Hi all, I have a late 2015 iMac 27 inch with a 1TB HDD. I have noticed that starting up applications is very slow. So I have decided to switch to an external SSD for installing Apps. I don't want to boot from it though. Is that system going to work and are the load times significantly different and also should I get a USB3 SSD or TB2 SSD?
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External SSD for Game Engines
- Thread starter asawesome07
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I'm running macOS completely on an external SSD and the speed is quite noticable. I'm using a USB drive, and I the last time I checked, the benchmarks for USB3/TB2 were such that it USB was just about as fast as TB but much cheaper. I opted for the Samsung T3 (though they're up to the T5 now).
Usb 3 ssd will work just as well, I would boot from it though if I was using this solution and just use the internal drive for media and files storage.
I think the TB2 drive would be faster, but a lot more money. I am sure you would see a very noticeable difference in load speeds with the USB3 drive.
Yes, TB2 will be faster, but those drives are too pricey for me.
I am sure you have your reasons for not wanting to boot from the external drive, but you could always have an external boot drive, and use your internal HDD as a backup. You could back it up every day using CCC or some other software.
I don't use external boot drives anymore, but I used to a lot. I remember making the free space of an iPod Mini into a boot drive for trouble shooting issues.