Clone My Bootable HDD to SSD

[iMacBigDaddy]

Hi all,

My 27" iMac late 2015 model running Catalina and 2TB Fusion Drive. I understand that upgrading to Big Sur I would need SSD and improve performance. My plan is to upgrade the 2TB Fusion Drive to 4TB SSD drive.

My questions are:

• Would CCC clone my bootable 2TB FD to 4TB SSD so that when I booth off the SSD I would see a 4TB space without any reinstallation of the OS or software components? or, Would CCC create 2 partitions of 2TB and it would end up with the same size of bootable drive?
• My plan is to get Western Digital 4TB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 560 MB/s - WDS400T2B0A. Do you see any issue with the drive?
• I am not planning to upgrade/replace the existing 128GB PCIe SSD. Do you see any issue for not doing this and upgrading the FD only?

Thanks for any input you can provide.

 

[G4DPII]

CCC should do what you want without issue. No additional partitions should be formed if you are making a direct copy of one disk to the other.

 

[||\||]

I have done this with the 32GB model. The process is the same as any other clone operation. Clone the Fusion drive as normal to the new SSD. Replace the old internal HDD with the new SATA SSD. You will be good to go from there. You can then reformat the 128GB PCIe drive for a second storage drive.

[Fun Fact]
If you haven't reformatted the internal 128GB, your old Fusion drive will piece back together if you connect the HDD externally.

 

[Realityck]

Hi all,

My 27" iMac late 2015 model running Catalina and 2TB Fusion Drive. I understand that upgrading to Big Sur I would need SSD and improve performance. My plan is to upgrade the 2TB Fusion Drive to 4TB SSD drive.

Just a FYI the 2 TB fusion will run Big Sur 11.3/11.4 acceptably, however the late 2015 i7 based 27" model is ready showing its age with that SATA III interface. It's worth $660 trade in as a FYI. As others have commented many people have done this modest upgrade. If you want a cheap place for Display Adhesive set and tape removal roller tool see this site.

 

[iMacBigDaddy]

So, I posted the same question on the Apple Community forum and received different response. I assume that the responder works for apple and for that reason he/she would have to follow Apple official reply.

This is what their response about upgrading the 2TB Fusion Drive to 4TB SSD drive
"First, never ever replace the internal drive. Rather, please use an external SSD and connect it to the iMac. iMac was never intended to be opened or serviced by anyone other than AppleCare. "

 

[Realityck]

So, I posted the same question on the Apple Community forum and received different response. I assume that the responder works for apple and for that reason he/she would have to follow Apple official reply.

This is what their response about upgrading the 2TB Fusion Drive to 4TB SSD drive
"First, never ever replace the internal drive. Rather, please use an external SSD and connect it to the iMac. iMac was never intended to be opened or serviced by anyone other than AppleCare. "

Yes but does AppleCare matter if your warranty is expired? The selling term from the late 2015 (Oct 13th 2015) ran until 2017 models announced on June 5 2017. (49 months ago)

You can approximate a SATA III interface speeds with USB 3.0 externally (5 Gb/s) . I doubt anyone would want to use the old Thunderbolt interface. Whats sad is that the iMac is too old to offer TB3 compatibility. That would be on cheap external enclosures using a decent WD/Samsung NVme SSD. I seen a lot buy a portable Samsung SSD like the T5.

 

[Fishrrman]

CCC doesn't care about the size difference between the drives.
It will clone the DATA, and NOT "the size of the drive".
(Of course, you can't clone 3tb of data to a 2tb drive!)

Having said that...
Do you really, really need 4tb?
How much of the 2tb fusion drive is "used up" right now?

For a 2015 iMac, I'd just get an EXTERNAL 2tb (or 4tb if there is one) USB3 SSD, and set that up to be the boot drive.

Leave the internal fusion drive setup "as it is".
It can become a backup, extra storage, etc.

 

[iMacBigDaddy]

How much of the 2tb fusion drive is "used up" right now?

Well, I still have about 900GB available. I thought I had plenty, but when I was working on a video with FCPX, it chewed up quite a lot. Next thing I learned that I had only 100GB left. While I freed most of the space back, my thought was to expand the drive to avoid the issue in the future.

For a 2015 iMac, I'd just get an EXTERNAL 2tb (or 4tb if there is one) USB3 SSD, and set that up to be the boot drive.

Leave the internal fusion drive setup "as it is".
It can become a backup, extra storage, etc.

Thanks for the suggestion. The Western Digital 4TB WD Blue 3D NAND has SATA III 6 Gb/s and USB3 is 5Gb/s. Do you think that would introduce any issues?

 

[mdgm]

I doubt anyone would want to use the old Thunderbolt interface.

The 2015 has TB2. You can get a TB3 dock with its own power supply.

2015 iMac -> TB(1/2) cable -> Apple TB2 to TB3 adapter -> TB3 dock -> TB3 NVMe SSD.

Though whether the speed benefits of TB2 over USB3 would be worth it to you is another question.

For the 2011 iMac with TB1 but no USB3, the benefits of using Thunderbolt are considerable compared with USB2 or FW800.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"The Western Digital 4TB WD Blue 3D NAND has SATA III 6 Gb/s and USB3 is 5Gb/s. Do you think that would introduce any issues?"

No, that should be fine.
You're going to need an external enclosure for USB3 for that drive.

Perhaps something like this?:

Inateck 2.5 Inch USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure External SATA HDD and SSD Case - Optimized for 9.5mm 7mm 2.5" SSD, Tool Free (FE2002)

Attention: package contains an extra foam sticker for 7 mm thickness hard drives, you should attach the sticker to the original one inside the lid before you insert the hard drive; 12.5 mm hard drives might be incompatible with this product. 70% faster than traditional USB 3.0 With UASP transfer ...

www.amazon.com

You should see read speeds in the 420MBps range.

 

[iMacBigDaddy]

2015 iMac -> TB(1/2) cable -> Apple TB2 to TB3 adapter -> TB3 dock -> TB3 NVMe SSD.

Does it mean there is no TB2 -> SATA3 cable or enclosure?

 

[iluvmacs99]

Hi all,

My 27" iMac late 2015 model running Catalina and 2TB Fusion Drive. I understand that upgrading to Big Sur I would need SSD and improve performance. My plan is to upgrade the 2TB Fusion Drive to 4TB SSD drive.

My questions are:

• Would CCC clone my bootable 2TB FD to 4TB SSD so that when I booth off the SSD I would see a 4TB space without any reinstallation of the OS or software components? or, Would CCC create 2 partitions of 2TB and it would end up with the same size of bootable drive?
• My plan is to get Western Digital 4TB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 560 MB/s - WDS400T2B0A. Do you see any issue with the drive?
• I am not planning to upgrade/replace the existing 128GB PCIe SSD. Do you see any issue for not doing this and upgrading the FD only?

Thanks for any input you can provide.

As others had noted, the SATA 3 interface in the iMac is pretty limited in how you can maximize the performance of Big Sur. With Big Sur, the best option would be a NVMe blade drive with a xfer rate roughly 1200MB/s to get good response and you need a Thunderbolt 2 drive for that, which will give you that xfer rate. Personally, I think it's not worth the money to sink in for a TB2 drive when an M1 iMac is a better upgrade path.

Having said that, did you know that you can move and edit your FCPX projects on an external drive?!? Do you have to edit your FCPX footage on a slower Fusion drive when you can move all that onto a faster external drive? Since new Macs past 2014 support USB 3.0 UASP (short for USB Attached SCSI Protocol), you need to get an external enclosure drive case that supports what is known as USB 3.0 Gen 1, which supports 5Gb/s xfer rate. Thankfully, most newer enclosures today support USB 3.0 Gen 2 which supports 10Gb/s xfer rate.

An external drive route is an easier route since you don't have to dismantle the iMac to replace the internal drive. You just attach the WD 4TB SSD drive on the external drive case and then boot off there and re-purpose your internal Fusion drive as a storage and scratch drive for the 128GB PCIe SSD drive. USB 3.0 Gen 1 speed should be fast enough to edit 4K footage, since you were able to manage just fine with just a Fusion drive, since only 128Gb is the SSD and the rest is on the slower hard drive platter. There's no need to spend more money on a TB2 drive or TB2 to USB 3.0 Gen 2 enclosure when you're not really going to maximize your editing throughput if you managed with just a slower Fusion drive. Just get by with what you have and then upgrade to a better iMac 27" M series macs when it becomes available. That's my thought anyhow..

Hope this helps.

 

[mdgm]

Does it mean there is no TB2 -> SATA3 cable or enclosure?

There are some TB2 enclosures, I think but seeing that TB3 has been around for years now they aren't so easy to get anymore.

An advantage of getting a TB3 enclosure is that when you get a new Mac you'll then be able to enjoy the full speeds of the device.