MP 7,1 Checklist of requirements for PCI/NVME Boot.

[mattspace]

Thinking about moving my boot drive from the Apple SSD, and onto a PCI card, so that IF something ever went wrong and I had to send the machine to Apple, there'd be none of my info on it etc.

So, does anyone have a good reference for an ordered checklist of all the steps necessary, security / firmware settings that need to be changed, tools to clone boot drive etc?

Fragments and Ideas I've collected so far:

• Allow booting from a non-Apple drive.
• PCI SSD adapter card (Looking at Sonnet M.2 2x4 which is bootable, and doesn't require both slots to be populated)
• M.2 SSDs (Looking at Samsung Evo options, the 990 / 990Pro seem to be the current contenders)
• Clone current boot drive (CCC and SuperDuper! are both options, anyone have experience with either that they'd confirm?)

What is different in use when booted from PCI, Vs. Apple SSDs - is there any aspect of the system that works differently when you're not running from the built-in storage?

 

[flowrider]

I boot from a Samsung M.2 SSD mounted on a highpoint PCIe card. But to delve further into your concern, my boot drive only contains the OS and Applications. All of my personal stuff, is on another SSD. Just because a document is on disk B and the application is on disk A, doesn't matter, click on it on disk B and it will open.

Lou

 

[mattspace]

I boot from a Samsung M.2 SSD mounted on a highpoint PCIe card. But to delve further into your concern, my boot drive only contains the OS and Applications. All of my personal stuff, is on another SSD. Just because a document is on disk B and the application is on disk A, doesn't matter, click on it on disk B and it will open.

Lou

Yeah, but do you have the whole user directory on the second drive? I currently have all my data separate from my boot drive, and find the lack of special finder sidebar icons for documents, pictures, downloads etc (they’re just generic folders) to be annoying enough that I want to re-consolidate all that back to the boot drive.