2017 imac with NVMEexpress?

[Guitarmas]

Hey guys,

My 2017 imac says that it has NVMExpress of 28GB. How do I know if it uses this feature to boot the system from? I'm still a newb on Macs.

Help?

 

[Fishrrman]

Looks to me like you have an iMac with a "fusion" drive?

The fusion drive is actually TWO drives:
- small SSD
and
- a larger platter-based HDD.

What you seem to be looking at is the info for the small (28gb) SSD.

 

[Guitarmas]

Thanks.

How do I install MacOS on the ssd? I did an install on the system using internet recovery.

 

[Fishrrman]

"How do I install MacOS on the ssd? I did an install on the system using internet recovery."

I don't think you want to try installing a copy of the OS on a drive that small. Just not "enough room".

If it IS a fusion-drive iMac, the two drives are "fused together" so that they should appear "as one drive" on the desktop. Then you install the OS onto that.

However...
It's possible to "split apart" the fusion drive into two "pieces".
That may be what you're seeing now.
Can't answer with certainty, we can't see what you see.

If the fusion drive is "split", it can be re-joined using terminal.
(wondering if some versions of Disk Utility can do this, as well?)

What you could do is to buy an external USB3.1 gen2 SSD (like the Crucial X9), plug that in, and set it up to become an external boot drive. You should see reads in the 900MBps range with that. Not as fast as you might get with an internal SSD, but still pretty good.

 

[Guitarmas]

Thanks..

When I did an internet recovery, it saw the drive as one. I just wanted to know if I missed something and was able to boot from the ssd as one and the rest as data. It does boot in 25 seconds.