean is that is takes around 20-25 seconds after pressing the power button for the apple logo to appear while booting the Mac. Earlier with the 5400 rpm hard drive as the startup disk the apple logo used to appear on screen pretty quickly after pressing the button but the loading process would take forever. To me it seems like my Mac is having trouble choosing which disk to start up from. But hey I'm not an expert on computers so I wouldn't really know. I'm totally fine with waiting for that extra 20-25 seconds as long as it is faster than the 5400 rpm hard drive, just wanted to check if others had the same problem too. Btw I have fire vault turned off.
Fast like the Samsung t7 .. but cheaper right ? How much was the enclosure ? Imac 2017 have 3.2 gen 2 ports ? I got the 2017 little brother 4k arrive tomorrow by post and I was to install on external ssd . I already have the t5 but I am considering a m.2 ssd or t7 … suggestions are welcome and thanks for the video
I would just go with the best external SSD you can get if booting off of it. I made that video a little while ago so there are many other options for sure. The m.2 speeds (NVME) will be slightly faster but even the 2.5" SSDS which pull 500 MB/s will be a huge upgrade over the spinning drives. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel yeah i see nowadays quite affordabkle NVME go to speed 2000. or at least 900. I have a relatively old T5... I just finished the set up... yeah totally different experience. I would have never used a mac with spinning drive... thanks for support!
@@craigneidel I just see that the USB C ports are limited to 3.1 gen 2 which theoretically go to 1250 MBps but I would love to see a speed test with the T7
@@craigneidel wow the iMac is so fast with external add but I screw up . I have installed the Samsung ssd software and as soon I have permission in the vault I can’t boot anymore now but I can only in safe mode . In safe mode I have uninstalled it but doesn’t help
Just grab any external hard drive and give it a try. I think it should work but you need to download a copy of MacOS so you can load that onto the external.
Hello. Don't know if you're still active but I'm struggling with what to do. Late 2017 I bought a 4K 21.5 inch iMac and for probably the first three months it was everything I hoped - fast, did everything I wanted and was MacOS which is a plus for me. As a student I spent as much as was possible so I went with paying for the 4K rather than spending more on the SSD etc because I was naive and assumed that spending £1200 on a basic mac with HDD and standard specs would obviously be great otherwise it wouldn't be sold. However maybe 3 months in my iMac became slow and the boot up time and the time to load applications was extremely slow: picture it taking a minute to open system preferences, or finder going unresponsive when opening it. Now it's 2020 and I've put up with my slow iMac for long enough now and I don't know what to do. I've followed articles online about clearing caches and making sure storage isn't full and everything seems to be fine - yet my Mac is still super slow even when using minimal apps. Tonight my Mac froze, went black, and then restarted about five minutes later even though I was only watching a video on twitch and editing something on a pre-game editor on steam (not actually playing a proper game) - I have a second monitor. Because I have about £5 in total I can't risk spending £80 on a Samsung T5 for instance only to find out that my iMac is still slow. Do you have any suggestions about what the problem could be? ...Or shall I save my money for a T5 and hope that having my OS and applications on the SSD will essentially save my Mac? If you see this and respond, thank you.
Thanks for sharing and watching. I would save your money for the T5 and boot from the external drive per the video. It really helps and would be a totally new OS so everything should be smooth. I have seen no issues but it appears your system may have other issues so trying the T5 might help since it will boot from that. I have a video on my channel under the tech heading that show you some things you can try for a slow Mac but it may not help in your case. Thanks again.
You can boot off external drives on any Mac system but with the newer systems that have the T2 chip it makes it more complicated. I have a video on booting from a Mac with a T2 chip but it is getting older. I would look that up also on TH-cam and see the steps for getting around the T2 security chip but it should be possible.
Hey boss can you answer a question? All of these videos say boot off of external SD. Does that mean also run the OS from the SSD and also you'll be running the applications from the SSD? And then if that's so is it better to run the operating system and applications from the SSD but the files being used in applications should be on the internal hard drive now?
Yes, when I say boot off an external SSD I mean run the OS off the SSD. That would be a new fresh install so you would be running everything off the SSD. Even the files etc. would be on the SSD. Your internal drive basically becomes a storage drive but everything is run off the ssd. As long as you don't reformat your internal drive you can boot into the SSD and then boot into your internal drive (back and forth if you wanted) and both act as a completely different mac computer with different OS's on them.
@@craigneidel Right on.. thanks. I'll subscribe. In your opinion, would it be advisable to now erase the internal drive? Or does this setup need that drive to have OS files on it to work?
hello! well first off I just want to say thanks for your time on teaching us alternatives for a faster iMac! I have not upgraded yet hence I'm doing re search on what will work for me first! but quick question? I have a 2017 iMac that only has 1 program that I installed called Logic Pro x from apple! have a fusion drive and I can not fix my latency issues at all! ive tried numerous things from changing options in my program itself and nothing has worked! I'm very disappointed because this is the only program I have on my Mac and nothing else ! as my project progresses it becomes more late on my vocal files that record and its such a pain to the point that I cannot even record my audio vocals! this happened after updating my Mac to instal Logic Pro x update and it all went down hill! will this type of upgrade help my issues? I did the black magic test and it starts off at 800mb/s write and read but as soon as it does the 2nd test right after it goes down to90mb/s on both read and write and stay like that no matter how long I let black magic keep going! could this be my fix in your opinion ?
Hello and thanks for watching. I do think it will help since the Fusion drive is fast at the start but ramps down once it reaches it's small cache. Then its a spinning drive. The external SSD is consistently fast. I don't use that program but I suspect it should help. Just don't remove anything and boot off the external and if it doesn't work boot right back to your existing drive. Just don't delete original until you know.
Are there any heat issues with the external? I’ve seen some other enclosures that are a bit bigger with fans so I’m wondering if the external is being used as the main hd, how hot would it get
Not on the system I used. I used the heat tape that came with the enclosure and this NVME doesn't seem to put out too much heat but of course you can use any NVME enclosure and NVME drive and I have heard of some that do pack quite a bit of heat. So I can't say for sure it won't affect somebody's setup. Thanks for watching Peter and supporting the channel.
So, i did this NVMe chip loaded in to case . . . odd things are occurring . . sometime the content of the Drive "disappears" and I only see the "System" left on the drive . . . everything comes back if I reboot . . WTF ? is this "normal" with Mac OS (running "Monterey") ?
I have not see that for sure but it might be that the external ssd you are using isn't getting power before the mac trys to boot. Let me know if you are still seeing this and I would look to see if you can find a similar video on that issue but I have not seen that before and run 3 macs off externals.
Sorry, I missed this one. After you setup the Mac to Boot to the SSD I should be able to partition the drive etc. I think the better method is to just setup two separate accounts under the single drive so each person has their own account and login. Thanks Phillip.
Yes, on older macs no but on newer macs yes. I actually tested this a while back and didn't notice too much of a performance difference but to answer your question in a perfect world yes APFS is correct on a 2017 imac. It really depends on the OS also that you are running.
I did this on my 2017 27" iMac 5K and it runs much better than the standard SSD. I have edited over 500 4K videos on it with out an issue. I do have 24 GB Ram on the system though.
@@alfonsozampogna2193 With the 27" it's easy to add ram but with the 21.5 inch you can't. It should be enough if you are not doing heavy editing and things like that.
Hey, thanks for the videos they are really helpful. I've just tried setting up a bootable OSX on an external NVME drive (Samsung Pro 980, Acasis TB4 40gbps enclosure) on my iMac 2017 27in 5k and it gets the amazing 2500 speeds at first, then always seems to throttle down to 100mb - 300mb, any suggestions?
I'm not sure about that. Are you monitoring thermals to make sure heat isn't causing it to ramp down. I have not tried this on Ventura yet so not sure if the OS might be doing it either. I'll see if I can find something.
@@craigneidel I've not got a tool to monitor exact thermals, but I've read that it can get super hot to touch, which mine hasnt. Have tried on Big Sur and updated to Ventura which worked better but still inconsistent. Thanks for taking the time to reply! Maybe I just have a faulty component?
I have seen people able to get around 800 MB/s to 1 Gb/s read writes with NVME using thunderbolt if you can find the right enclosure etc. It all comes down to drive speed and connection type (Thunderbolt 2 etc.).
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,
Hello and I'm not sure what exactly you are asking. You would need to follow the entire video and load the OS on the external drive and make sure it's formatted correctly etc. via the video. My videos show people what is possible but I cannot troubleshoot individual cases since I have so many people trying this. I would watch the video and make sure you follow the steps and it should work. It sounds like you didn't format the drive or even have installed the OS on the new drive yet would be my guess based off your notes.
Hello! Any issues from booting in nvme? Do they tend to heat up on using it long run? Thank you for the response! Im booting using external ssd right now and planing to make it more faster
@@SeanBeatsss To be honest with an older Mac I'm not sure you will see a huge difference in performance with the NVME if you are already getting 460 Mbps. On paper maybe but in real-life you might not notice it unless you are pushing the limits of the current drive. If you already have it and like to tinker with electronics then give it a try for sure. It was hard for me to notice to be honest since I wasn't using the older system for 4K video editing or things like that but I guess it depends on other factors. Thanks.
@@craigneidel thank you so much!! Have this sata right now im pretty contented with it. It’s fast enough for me. Btw im using it for music production. Paring it with 32gigs of ram . It can handle well
If I install the Mac OS on the external SSD, would I be able to utilise the internal HD's storage at the same time the OS is running on the external? Or would the system not recognise the internal drive as a storage unit at that point? Pls advise.
I always say just leave your internal drive alone and load the OS on the external SSD and boot to that. Once you do you will still see your internal hard drive is still visible when you boot into your external SSD. You can save files to it also like it's an attached drive. The best thing is that you can also just boot right back to your internal hard drive when you want to by changing the boot drive back to your internal drive so it's like having two iMacs in one if you don't erase your internal drive.
For sure. The ones I get have not had that feature but that is a good point. On my main machines I use enclosures from OWC etc. and make sure that is not a issue. Thanks for the follow up on this.
My enclosure was capable of 10 Gbps so it could handle about 800 MBps speed on the drive. Use the fastest connection you can to the external drive and you will see the best performance. Thanks Christopher.
What I really appreciate about this is that you didn’t monetize this podcast. Thank you for not doing that. I know it costs you money to do these. It does on my channel as well. But taking the extra step to not monetize it help others I think it’s very special. Well done my friend.
Larry
de K7HN
Thanks for watching.
Ok wow I can't thank you enough for this!!! My iMac feels 10x faster, I was becoming so unproductive waiting for every single click to load so this has totally changed my workflow. Thank you SO MUCH, GENIUS!
Thanks Emile for sharing how it worked. Yes, they do speed up the systems for sure and it's nice to hear how it is working for people who watch the videos. Thanks.
Excellent video and I love the recycle aspect and the cost savings are enormous, thanks for showing us this route.
Thanks for watching the video.
Hi Craig. Thank you for your video. Im thinking to create external boot to my iMac 2012 (with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3.0 ports). In my case, would you suggest NVME over the normal SSD? do I need to find casing with thunderbolt 2 cable instead of USB3? Will it achieve full potential of NVME performance?
If you are going with USB3 (5 Gbps) then the hard drive can really only go up to 5000 Mbps/8 (bytes/bits) = 625MB/s in theory. But with overhead about 550 is as fast as you can get out of that connection. Going that way with a normal SSD 3.5" would really improve performance massively over a spinning drive. No need for an NVME here since you cannot get enough speed on the line. If you do go with a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure you should be able to be about double that speed but of course that type of an external enclosure is very expensive. You just need to decide if the extra speed is worth the cost. You may not notice it too much in real world use.
Craig, as usual, you have created a "most excellent" (this comment brought to you by the current Bill & Ted craze) tutorial that millions of people could benefit from across the world. Of course, I already learned from you almost two years ago, so this video serves as a confirmation to me that my (your) methods are still intact. Nevertheless, I still watch your vids because I enjoy seeing you do this. You're an excellent teacher and it shows. I even let all your commercials play out as a way to support your channel. Be excellent my friend and party on, dude!
Thanks for the nice words and for watching and supporting the channel. I love making the videos and while not the best production quality I hope people get something from them. I wish you the best and thanks again for watching all my Apple videos and videos on other tech. I'll keep making them and if I had more people support me like you do it would really help.
I like your ideas, curious what connection did you use; USB3 or Thunderbolt? Thanks and keep up the good videos.
Hello. I used USB3.1 Generation 2 TYPE-C connection and plugged into the type C port on the 2017 iMac . Here is a link to the inexpensive enclosure I used - www.aliexpress.com/item/32913145106.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.436637fcCMUehb&algo_pvid=f3bc6d39-fc13-44bb-8cc0-27e2e7233b7b&algo_expid=f3bc6d39-fc13-44bb-8cc0-27e2e7233b7b-12&btsid=5105873e-7f5f-470d-9df9-c348f679f2e7&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3,searchweb201603_52 . There are some better ones that will do the same thing but you just need to make sure the connection between the enclosure and your computer is 10 Gbps. This one takes about 4 weeks to get in the mail and I was just trying to keep cost under $100 but later I found a few on sites like Newegg and Amazon that are about the same cost. The drive is super fast and you can pick them up at Microcenter. In fact, they also have a 1 TB NVME M.2 drive there for about $99 you can find. Thanks for watching and please subscribe and I should have some giveaways in the future.
Oh, yeah, here is a link to the 500 GB NVME drive - www.microcenter.com/product/600420/512gb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive . It went up a few bucks but is usually on special for about $50 every now and then.
So I just found your video after making one of my own asking for help- and you seem to know what you are doing. I have a 2014 MacBook Pro with usb3.0 drives. I’m only getting about 420mb/s read/write from a Samsung nvmeevo I placed in an enclosure and tested externally in that usb 3.0 port. the same as a Samsung t5. I was expecting faster. Any reason why?
@@Samlol23_drrich USB is slow, 2014 iMacs have usb 3 which is limited to 640 MBps... these NVME drives aren't meant to be used this way, an m.2 port on a motherboard can have read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,700 MB/s.
Thanks a lot for this video! Worked perfectly, was really easy esp with time machine. Used a Sandisk Extreme Pro 500GB and it's waaay faster. Crazy how the fresh out of the box Mac takes 30 seconds to load each single App vs this.
Thanks Alfred. I hope it helps. I'm glad when people can improve their systems without spending a ton of money and they can get a few more years from them. I wish you the best.
Thanks! However, I'm getting slower speeds on an external NVMe compared to an external SSD, both connected via USB-C Thunderbolt. Boot time on the external SSD is about 59 sec.s while the NVMe boot time is 03:37.xx minutes. Once I Finally am able to log in, usage seems to be similar to the SSD. Using blackmagic speed test the avg. NVMe W 883.5 / R 484.5 while on the SSD it is W 484.5 / R 519. Ventura installed from scratch on both. I tried the other thunderbolt connector on the iMAC. I used a different USB-C cable. Formatted the internal HD to get it totally out of the equation. 2017 iMac 21.5 / HD / 3Ghz Core I5, 8GB RAM, Radeon Pro 555 2GB. SSD = Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB and enclosure. NVMe Crucial P3+ M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x 4 2280 and enclosure RTL 9210B. 1 - Shouldn't the blackmagic numbers be higher for the NVMe? 2 - What could be causing the super delayed startup? Thanks
I have not heard of that and I used an NVMe on my 2017 and it was much quicker. Might be an issue with the enclosure not powering on before the system boots or something else. If you checked the speeds it's weird that it would be booting slower etc. when it is benchmarking faster. Mine boots in about 35 seconds with the NVMe but it could depend on what you have on the system and the OS you are running so that won't be exact. My guess is it has something to do with the enclosure and not the NVMe drive.
Many thanks Craig, I am looking forward to doing this, you’ve made an old guy very happy
Thanks, and good luck with everything.
Very helpful! I am planning to work around with a late 2013 27 inch iMac with a 1TB HDD. Booting from an external Samsung T5 500GB. In order to get a faster machine. Maybe a silly question: can you use the external SSD for storage as well or only for booting and running applications?
Moreover, what should I do with older internal SSD's that I have laying around. Is there a way to turn them into external SSD drives? Is that even advisable. Point being I do not want to open te screen of the 2013 model and rather work around with external drives. And upgrading the RAM of course. Thanks a lot!
Thanks for watching. If you set up an external enclosure to boot from (with an SSD) it acts like a brand new Mac. So you can run the OS and store any files on it just like it was an internal SSD. When I do this I just leave the internal drive in the system and then if I ever want to boot back into that drive it's as easy as just changing a quick setting and you can boot right back to the older drive (internal). Even if you boot from the external drive you will see the internal drive in Finder and can save files there and vise-versa if you boot into internal drive. My advice is just leave the internal drive alone until you make sure everything works good with the external drive. Since you can boot into either one it's like having two different Mac computers. Thanks for watching.
Why does Apple still ship modern computers with 5400 rpm hard drives
Funny, I agree. Because they can I guess but nobody should really buy one with a 5400 RPM drive. Of course, unless you just upgrade it right away without paying the Apple tax. It is crazy they ship these things and they can be crazy expensive. I think the best deal is the 27" 5K though since you can pick one up for around $1300 with a 5K screen that would normally cost $1000 for the screen. So that is the only one I think is worth the cost but of course, they have an incredible marketing department and that is why they can charge so much.
Because Apple want to laugh all the way to their bank vaults...
money -
This is my second imac. I will never buy another one.
Very well explained videos, very useful indeed. I have a late 2015 21.5 inch imac, very slow internal drive. If I use a Thunderbolt 3 dock and an external NVME SSD as boot device, will I get some extra speed, or can I connect the external NVME SSD directly to the USB-C port with the same results? Thanks.
What I tell people is to connect an external SSD that gets at least 400 to 500 MB/s in speed and then you will see some gains for sure. So either might work but you need to see how fast the external drive is. It's easy to test and just test it out. Just don't delete your older drive and you can boot right back into the older drive at any time like nothing happenend.
Great video. With a late 2013 imac 27, would I be better off inserting ssd inside, adding pcie to board or both while it's open, or just booting from external SSD?
Hello and thanks for watching. If you have a 2013 that means the screen is sealed up. So it's much harder to get inside of that than a 2011 that used magnets for the screen connection. If you are comfortable with that it's always better to put inside but you run the risk of issues. But, it is best. If you don't want to do that then booting off an external SSD works good. That is the second best option but just make sure you keep original drive in place so you can boot back to it and do backups. Since you have much faster USB ports on the 2013 than the 2011 you also should be able to use them instead of the thunderbolt port. Something like a Samsung external ssd would work good but in any case good luck with everything.
Hi Craig, great video! It worked perfectly in my case. We bought a 2017 iMac 21.5 inch, it was in perfect condition and at a very good price, but it was running quite slow. After evaluating several options, I came to your video, and it was the salvation. I bought a 500gb Samsung NVME M.2 SSD and installed a thunderbolt 3 enclosure I picked up for 90 bucks. Now the iMac flies. It's really like a new machine. I'm only wondering if is it worth using the thunderbolt 3 instead of a USB-c? The speed increase is noticeable? Regards!
Great to hear it worked good. Yes it's like night and day when you boot off external SSD. I think you will get better performance out of nvme for sure.
Hey Juan. If you're talking about using a USB-C vs. Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with your NVME drive, you'll want to continue using the Thunderbolt enclosure. I have both, and can verify that I'm averaging 1000MB/s read and write speeds on the USB-C, while I'm averaging 1400MB/s write and 1500MB/s read on the Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Hope this helps!
Great video Craig! Can i get this done on my MacBook Pro 2017 ? Will this be recommended?
Yes, you should be able to do this on any Mac that doesn't have the T2 security chip and even then I have a video for how to get around that (need to disable one setting). Although if your Mac already has an internal SSD and not a spinning drive (like a 7.2K drive) then I'm not sure you will see any speed benefits. If you have a spinning drive in the laptop then you should see speed increases for sure. If you just want to be able to boot to another drive with a fresh OS and go back and fourth it should work fine also. There are other reason besides speed people like to do this. But I guess to answer your questions yes this should work on any setup since they are all basically the same. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel hi Craig. Great information. I have a 2017 iMac. Does my new external need to have Mojave? Or can it run Catalina when I set it up? What cable should I use ?
I took the risk and disassembled my 27” 2017 imac, and upgraded:
- 3.4ghz i5 to 7700k-i7 4.2ghz
- 1tb fusion to 512gb Samsung evo 870 Pro NVme (with the sintech adapter)
- 8gb ram to 64gb ddr4.
Final result, 2300+ mb/s write, and 3000+ mb/s read - and in Geekbench 5 this little iMac beats some of the higher tier 2019 models. you’ll save a lot - and it’s performs better - compared to buying a new from Apple!
Thanks for sharing and helping everybody out. This is a good option if you know what you are doing. There is some risk but the results look good for sure. Thanks for watching.
did you use the kit from ifixit? Taking out the screen is scary...
Tu Tran sorry for the late reply!
yes I used the wheel cutter - and yes it is quite scary but if you take it slow and carefully cut it with the wheel it will be fine :-)
Craig Neidel thank you for the reply Craig! Yes it is definitely worth it - and a lot cheaper!! But I ran into some issues at first, with improper seating of the new cpu and then the need for updating the firmware of the Nvme drive before installing it into the Mac. But still now, I don’t understand how my ‘Franken-mac’ performs better than apple’s own i7.
@@much2fast4you1 hey man thanks for the reply!
Thank you Craig,
this video inspired me not to trade in my 2017 iMac-i5 and to give it a try.
That we have newer OS available nowadays, does the OS version makes a difference in the process?
Or, regardless of the OS, should the same process work???
Do you have an experience or particular suggestions with the later OS versions?
You can only upgrade to Ventura on the 2017 but I normally start with the OS it came with and then upgrade that to highest version. It should work the same no mater the OS but of course Sonoma won't work on the 2017. I would just give it a try and don't erase your normal drive because you can always boot back into that later if you wanted to (and don't delete that). It's it's easy to try and takes about an hour. Just make sure you have an external SSD around 500 MB/s for the best results (or faster). Thanks.
external tb3 nvme for mac os, another one for bootcamp, serperate the fusiondrive into hdd / ssd and use the hdd part as "time machine" :) best investment - imac 2019 1tb fusion 32gb ram
Thanks for sharing and good luck. Yes, booting off the external drives can really improve the systems and provide loads of fast storage.
Hi, I got a new 4K 21,5 inch iMac back in October 2019. It all went south quickly... my iMac slowed down really fast and I still don't know why. Me and a friend reinstalled Catalina a few months ago, but to no avail. Things started to drag again gradually. And I'm talking basic stuff like opening a Finder window, System Preferences, Music app, Safari. The Messages app is a different story: sometimes it opens rapidly, sometimes it keeps 'bouncing' and gets stuck on opening.
Even the Contacts and Calendar app can take up to 10 'bounces' to load. The system takes 70 seconds to boot, and an equal amount of time after login. It keeps running for up to 30 seconds after I click to shut down.
I have few third party apps installed and lots of free space but... a 5400rpm HDD. I keep thinking I should have opted for at least a fusion drive or invested a little bit more for a proper SSD.
So the only solution I can think of is getting an external ssd, connect it and reinstall Catalina on that. What do you think? Please, I'm a technology dummy and my IT friend says SSDs have some downsides, mainly in the durability department. But to me, as a layman, I have all my money on an external SSD. Please let me know!
Saved my Bacon. Thank you 👍(2017 imac)
Welcome
I really want to thank you for your advice I have brought 2013 IMAc 21 inch with 1tb Fussion drive I would be using IMAc for dj and I am thinking about booting of Extrenal drive.I know you said that hdd are slow and I have watched your videos every
day 🙌🙌🙌 if you are not doing video editing or playing games r they still a good investment. I just really want to thank you for your video and I can’t wait for more video.Thank you 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Thanks for the nice words and for watching. I have a few videos if you search my channel on booting off an external SSD. I did that on my 2017 27" iMac. Good Luck DJ Deep65.
@@craigneidel Thank you so much and once again you are wonderful with your video
Dear friend, tks for share it with us. I follow all steps and was happy with my “new mac” 2017 27 5K 40gb and main drive ssd (7500Mbps speed write and read) using acasis 40GBps enclousure adaptar, but today I have a new update from mac os, I was update and boom, system reboot in my fusion drive, I trying go back to ssd drive but doesnt work. If you know how solved it please talk to me, thank you and best regards :)
Search for startup disk in settings and make sure boot disk is setup to boot off external SSD and not fusion drive. My guess.
I bought the SATA ssd. I heard it does not get as hot as the nvme ones but I could be wrong. I hope I made the right choice!!!🙏🏻
@@james8156 yes if it's for a boot drive it should be good
@@craigneidel Thank you👍
Thank you for the useful video. I have 5k iMac 2017 and its too slow now. It takes 1 minute to open Chrome :(
I want to know which is better solution-
1. Booting up from new nvme ssd with enclosure. In this case, where are the macos updates are installed?
2. Adding up extra RAM modules of 32GB.
Also, I use Adobe photoshop, Lightroom and Davinci Resolve heavily. Which is the ideal solution for me?
I would do both. Yes the updates are installed. If you boot from an SSD and install ram (I would say 48 GB) it flys and can do most things for sure. You can get ram for cheap at OWC and a bit ago I think I got the 48 GB for about $70 but I'm sure that might have changed a bit.
Craig a QUESTION. Firstly thank you for a great video, subscribed! I have a functioning 2011 macbook (high sierra) and an dead 2016 iMac (big sur) where the fusion drive just died. Could I go through that process on my functioning macbook and then take that external drive and plug it into my dead imac to boot it up and bring it back to life? If that does work then presumably when I unplug the external drive from my macbook I’d need it to revert to booting off the internal drive next time…. Or would it just default to that anyway once the external drive is removed? Thanks again, props from the UK :)
Great vid, Craig. I’m most definitely going to do this.
Thanks for watching Chris.
How do you know you’ve booted from the SSD ? What about your internal iMac drive ? Is they a place you can see both operating systems at once ? Then choose which to boot from ? I’ve done this install, but seems exactly the same as my old system
It would boot to a new computer and not be any of your old data. That is how you would know. Or check "Startup Disk" in your settings and see what is selected as that will be the drive it's booting to.
3 things need to line up - port, cable and drive. So if you have a thunderbolt 3 (tb3) port on your mac, and use a tb3 cable with tb3 rated ssd, you're gonna get the full 40gbps speeds.
The overall speed of the connection will be the slowest of these three things. If you use a tb3 ssd with a tb3 port, but use a cable that's rated for usb 3.1 gen 2, expect 10gbps, because that's the limit of cable.
Most NVMe drives these days are usb3.1gen2, so don't waste money on buying costly tb3 cable. Something like Samsung x5 is tb3, but also several times more expensive than usb3.1g2 drives.
Thanks for sharing the additional info. You are correct. You need to get the best of all three your system can handle. The only other thing is is you build your own external SSD for the boot drive make sure the enclosure is quality and so is the drive (both). In any case I have 3 systems booting off external drives and they all work very good for me. Thanks again for the info and sharing Akash.
@@craigneidel Thanks for making this video! I switched from an internal fusion to a Samsung T7 a couple of days ago, and so far the system feels much faster. Gonna have to wait and use this more for work before calling it a success, but excited by what I'm seeing!
@@AkashAgrawal03 Thanks Craig for the video firstly. Akash I would like to hear the long term review in short about your set up. I have just purchased a used iMac 27 inch 2017 with 1TB fusion drive and also have the T7 500GB SSD bought earlier. Looking to boot from this T7.
Just wanted to say thank you for this video. My late 2015 is running amazing with the Inland NVME SSD!
Thanks for supporting channel and for letting me know. I just got 2012 mac mini im going to play with so look for some more videos and please subscribe. Thanks again.
Did you use Thunderbolt connection? I have a 2015 Imac and want to use Thunderbolt 2 but don't see enclosures.
Jonathan Roberts same. i got a 21,5” late 2015 can’t find thunderbolt 2 enclosures
Hey Craig! So I followed your instructions and everything went great. I only have one problem. It seems I'm not allowed to use the old Mac HD disk. Not even to copy files as storage. Do you know why and how can a solve it? Is it safe to format it?
That drive should be visible so that you can still use it. You should be able to boot back into it when you need it also. I normally keep it so that I can boot back just in case I ever need to boot back into it. If you don't see it make sure you didn't reload the OS on that.
I really like this, USB C opens up a lot of bandwidth and it allows a noninvasive approach to drive upgrades for imac. Do you have to do anything special to designate the External as the primary boot and can you safely erase the fusion drive after?
Thanks for watching. Yes, you need to make this drive the boot drive by going to system preferences and then go to startup disk. In there you can select what disk you want to boot from when you reboot your system and it will stay that disk until you change it back. You can erase the fusion later but I normally leave it since you can boot back to that drive when you want to and even store files to it when on the external SSD since it still shows up as a drive. Once you feel 100% confident you don't need it you can remove it and format it later as a storage drive but I recommend keeping it bootable to keep options open or if you have any issues later. Thanks again for watching.
@@craigneidel I'm looking at the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures, since it supports a greater Bandwidth. I've built two of these so far with a WD and a Kingston NVME. Work just fine but it would be cool to push them on those Mac's above that 10gbps. Good bit of a price different on the T3 enclosures though.
Thanks Craig for your video. Quick question, I already have a external SSD (Samsung T5) with 400/500MBps, do you think and new NVME external SSD that give me around 800/900MBps will be a big difference in loading programs? I know in testing is double but this is more for transfer big files when take it importance, but to turn on the iMac and load programs I really don't know if it is a real difference in order to make an additional investment. Thanks in advance
Welcome - yeah it's a tough one. I actually boot a 2017 iMac off a 2.5" Samsung EVO 1 TB and it's loads everything super quick. Will you notice a difference loading apps - maybe not. But you should notice things like video editing or SSD intensive tasks with the additional 400 MB/s speed. It should be faster but maybe not a ton.
@@craigneidel thanks!!
I used Samsung T5 USB 500GB. Cloned my old internal drive using Carbon Copy. From hitting the power button to login screen 42 seconds. From login to full desktop 7 seconds. Open Final Cut Pro 2 seconds or less to open.
Thanks for sharing our experience Fred. It should others with what they can expect.
I was up all night trying to figure out what your TH-cam video demonstrated today. Recently my iMac 12,1 (2011) 27" HDD failed. I was thinking about trying NVME M.2 as the bootable drive. Instead of wasting money from OWC on thermal sensor to upgrade internal HDD to SDD, your option makes more sense. If I use external NVME with thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 adapter will this configuration work? If it works then I will change the internal failed HHD with new 4TB HDD without need of thermal sensor. Then this internal 4GB HDD can be my storage and time machine drive. Can you do a video on your 2011 iMac and this NVME SSD external drive? Also the Blackmagic speeds? Thanks, I love your videos.
Hello and thanks for watching. Please subscribe if you have not already to help me out. Your in luck because I already did a video on adding an external boot drive to a 2011 27" iMac. In that video I show how you can boot off an external SSD but you can't use the NVME M.2 drive and instead you need to get a Lacie Drive (see model in video). On your 2011 iMac the only port that is fast enough is the Thunderbolt 1 port and I'm not sure they make those that go to a NVME enclosure since Thunderbolt 1 is much older. So you need that very specific enclosure that I cover in that video (see model number in video) so you can get really good speed to the drive. Then you can add any good SSD to the enclosure and I show you how to buy the enclosure and remove the stock drive and replace with an SSD. I is a process but very easy. I get speeds then about 350 to 450 MB/s which is way better than the spinning drive. It's also in the real world maybe 10 times as fast. Please note that if you look on Ebay you can usually get these enclosures for about $80 (new they are much more). Just buy a used one - remove the spinning drive and put in a Samsung Evo or something similar. Note that you need to buy the one I show you as many of the other ones don't have the true Thunderbolt 1 connection you need to load the MacOS off the spinning drive. Once you do this on any iMac (boot from external drive) you will see how easy it is. In fact on all my iMacs I boot to various drives. In your case if you get it to work you can reformat the original internal drive or add a larger one and use for storage but I sometimes leave it so I can boot back into that drive if I need to. In any case here is the video for the 2011 that might help you. th-cam.com/video/VyZlDwV1AOY/w-d-xo.html - link to video. Thanks for watching and good luck. Just remember it's easy to boot to external drives. Always back up but experiment as needed.
@@craigneidel I saw your video using the Lacie SSD. Loved it!!! I thought the Apple thunderbolt to thunderbolt 3 adapter would work with your NVME. You would need to use a thunderbolt male to male cable ---> to the Apple thunderbolt to thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cable ----> to your NVME external enclosed drive. This should allow up to 10Gb/sec data transfer. Thoughts??? I already subscribed. If this works, you need to sell this on Amazon as a kit. I would buy it.
@@kentc1020 Thanks Kent. It might work but I would need to get a cable and try it out. Also the standard ssd is sata and the NVME is different so it might have an issue with the OS. I'm not sure how much overhead there would be also in the cable but if it works it should provide about 850 Mb/s on the 2011 iMac. Just note that even with the Lacie (with Samsung EVO) it is night and day over the spinning drive. Everything loads super fast and in the real world it seems as fast as the NVME setup. Thanks again for watching.
There might be several consequences to running a replacement drive without the sensor. First, your system fan might run at full speed all the time. Second, the ambient light sensor might not work and the screen backlighting will be at max all the time. If you can live with those consequences, OK. But it might be better to leave the dead drive inside, ignore it, and use a second external drive for your bulk storage. You can avoid all the hassles involved with popping off the cover glass etc. that way, too - there’s hardly anything easier than just plugging in an external drive.
Hi Craig, I'm a fan of your channel.
I changed my startup disk using external nvme. But i experience a slow down during the startup. Can you help me out?
Im using imac 27 inch 2019 with fusion drive, and my external ssd is 1 tb
You can imagine I can't troubleshoot individual setups as I get hundreds of requests. I would test speed od external and make sure all connections and cables are good. Make sure your booting to correct drive too.
If I buy an external ssd and boot my Mac OS on it and have 4gb RAM in my iMac, will upgrading ram be useless? Does ssd have its own ram? Will it ignore the ram in the computer?
Upgrading the ram on a system is independent from the external hard drive project and will always help with system performance. Ram is not stored on the SSD so it has no direct relationship with this project. So if you upgrade your ram it will always help your overall system and if you add a fast external SSD to boot the OS that will also help but in a different way. You just need to make sure you use the correct ports and a fast enclosure and SSD drive so that you get good performance to the disk. Thanks for watching.
Good stuff as always, thanks Craig!
Thanks for the feedback.
Can I do this when my iMac won’t boot up even in recovery mode? Precious wedding photos on that hard drive 😢
You just need to make sure you pick the correct drive and don't reformat the original.
Great video! Could you use your Time machine to copy your old drive and OS and then use it to boot on the SSD drive instead of downloading a new os to the ssd?
Thanks for watching. I heard you can do that but I have not tried it yet myself. I always do a fresh install of the OS on the external and leave my primary drive along just in case I need to reboot to it later. I'll maybe try this in the future and if I do make a video.
I ended up following your instructions and then later updating my new boot drive with Time machine. Worked out perfect! Thanks again for your well informed videos.
Thank you for your video, what if you are exchanging your ssd to a better ssd. It would have to be off and go through safe mode. Am I right ? Or completely lost? I just want to use the same enclosure for my older SSD and put in the new ssd, then .......... Any ideas!
Not sure if I understand what you are trying to do but you would need to backup everything and then change the SSD. The restore back I would guess.
Hey Craig love the vids, I got stuck not being able to get the Catalina install icon on the computer even with the Samsung 2tb nvme set up but eventually got it, I have 64gb of ram coming hopefully it is quick.
Thanks for the tips 👍
Subscribed
Thanks and I'm glad it worked out for you. It should be really quick with 64GB ram. Good luck.
Such great Stuff !!... I have learned so much from your videos, my head is spinning!!... May I throw in a new question? : Nvme Housing and their connections ...which Housings would you recommend to max the speed: My Older iMacs (late 2013 and late 2015) have often also those ethernet 1000base-T,...then thunderbolt 2....then USB 3.0 ...... I cannot figure out what housing to search for, with your suggested bootable Nvme SSD's. ( I would boot from those SSD , as You do).
For TB2 connections, you need the LaCie externals that have the TB2 port housing. They will come with an HDD inside. You will have to take it apart, remove the HDD then mount the new SSD (not available with NVME Drive, SATA port only), then reassemble. Craig has a video on this, I think it was from last year sometime. The LaCie "take-apart" is fairly simple, but you need to take your time so you don't damage vital components. I did this with my 2011, then copied my 2011 HDD to the new SSD inside the LaCie, then started booting from it. It's now blazing fast (325r/300w). Good luck, Akos.
Subbed! Dumb question: can you accidentally eject the drive that runs the OS? Or how does the mac respond if the cable comes off from the ssd drive? 🙈 I'm getting my very first imac tomorrow, it's a 27" 2017 model with the fusion drive, and I'm very interested of doing this ssd upgrade.
If the cord comes undone you can always hold down the correct keys while booting and then select the correct drive to boot from (after reattaching). I should not mess anything up if it comes undone accidentally. I always leave my original boot disk operational and you can always boot into that also. From my experience booting from an external SSD has been extremely reliable for me. I assume it might depend on the external enclosure and drive you choose also but for me it has always worked good. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel Great, thanks!
Hi great video, what is the fastest external SSD to boot a 27 inch iMac 2019 model, thanks
I would use an NVME style drive for that. My latest iMac is the 2017 iMac but just buy the fast external drive, ssd, and connection you can and it should be all that you need.
Would have love to seen a restart and how quick that was
I’m about to do this with my Mac mini 2014 to give it new life as I runs soooooo slow
Boot times should only take about 20 seconds but it depends on the external enclosure and drive etc. They are about 5 to 7 times faster than booting off the HDD. Thanks.
@@craigneidel it’s amazing you could practically run 2 Mac’s from one machine
@@craigneidel finally done tonight. Boot up takes about a minute but that’s still faster than what it was. Everything once it’s running is so much smoother and responsive.
@@anthonypollifrone6376 Thanks for posting and glad everything worked out. Yes, it should make a very big difference when using the system and opening up apps etc. Nice.
So, after doing this could you go ahead and just pop the screen off and install that NVME drive into the iMac?
You would do this instead of removing the screen since that is a much more detailed process.
This is officially give me the confidence to go into YouTubing. you had 500 subs here O_O 4 years later you sitting pretty well id say!
@@MarcellJjr I'm growing slowly and getting close to 30k subs. Many hours of work and 680 videos
Great video! I am new to mac and have a question. After doing the install to ssd external are any of the programs or data from the original fusion drive available and if not is there a process to migrate them without loss. Also is there any difference in performance putting the new drive inside the computer. (I know it will be a major production however) thanks in advance Ernesto
If you leave the older drive alone (don't delete anything) you can always boot back into the older drive at any time. So the new external SSD is basically like a brand new Mac and if you boot back into your older drive using (Preferences --- Startup Disk) it will be like you are back to the old computer in a few minutes. If you put the new drive in the computer you will get slightly better performance for sure but it's a process with the seals etc. so this is a quicker fix.
Hi Craig, what about using the Thunderbolt 2 port and an external PCiE enclosure with an NVME drive?
For sure that would work. That would allow even more throughput to the drive and your numbers would be faster (read, writes) depending on the drive you select. I always say use the fastest drive you can use for this and the fastest connection to the enclosure which would be Thunderbolt 2. Thank you.
Craig Neidel Thanks for your quick reply. With a PCIe enclosure do you know if there are specific chips that have to be on the expansion card to get it to boot from PCIe? Or will a basic $10 PCIe to NVME work from Amazon? There’s not a lot of documentation.
@@paulolson1920 The only EXT chipsets that I could find that would bus into TB1&2 are SATA, and they are the LaCie EXT's and the OWC toasters. The OWC's are really expensive too. There were no PCI's, nor any conversion cables. TB1 and 2 ports are being phased out of the aftermarket supply chain because of the demand for USB-C/TB3 ports.
So, what do you think about using a thunderbolt thunderbolt enclosure for NVMe? I have 2017 Imac 27” and want to run a DAW Ableton with softwares synths and audio samples. Would also like my project to be saved on ssd NVMi too
Just make sure the Thunderbolt enclosure you buy is the same as the Thunderbolt speed on the 2017. No reason buying Thunderbolt 4 if the 2017 can't support it. But, with that said it should work fine and you would get a bit more speed. You might just need to worry about heat more so make sure you cool it good and use good heat tape.
Thanks for this Craig! Very interesting.
A question:
What's the connection between this new, fast, SSD boot up and all the data that is sitting on the Macintosh HD? Suppose I've got a 1TB SSD ready to go as is seen at the end of this video. The reason I've done it is that my Fusion 2TB Macintosh HD was running very slow. After repopulating all my non-OS software and adding in my bookmarks etc to this new drive, can I simply click on the Macintosh HD and have easy access to that over 1 TB of data; all those Word, Excel, .txt, .pdf, audio and movie files that are sitting on the other (Macintosh HD) drive?
Can I also now delete all the files in "System", Library", & "Applications" that are sitting on the Macintosh HD to save space on my 2TB drive? What I'd like to do is have all that space (2TB) available for data only, and have the fast 1TB SSD used for housing only the OS. Is that possible?
You need to get the fasted external enclosure you can to move the data to the external SSD. Once you setup your Mac to boot off the external SSD that is basically like a brand new Mac so everything needs to be reloaded on the external drive (you basically setup as a new Mac setup). Eventually you could reformat the older drive for storage once you are comfortable using the external or just leave it and boot back into the old drive when needed. Thanks.
Fantastic! Helped us Lots. We appreciate you. ALOHA!
Thanks for watching
Just found your channel. I have a 2017 iMac and I was using a Samsung T7 but the read/write speeds are terrible. I am sending it back and need to find an alternative 2tb drive. How fast does your iMac boot now? The Samsung T7 takes over 2.5 minutes.
I used Samsung 3.5 inch SSD in external enclosure from ocw. It only takes 20 seconds to boot and works great now for over 2 years. Maybe give that a shot. Good luck and thanks for feedback.
Great video! Did you experience any issues whilst running MacOS off the external drive? I'm really thinking of doing this upgrade but, I've boot camped Windows from an external drive before and had all sorts of issues with running programs and compatibility stuff - wondered if you experienced anything like that in MacOS off of the external drive? Thanks so much! 🤙
Hi James. I actually am running a 2017 27" iMac and one 21.5 and one 27 2011 iMacs wit external SSDs. They work great and I have not experienced any issues that I can think of. I would also say about 500 people have actually done this based off the video and have had a good experience. Plus, just don't erase your primary drive and you can test it out first (boot to the new external SSD) and if it doesn't work boot back to the older drive. Thanks for watching.
Great Video! Can you enable trim?
Yes, depending on drive etc. you can do that also. I have a few iMacs that I boot off SSDs with an they all work very good. Just make sure you get quality enclosures (that don't turn off) and good SSD drives. But, as long as you don't delete your original drive's contents you can boot right back into that after testing if you need to.
Hi Craig, I have a 2017 i-Mac and I wonder buying an external SSD to boot on in order to make it faster. But I don't want an SSD without cooling system or a fan because this should damage it ? I saw in another video of yours that you bought an external SSD for your 5K 2017 i-mac. Do you have a brand, a model to provide for me ? thanks
To be honest I use a Samsung 2.5" SSD (only about 500 Mbps) and use an OWC external enclosure now for 5 years on my 2017 iMac. Works incredible and I have edited 550 4K videos on that machine. You can check out my most recent video for the parts (video is about M1 iMac vs intel imac) and in the description I list some items for the boot drive and disk. I would just use a normal Samsung 2.5" disk instead of the QVO (use black one not gray) and you will see even a little better performance. Of course you can also use M.2 drives but this setup is a workhorse and never get's hot.
Great videos after watching don't know what else I can do. I have two imacs. One 2017 it died (it said the drive was bad and can't be fixed). One 2007 but it cant download a operating system from apple store they say to old. I was trying to get operating system on the 2007 then transfer to SSD drive to install on 2017 imac. How can I get "Ventura??? operating system to 2017 (thats what it had)". Do they sell SSD's with the operating system installed already on the SSD? If not, that would be a way to make money right, buy and just install? Do you sell SSD's like what I need?
I don't do that but see if you have a friend or somebody you know that might have a Mac and download it that way. Not sure but the 2007 isn't going to be much of a help. Here is a link that might help but just do research on Google of people in a similar situation and there will be info - support.apple.com/en-us/102662
This was super helpful, thanks. I do have a question. I cloned my iMac onto an external SSD enclosure Drive and booting off of that. It works great, but since I have been running my machine that way, my iCloud isn’t syncing with my documents and desktop folders, which are located on my internal Drive is this happening because I am running the operating system off the boot disk? if so, do you know of a way to force the sink between iCloud in my internal hard drive?
This video was a while back so I'll need to do some research on that and get back to you. I don't remember having this issue. It might come down to how you set it up. When you clone a drive it's a duplicate computer basically. When you install the OS from scratch on the drive it acts a brand new Mac so it might then not have the same issue with iCloud.
ok, thank you. Yeah, I wasn't having the sync issue before I cloned it. It started right after I started booting from the external SSD. I have a failing flash drive on my fusion drive in the iMac. It was regularly shutting down on me and taking an hour to boot. This is a bandaid fix until my new MacBook Pro arrives next week. I just want to make sure that my iCloud and internal hard drive is synced before I do a time machine migration. @@craigneidel
Ok and good luck with everything. Thanks again for watching.
I am using a 1tb Samsung T5 SSD drive to boot an 2013 iMac, and it runs really fast.
Thanks for sharing. Those are maybe best way to go since pre-build and pretty fast. I think those are around 500 MBps. The make the system much faster for sure. Thanks.
@@nealkurz6503 T/he Samsung T5 and T7 I are standard SSD drives and the one I recommended was an NVME. The NVME is going to be slightly faster but in real world use it will be hard to tell in most cases. I would try it and see what you think and just don't delete anything as you can always boot right back into your older drive and OS. I just show people how to do it but there are so many combinations of drives and enclosures out there. The key is going with the fast combo of Drive and connection to the drive you can do and you should be fine. Thanks Neal.
Hi Dennis your vedios are really helpful. Just a question regarding the installation. If I select restore from time machine option while booting to the new SSD, would I be able to get all data I have in the internal hard disk copy to SSD? Or is there another way to do it?
Hello Manu. My name is Craig not Dennis but no worries. I have not tried that but heard it could work. Sorry but since I have not restored time machine to the external SSD I really don't know for sure but I think there is some info out their on TH-cam for that answer. Thanks for watching again.
@@craigneidel sorry for that wrong name, however, I have installed mac os in an external nvme SSD and it's working incredibly fast and also I have migrated all the files to the SSD.
hello, great video ... better nvme usb 3.1 or thunderbolt3? how do you think the solution you used? does the apple system work well?
Always use the fasted connection you have so Thunderbolt 3 is best but usb 3.1 would work good also. The system works very well and I have had no issues for a few years on all types on Macs that don't use the T2 chip.
3 things need to line up - port, cable and drive. So if you have a thunderbolt 3 (tb3) port, and use a tb3 cable with tb3 rated ssd, you're gonna get the full 40gbps speeds.
The speed of the connection will be the slowest of these three things. If you use a tb3 ssd with a tb3 port, but use a cable that's rated for usb 3.1 gen 2, expect 10gbps, because that's the limit of cable.
hey I have I Mac 2017 21inch 1 tb fusion drive I am video editor . Liam using final cut pro full day . I want know this nvme ssd methods is good to speed my Mac like is there any problem if I run final cut pro for 7 to 8 hour
I didn't see any issues with video editing and it helps to speed the iMac up over the fusion drive. Just make sure you get an enclosure and SSD (NVME) that is quality and have the connection speed high enough for the NVME drive and you should be fine. It seems like it only helps and you can also boot back to your fusion drive at any time if you want to so trying this is a good option to see if it works good. Thanks for watching.
how about all the applications installed in internal hdd ? should I reinstall all the apps to the new OS on ssd to make it faster ?
Yes, you can do that for sure. It depends on how you want to use it of course. You can leave your other drive alone and boot back to it from time to time and access older apps or just reinstall them on the new disk. It will think it's a new Mac though so for items like Photoshop with licensing it thinks it's a second computer. I normally leave my first OS alone and boot back to it later if I need it and I can still use for storage from the new OS if I need to later. So I would say it's like 50/50 when it comes to reinstalling apps but in any case it's up to the user. Thanks for watching and please subscribe if you have not so we can make more videos.
Interesting how you get close 900mb/s with the USB 3 interface, I thought it was limited to 635mb/s?
On the 2017 you have a few ports. Thunderbolt (up to 40Gb/s)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s). Even the 3.1 Gen 2 is 10Gbps which when divided by 8 (bytes to bits) you get 1,250 MB/s. Of course with overhead you won't get that with an external drive but you are good both ways. Since this drive is capable of over 2000 MBps using the USB-C Thunderbolt connection to a Thunderbolt enclosure (both sides) would be even faster but way more expensive for that enclosure.
Hi Craig!!! I've been running my iMac since last year off an 512gb NVME external drive I built thanks to you.. But recently, it's going super slow... I have 400 something space on the nvme, why I'm a getting the beach ball now? Thank you!
Hello, I have a number of systems running off externals and have not had any issues so it could be hard to troubleshoot. My 2 guesses is the SSD is having an issue or over-heating maybe or you are running a new application causing system issues. I wish I would be of more help but it would be hard for me to troubleshoot a system with so many variables. I think one of those 2 items could be something to look into and I hope that helps a bit. Thanks Yary.
@@craigneidel Thank you very much for replying to my message. I'll look into buying a new enclosure. Any suggestions? :)
Hi Craig, I need advice and information.
2017 I have imac computer, I want to make a boot disk like you do.I want to boot everytime with External NVME SSD, Is this enough to select the disk once to boot? thank you in advance for your answer
Here is a good link for this - support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796 . Yes, once you change it here it should continue to boot from the same drive every time until you change it back. So no need to change it back until you want to boot from older boot up drive. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel Thank you very much
Great video! You explain things well
Thanks for watching and supporting the channel. I'll need to check out your channel.
I have done this with a mid level 2019 5k iMac 1TB fusion and 40GB ram. My first attempt I used a 1TB NVME like you showed here in a usb 3.1 case. Speed was better but it seemed to be slow to reboot whenever I needed a e start. So I got a newer 970EVOplus 2 TB NVME and a Thunderbolt 3 case. Faster still when booted but it takes 15-30 minutes to restart even if no other drives are connected. The progress bar moves normally to half way then stops for an inordinately long time. Then it suddenly completes and the login screen is presented. Any ideas why this iMac is so slow with an external NVME boot drive?
I don't know why it would do this off hand. I have not tried this though with any Macs that have the T2 chip which could be causing an issue. I'll let you know if I can think of anything but maybe see if there are dedicated videos on this for your specific year (model) since I know the 2017 iMacs don't have the T2 chips etc. and that could be a difference.
@@craigneidel Thanks. I think it may be at the system level, as a new user account still has the slow boot with long pause. This machine didn't have the T2 yet, so it could be some other issue. Booting off a clean install from the internal 1TB Fusion drive is not an issue. I've found many many similar complaints on the forums. It may be some technical issue booting from USB-C under certain hardware conditions. I may not find a solution short of letting this iMac go to my wife, where the Fusion drive will suffice, and get myself one of the newer Apple Silicon systems.
I have a late 2015 21.5 inch imac with 1920 x 1080 resolution with a i5 processor with 8 gb of ram with a 1tb internal HDD, i do video editing and not heavy stuff just some light stuff like adding in Broll footage, a couple of cuts and such and i was wondering if getting this or a 256 or 500 gb external ssd to use ad my main drive will drastically improve the speed of my iMac, i use DaVinci to edit btw.
Hello and thanks for watching. I found that in all my systems that I had a spinning drive when I booted off an external SSD I saw major improvements. You just need to make sure you use your fastest port (5 Gbps or 10 Gbps is best) for the enclosure and a good SSD. For example I have a video I did this on a 2011 27" iMac and it's about as fast as my 2017 27" iMac for basic tasks and just a little slower for video editing on 1080p. Anyhow Ram also makes a big difference but I only had 8 Gb on each system when testing and it ran way faster. Just make sure you have the right enclosure and drives and you will notice it. Thanks again .
@@craigneidel Okay, thanks for the response :)
Craig, in formatting the inland nvme ssd you used extended journal not apfs?
Older video and older mac's used extended journaled. But either will work fine
Can you explain why you use the “Mac OS Extended” format? Why not the “AFPS” one?
With an SSD you can use either one and AFPS is more for the SSDs but can have some issues on older Macs. So I just used Mac OS Extended so it would work with more viewers systems and it will still work good with SSDs. So that would be the only reason.
Can I use 256GB NVME drive for boot up my old 2017 iMac or do I need more then 1000 GB drive for just boot up iMac since I am already using an external drive for time machine backup.
Can you please let me know?
You can easily use a 256 GB for a boot drive. Most new Macs only ship with a 256 GB drive so no issues on loading the OS. I will provide you with about 210 GB left give or take.
Enjoyed your video! I understand the steps, mostly. Here’s where I’m a little fuzzy…
Once the MacOS is installed & booted from the Thunderbolt external NVME, is new, saved data & new applications automatically saved on the Thunderbolt external NVME drive, too?
Also, could I restore from Time Machine to this Thunderbolt external NVME drive and not have to reload user profiles & applications already loaded?
If so, how do I ensure all new activity always goes to the Thunderbolt external NVME, and no longer to the internal Fusion drive? (I’m too leery of popping off the monitor & physically removing it/them.)
Thanks again for your video.
RB
Hello, and thanks for watching. In MacOS settings there look for "Start Up Disk". If you set your system to boot into the new SSD it always will boot to the new SSD and that is basically a totally different computer as it then boots from that disk. You can always go back and set this up to boot from the original disk if you don't erase that. So Start up disk is what you are looking for and make sure the new disk is the start up disk. Finally, I have not tried resorting from Time Machine but think that could work. There might be some videos on that on TH-cam etc. but I do think that could work but I have not tired it yet.
@@craigneidel Again, thank you for your videos and for your response. After much Google searching, I learned I may also have a macOS driver issue on macOS Ventura with my new Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD in an external case. The post I read said the 980 Pro wasn't compatible on newer macOSes and recommended the WD Black SN850X. So, I ordered a 1TB one. Upon its arrival (maybe tomorrow?), using an external case, I will again try to Erase/Partition it, download macOS Ventura onto it, (per your TH-cam video guidance) choose it in "Start Up Disk" and try to use it as my new boot/applications/data drive on my 2017 iMac 27". I will try to remember to post that progress (or not) back here.
My Samsung 980 Pro in an external case failed during the macOS Ventura install and NEITHER my 2017 iMac 27" desktop nor 2019 Macbook laptop would recognize it (both macOS Ventura). I had to resort to various commands in macOS Ventura "Terminal" mode and also various commands in Windows 10 "Command Prompt" mode on a Windows PC. But, I finally got the 980 Pro back to being a Windows NTFS, free healthy data drive. At first, my Windows 10 PC wouldn't display the 980 Pro, but "Command Prompt", "diskpart", then "list disk" would show it, but it had 0 free space. Ultimately, I got it converted, wiped and reformatted in a Windows 10 PC.
P.S. The external cases I tried were the UGREEN, Model CM559 (aluminum and black silicon) and the UGREEN Model CM578 (gray plastic and also black silicon); both purchased at Amazon. The plastic CM578 is easier to open, but I like the ruggedness of the CM559 model. So far, these external cases have worked very well on my Windows PC. Once the, hopefully compatible, WD Black SN850X arrives, I'll see how it fares in an external case with macOS Ventura on it and, hopefully, be able to use it as my primary boot/applications/data drive on my 2017" iMac 27".
P.S.S. If a 2017 iMac Fusion drive ever displays as two drives (mine did as a 28GB SSD and 1TB HDD; my fault when I erased it and renamed the two drives), then one has another whole host of headaches! Using Google searches, eventually I was able to get it reset as ONE, "Macintosh HD" drive. Fortunately, a Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant saved me!
Craig, today, all went well. Successfully loaded the latest macOS Ventura onto a WD Black SN850X 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD in a Ugreen CM578 external enclosure connected to my 2017 iMac 27” (Intel i5 3.4 ghz / 40 GB RAM: 8 GB + recent 32 GB upgrade). Could NOT have accomplished this without your TH-cam video! Thank you!!!
After the install, I shut it down several times and timed each boot up. Each try, it took about 1 minute 40 seconds from the Apple logo at power up to the log on screen. I’m not sure if I should expect a faster boot up or not…? Regardless, I am super happy to be off of the original, 6 year old Fusion Drive (it has been my experience that most HDDs die or become unstable after about 5 years).
I’ve ordered an Intel certified Thunderbolt 3/4 cable and I’m researching possible better (re: faster) external enclosures. Maybe this could improve things even more…??? [I’m thinking of a Thunderbolt 3 dual bay M.2 external enclosure and maybe getting a 2TB WD Black SSD for the Time Machine backups to go with today’s 1TB boot SSD. Too early to know just yet.]
I don’t really work this iMac all that hard, but I really want reliable (& fast) components for it. Again, thank you for your help.
RB
Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant worked perfectly. Highly recommended to all.
Overall, I am very happy that my 2017 iMac 27" now boots off of an SSD in an external enclosure (thanks, Craig!). I'm just a little disappointed that its boot time still seems just a little sluggish, at least compared to my somewhat similar Windows 11 PC:
- 2017 iMac 27: about 1 minute 40 seconds from power up to logon screen
- - macOS Ventura, Intel i5 3.40GHZ. 40GB RAM, WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD in Ugreen CM578 enclosure (up to 10gbps), plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port using an Intel certified Thunderbolt 4 cable
- 2019 Dell Inspiron desktop: about 15 seconds from power up to logon screen
- - Windows 11, Intel i5 2.80GHZ, 16GB RAM, Crucial CT250MX5 250GB SSD in the motherboard
I know I'm comparing apples to oranges, but it makes me question if there might be something else I need to do to my iMac, as that's about a 1 minute 25 seconds difference...??? Might the difference in boot times mainly be that my Windows 11 PC's SSD is on the motherboard?
If you change your boot drive to external, would that drive be automatically be the swapdrive as well?
Yes, if it is running the OS I think that is the case.
So if I do this, when I install applications like Microsoft Office and Photoshop, would I install on my internal HDD or the SSD? Also, for documents and music files, which drive would be best to install? Thanks!
You set the Mac to boot from the new external drive so all files are on the external. You old drive will show up as a drive for storage but the faster external is best place for apps. Don't delete old drive and you can always boot back into that drive using settings.
@@craigneidel Thanks for your fast and helpful response!!!
Thank you for the video! I connected a Samsung T5 ssd to my late 2015 21.5 inch iMac and cloned my internal hard drive to the ssd using disk utility. It gave my Mac new life!! The only problem I have is that it takes around 20 seconds while booting the computer for the apple logo to appear even though I've selected the ssd as the Startup Disk in system preferences. I'm running Mac OS Big Sur and my ssd is formatted to APFS. Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?
Hello.. 20 seconds is way faster than it would be with a spinning drive and you said the Mac has new life. So it appears that it worked. It could maybe be you have FileVault on which needs to unencrypt your files when it loads on the newer versions of MacOS and that usually takes a little while. But 20 seconds to load a Mac is shorter than it would be on a spinning drive. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel What I mean is that is takes around 20-25 seconds after pressing the power button for the apple logo to appear while booting the Mac. Earlier with the 5400 rpm hard drive as the startup disk the apple logo used to appear on screen pretty quickly after pressing the button but the loading process would take forever. To me it seems like my Mac is having trouble choosing which disk to start up from. But hey I'm not an expert on computers so I wouldn't really know. I'm totally fine with waiting for that extra 20-25 seconds as long as it is faster than the 5400 rpm hard drive, just wanted to check if others had the same problem too.
Btw I have fire vault turned off.
Fast like the Samsung t7 .. but cheaper right ? How much was the enclosure ?
Imac 2017 have 3.2 gen 2 ports ?
I got the 2017 little brother 4k arrive tomorrow by post and I was to install on external ssd . I already have the t5 but I am considering a m.2 ssd or t7 … suggestions are welcome and thanks for the video
I would just go with the best external SSD you can get if booting off of it. I made that video a little while ago so there are many other options for sure. The m.2 speeds (NVME) will be slightly faster but even the 2.5" SSDS which pull 500 MB/s will be a huge upgrade over the spinning drives. Thanks for watching.
@@craigneidel yeah i see nowadays quite affordabkle NVME go to speed 2000. or at least 900. I have a relatively old T5... I just finished the set up... yeah totally different experience. I would have never used a mac with spinning drive... thanks for support!
@@Mangold108 thanks and glad it worked out good. Should be a nice system for you.
@@craigneidel I just see that the USB C ports are limited to 3.1 gen 2 which theoretically go to 1250 MBps but I would love to see a speed test with the T7
@@craigneidel wow the iMac is so fast with external add but I screw up . I have installed the Samsung ssd software and as soon I have permission in the vault I can’t boot anymore now but I can only in safe mode .
In safe mode I have uninstalled it but doesn’t help
Basically! I like the video
Hi Craig, I have Imac late 2009 i7 16Gb, unable to boot with folder ? symbol, Can i do like in this way you showed in video?
Just grab any external hard drive and give it a try. I think it should work but you need to download a copy of MacOS so you can load that onto the external.
Hello. Don't know if you're still active but I'm struggling with what to do. Late 2017 I bought a 4K 21.5 inch iMac and for probably the first three months it was everything I hoped - fast, did everything I wanted and was MacOS which is a plus for me. As a student I spent as much as was possible so I went with paying for the 4K rather than spending more on the SSD etc because I was naive and assumed that spending £1200 on a basic mac with HDD and standard specs would obviously be great otherwise it wouldn't be sold. However maybe 3 months in my iMac became slow and the boot up time and the time to load applications was extremely slow: picture it taking a minute to open system preferences, or finder going unresponsive when opening it.
Now it's 2020 and I've put up with my slow iMac for long enough now and I don't know what to do. I've followed articles online about clearing caches and making sure storage isn't full and everything seems to be fine - yet my Mac is still super slow even when using minimal apps. Tonight my Mac froze, went black, and then restarted about five minutes later even though I was only watching a video on twitch and editing something on a pre-game editor on steam (not actually playing a proper game) - I have a second monitor. Because I have about £5 in total I can't risk spending £80 on a Samsung T5 for instance only to find out that my iMac is still slow. Do you have any suggestions about what the problem could be? ...Or shall I save my money for a T5 and hope that having my OS and applications on the SSD will essentially save my Mac?
If you see this and respond, thank you.
Thanks for sharing and watching. I would save your money for the T5 and boot from the external drive per the video. It really helps and would be a totally new OS so everything should be smooth. I have seen no issues but it appears your system may have other issues so trying the T5 might help since it will boot from that. I have a video on my channel under the tech heading that show you some things you can try for a slow Mac but it may not help in your case. Thanks again.
Hey Craig, Great video :)
Can I do the same thing for the Macbook pro-2018 model? (128 GB)...
You can boot off external drives on any Mac system but with the newer systems that have the T2 chip it makes it more complicated. I have a video on booting from a Mac with a T2 chip but it is getting older. I would look that up also on TH-cam and see the steps for getting around the T2 security chip but it should be possible.
@@craigneidel Thanks for the reply :)
Hey boss can you answer a question? All of these videos say boot off of external SD. Does that mean also run the OS from the SSD and also you'll be running the applications from the SSD? And then if that's so is it better to run the operating system and applications from the SSD but the files being used in applications should be on the internal hard drive now?
Yes, when I say boot off an external SSD I mean run the OS off the SSD. That would be a new fresh install so you would be running everything off the SSD. Even the files etc. would be on the SSD. Your internal drive basically becomes a storage drive but everything is run off the ssd. As long as you don't reformat your internal drive you can boot into the SSD and then boot into your internal drive (back and forth if you wanted) and both act as a completely different mac computer with different OS's on them.
@@craigneidel Right on.. thanks. I'll subscribe.
In your opinion, would it be advisable to now erase the internal drive? Or does this setup need that drive to have OS files on it to work?
cool but after that my imac crashing when screen go to saver mode,
You may not have done it correctly then. I also provided one specific case but all setups are different.
hello! well first off I just want to say thanks for your time on teaching us alternatives for a faster iMac! I have not upgraded yet hence I'm doing re search on what will work for me first! but quick question?
I have a 2017 iMac that only has 1 program that I installed called Logic Pro x from apple! have a fusion drive and I can not fix my latency issues at all! ive tried numerous things from changing options in my program itself and nothing has worked! I'm very disappointed because this is the only program I have on my Mac and nothing else ! as my project progresses it becomes more late on my vocal files that record and its such a pain to the point that I cannot even record my audio vocals! this happened after updating my Mac to instal Logic Pro x update and it all went down hill! will this type of upgrade help my issues? I did the black magic test and it starts off at 800mb/s write and read but as soon as it does the 2nd test right after it goes down to90mb/s on both read and write and stay like that no matter how long I let black magic keep going! could this be my fix in your opinion ?
Hello and thanks for watching. I do think it will help since the Fusion drive is fast at the start but ramps down once it reaches it's small cache. Then its a spinning drive. The external SSD is consistently fast. I don't use that program but I suspect it should help. Just don't remove anything and boot off the external and if it doesn't work boot right back to your existing drive. Just don't delete original until you know.
@@craigneidel thanks for the reply! Thanks 🙏
Are there any heat issues with the external? I’ve seen some other enclosures that are a bit bigger with fans so I’m wondering if the external is being used as the main hd, how hot would it get
Not on the system I used. I used the heat tape that came with the enclosure and this NVME doesn't seem to put out too much heat but of course you can use any NVME enclosure and NVME drive and I have heard of some that do pack quite a bit of heat. So I can't say for sure it won't affect somebody's setup. Thanks for watching Peter and supporting the channel.
Question: any reason I couldn't clone my existing fusion drive to a NVME drive and then boot to the external?
I haven't tried that and wish I knew for sure but could work.
So, i did this NVMe chip loaded in to case . . . odd things are occurring . . sometime the content of the Drive "disappears" and I only see the "System" left on the drive . . . everything comes back if I reboot . . WTF ? is this "normal" with Mac OS (running "Monterey") ?
I have not see that for sure but it might be that the external ssd you are using isn't getting power before the mac trys to boot. Let me know if you are still seeing this and I would look to see if you can find a similar video on that issue but I have not seen that before and run 3 macs off externals.
What ssd brand do you use, crucial ?
I use a bunch like Samsung, WD, Crucial, Silicon Power, Inland, Kingston - funny but true.
Craig, Hi... Is it possible to "split" the fusion drive in my wife's iMac into "2" separate partitions?
Sorry, I missed this one. After you setup the Mac to Boot to the SSD I should be able to partition the drive etc. I think the better method is to just setup two separate accounts under the single drive so each person has their own account and login. Thanks Phillip.
Shouldn't that NVMe drive have been formatted as APFS, as is recommended in Mac OS X Mojave or higher?
Yes, on older macs no but on newer macs yes. I actually tested this a while back and didn't notice too much of a performance difference but to answer your question in a perfect world yes APFS is correct on a 2017 imac. It really depends on the OS also that you are running.
When doing this does the apple memory swap still work? I am curious as I want to do this on my 2017 4K iMac 21.5inch with 8gb ram
I did this on my 2017 27" iMac 5K and it runs much better than the standard SSD. I have edited over 500 4K videos on it with out an issue. I do have 24 GB Ram on the system though.
@@craigneidel good to know! The ram will
I’m sure make a difference. Look 8GB should be okay for me. My M2 laptop has 8GB and I don’t ever see it lag.
@@alfonsozampogna2193 With the 27" it's easy to add ram but with the 21.5 inch you can't. It should be enough if you are not doing heavy editing and things like that.
What about connecting through the thunderbolt port?
That would work fine too.
Hey, thanks for the videos they are really helpful. I've just tried setting up a bootable OSX on an external NVME drive (Samsung Pro 980, Acasis TB4 40gbps enclosure) on my iMac 2017 27in 5k and it gets the amazing 2500 speeds at first, then always seems to throttle down to 100mb - 300mb, any suggestions?
I'm not sure about that. Are you monitoring thermals to make sure heat isn't causing it to ramp down. I have not tried this on Ventura yet so not sure if the OS might be doing it either. I'll see if I can find something.
@@craigneidel I've not got a tool to monitor exact thermals, but I've read that it can get super hot to touch, which mine hasnt. Have tried on Big Sur and updated to Ventura which worked better but still inconsistent. Thanks for taking the time to reply! Maybe I just have a faulty component?
I have not had any heat issues but it really depends on the drive and enclosure you pick.
I have imac late 2012 with USB 3.0 port, need to know max output for read and write using external nvme Ssd
I have seen people able to get around 800 MB/s to 1 Gb/s read writes with NVME using thunderbolt if you can find the right enclosure etc. It all comes down to drive speed and connection type (Thunderbolt 2 etc.).
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,
Hello and I'm not sure what exactly you are asking. You would need to follow the entire video and load the OS on the external drive and make sure it's formatted correctly etc. via the video. My videos show people what is possible but I cannot troubleshoot individual cases since I have so many people trying this. I would watch the video and make sure you follow the steps and it should work. It sounds like you didn't format the drive or even have installed the OS on the new drive yet would be my guess based off your notes.
Hello! Any issues from booting in nvme? Do they tend to heat up on using it long run? Thank you for the response! Im booting using external ssd right now and planing to make it more faster
I don't have any issues but just make sure you get a good enclosure that can cool well. Thanks for sharing and watching.
@@craigneidel thank you! I have sata ssd with 460 mb write and read speed right now
@@SeanBeatsss To be honest with an older Mac I'm not sure you will see a huge difference in performance with the NVME if you are already getting 460 Mbps. On paper maybe but in real-life you might not notice it unless you are pushing the limits of the current drive. If you already have it and like to tinker with electronics then give it a try for sure. It was hard for me to notice to be honest since I wasn't using the older system for 4K video editing or things like that but I guess it depends on other factors. Thanks.
@@craigneidel thank you so much!! Have this sata right now im pretty contented with it. It’s fast enough for me. Btw im using it for music production. Paring it with 32gigs of ram . It can handle well
If I install the Mac OS on the external SSD, would I be able to utilise the internal HD's storage at the same time the OS is running on the external? Or would the system not recognise the internal drive as a storage unit at that point? Pls advise.
I always say just leave your internal drive alone and load the OS on the external SSD and boot to that. Once you do you will still see your internal hard drive is still visible when you boot into your external SSD. You can save files to it also like it's an attached drive. The best thing is that you can also just boot right back to your internal hard drive when you want to by changing the boot drive back to your internal drive so it's like having two iMacs in one if you don't erase your internal drive.
@@craigneidel cool.. thanks a lot.. that was helpful! Also would the Samsung T5 SSD work fine via the USB C port on iMac 2017 21 inch?
The auto sleep mode present into some enclosures can be bad for use it as bootable os?
For sure. The ones I get have not had that feature but that is a good point. On my main machines I use enclosures from OWC etc. and make sure that is not a issue. Thanks for the follow up on this.
Hi ! A iMac 2013 with external nvme gone pass the 300-400mbs ? Thanks
I'm not sure what you are asking on this but in the end good luck with everything.
Great Video, was the enclosure thunderbolt? or running off usb 3? I have been looking at the Thunderbolt enclosures for an extra bit of pace
My enclosure was capable of 10 Gbps so it could handle about 800 MBps speed on the drive. Use the fastest connection you can to the external drive and you will see the best performance. Thanks Christopher.