Extending Life of Mid 2011 21.5 inch iMac..Speed not a big concern

[Joseph Murphy]

I want to extend useable life of my i5 mid 2011 21.5 inch iMac, 12 gb RAM, (High Sierra I think,) but frankly don’t care if it is slowish, just want it to work. (I live in rural area with VERY slow satellite internet service and am “mostly“ retired so I have gotten used to slow surfing, etc).
Streaming Netflix is 98% not possible most days, for example).

I don’t have the true grit to add an internal SSD myself although I probably could do it if you held a gun to my head
and don't particularly want to have an internal SSD added professionally because of the labor cost, although I have not looked for an estimate yet.

So I am looking for suggestions for an basic (512 gb ish ) external SSD to add to boot from , not from a speed increase rationale, but simply to avoid the inevitable hard disc crash coming sometime.

A second reason I am considering an external SSD is the ability to reuse it sometime later when my trusty iMac goes over the Rainbow Bridge.

My understanding is my iMac has a Thunderbolt 1 port that would be the fastest possible for me to use.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[sahnert]

Hopefully someone knows of a good cost-effective external solution. I have the same machine and ended up going with an OWC internal SSD upgrade and let me say the speed difference from the old HDD is night and day. It feels like I upgraded the whole machine. I think you will be very happy with the speed increase, even going the external route. Good luck!

 

[r6mile]

As you say, it sounds like the external SSD route is the best for you. Thunderbolt 1 external SSDs are not cheap though - there is this sort of thing, the Transcend Storejet 500 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NV9LSEE/ref=twister_B00P27HNQK?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Amsterdamned]

As you say, it sounds like the external SSD route is the best for you. Thunderbolt 1 external SSDs are not cheap though - there is this sort of thing, the Transcend Storejet 500 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NV9LSEE/ref=twister_B00P27HNQK?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

How about trying to find a cheap thunderbolt 1/2 dock and going USB 3.0 from there? A used dock will be far cheaper than a thunderbolt SSD and provides additional benefits for the 2011, depending on the dock chosen.

e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Open-B...138591&hash=item4b7d0d687a:g:CgYAAOSwrD9fAoPK

 

[EugW]

OWC sells Thunderbolt 2 enclosures (backward compatible time TB 1), but the empty enclosure alone is US$200.

How about trying to find a cheap thunderbolt 1/2 dock and going USB 3.0 from there? A used dock will be far cheaper than a thunderbolt SSD and provides additional benefits for the 2011, depending on the dock chosen.

e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Open-B...138591&hash=item4b7d0d687a:g:CgYAAOSwrD9fAoPK

Is that a Thunderbolt 1/2 dock? Or is it TB3?

 

[UFallingRock]

As you say, it sounds like the external SSD route is the best for you. Thunderbolt 1 external SSDs are not cheap though - there is this sort of thing, the Transcend Storejet 500 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00NV9LSEE/ref=twister_B00P27HNQK?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I attached the 1TB version of the Transcend about 2 months ago to my 2011 iMac (21 inch) and the drive has been fantastic, with about a 5 times increase in speed. I "velcroed" it to the stand, so I never see the drive.

I also used Super Duper to clone my internal 1TB hard drive to the external drive, then made my external drive the boot drive. The cloning process was slow (overnight), but once it finished the transition was seamless. Highly recommended.

 

[Amsterdamned]

Is that a Thunderbolt 1/2 dock? Or is it TB3?

It is/was a Thunderbolt 1. I have the same dock.

 

[Kent W]

I got a LaCie external thunderbolt 2.5 HDD with case (the orange bumber style). I replaced the HDD with a Samsung SSD. It works great. I removed the orange rubber protection and without that the LaCie case is nicley silver colored. With some double sided tape it sits neatly attached to the iMac stand on the back side. Works great, speed is also great.

When it comes to my iMac platform itself I had some concerns, it's 2020 and Apple has left 2011 iMacs behind.

I have an iMac i5 27 2011 that is stuck on High Sierra unless I replace GPU and update the BIOS on the new GPU. I could then use Dosdude1's patcher to get to Catalina. It's a lot of patching and efforts with mixed results. So I don't get into that when it's a lot more needed than just the Catalina patch itself. I have a Macbook Air i7 that runs Catalina natively so it's OK.

Anyhow lets face it, High Sierra has soon reached EOL this fall and no more saftety updates and no more Safari updates. The latest versions of iMovie and iWork from Apple are since some time not compatible. Several other software manufacturers have abandoned HS and more will follow. Still apps on the platform works great and there is always the alternative to run other browsers and run anti malware at frequent intervalls. Still it got me to think.

So this is my approach:
1) External Thunderbolt SSD with latest and greatest Windows 10 - worked excellent, installed through a Parallels setup in MacOS since Apple doesn't approve of external drives in Boot Camp. Works great though, just remember to use legacy BIOS mode when installing. This way I got a modern updated OS. I installed Itunes and iCloud as well.

2) I use the iMac as target display for my MBA i7. I use Virtual KVM app by Duane Fields (GIT-hub) to auto toggle iMac keyboard and mouse to MBA when I plug in the thunderbolt cable. I close the lid on the MBA and the iMac displays the MBA as it would have been an iMac itself running Catalina.

3) I can of course get into HS on the iMac and use that environment as before.

This is my way of mitigating Apple SW EOL, right now exploring latest Windows 10 2004 release that works flawlessly so far.