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External Thunderbolt SSD as main boot drive

I have Apple iMac "Core i5" 2.7 27-Inch (Mid-2011).

It has a 1TB HDD.

Considering the hasstle to add another internal SSD, I was thinking of the following solution:

- Add an external thunderbolt SSD (250 GB) and use it as the main drive

- Use the internal drive (partitioned) for TimeMachine, SuperDuper backups ... and maybe for storage..

What do you think of this solution? Is it equivalent to adding an internal SSD in terms of performance?

If so, what external SSD would you recommend ?

Thanks!

It definitely works. I've tried it on my 2011 iMac. It is not as fast as it would be internally, but it is much faster than the HDD.

Thanks for your reply.

What makes it slower than it would be internally?

Running through a conversion interface. Mine reached around 300,000 MBs on read and a bit lower on write. If on a SATA III 6.0 Gb/s interface it would reach about 500,000 on read.

So it's still worth it...

Would a portable external SSD (bus powered) be ok?

Any External SSD you would recommend?

Buy a good SSD separately. Seagate makes a small sled-like adaptor for Thunderbolt. Shop thoroughly for the SSD. I've seen some good prices on the Samsung EVO 850s.

Excellent idea. Thank you!

What's your setup?

I am currently running my 27", 2013 iMac with an external SSD as a boot drive.

I have one of the Seagate Thunderbolt Sleds previously mentioned with a

Toshiba 240 GB Q series Pro drives plugged into it.

I have my 1TB internal drive split into 2 partitions.  One is a clone backup

of the SSD.  The other is my "data" volume.  On it, I have my iTunes library,

photos, default download folder, etc.

Probably a little late to chip in but I've been using a Startech thunderbolt enclosure for a while after posing the same question, running two Samsung Evo 1TB SSDs: one for TM and the other for OSX and whatever else finds its way onto it. I've read articles about migrating libraries and so on but this seems to happen anyway; iTunes, photos, the lot Went on with no cloning or even asking. No, I Maintenance-free too with TRIM enabled, takes seconds. I don't need anywhere near this capacity but always thought it's a good idea to go big for the right money.

Only problem I had was boot failure and frequent, random safari crashes - resolved by swapping a genuine Apple thunderbolt cable for the one that came with the enclosure.

Not much effort or skill required, as I don't have any skill I can say this with impunity, and for not much cash the result is night and day! Compares very favourably to buying new, or even the pre-purchase upgrade - which doesn't provide a fraction of the capacity available externally.

The Startech enclosure is  decent bit of kit, and will run any SSD combination you like. Their tech support is just brilliant, which is worth a mention, although it's unlikely you'll need to trouble them. Only thing you'll need is a spare socket to power it,

Why would it be faster internally, the TB bus is much faster than the internal (10GB/s vs 6GB/s), what slows the TB bus down?

Hi, I'm trying to do this as well, but I can't get the my iMac to boot from my SSD. I have it connected through Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 Adapter since I have a Mid 2011 21" IMac. If I plug it into the USB 2.0 port it sees the SSD and will boot from it. Not sure why it;s not working for me. Any help would be awesome

That's actually 10Gb/s - that is Gigabits per second not Gigabytes per second. Anyway Apple are hiding something because my MacBook Pro SSD write speed is 10.4Gb/s but using it on Thunderbolt Target mode (on the Mid 2011 iMac) I only get 3Gb/s - slower than the internal Crucial SSD which registers 3.59Gb/s.

Is your MacBook Pro is one of those that was only equipped

with SSD or did it have a HDD that you switched to SSD.

If it is the former, those SSDs are very fast (faster than the 2.5"

SATA formats).

In Target Disk mode, you are not directly accessing  the MBP drive.

There is hardware/firmware/software overhead involved in moving

the data.  It is not the same as a direct connection to a dedicated

Thunderbolt SSD.  So yes, it will be slower.

mailje wrote:

 

That's actually 10Gb/s - that is Gigabits per second not Gigabytes per second. Anyway Apple are hiding something because my MacBook Pro SSD write speed is 10.4Gb/s but using it on Thunderbolt Target mode (on the Mid 2011 iMac) I only get 3Gb/s - slower than the internal Crucial SSD which registers 3.59Gb/s.

Thank you, I know the difference between bit and a byte and 10.4 or 3.59 of either is an absurdly low rate for an SSD, (it would be absurdly low for an HDD as well)

Your speed (in gigabits) should be (dependent on bus speed) 550 or 260 gigabits per second, approximately

I doubt that you are reading the numbers correctly.

最後更新：2017-09-06 21:44:01

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