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Beejan181

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2016
66
3
The imac takes over a minute to boot and the beach ball comes when you open.apps .
Is there any way of adding an external ssd to make it faster.
Can you please guide /point me in the right direction.
Many thanks
Os catalina
Ram 8gb
 
Can you please give some advice to do it as a DIY project
I want to boot from the external ssd. I have got the USB 3 enclosure and a ssd as well.
Many thanks
 
Apple advises memory in the 21.5" model is not user upgradeable so you are stuck there. What is the internal hard drive, a platter drive which is where your slowness comes from as Catalina was designed for SSDs.

Hook up your SSD via USB3 and use cloning software CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to copy the internal to the mexternal, go into System Preferences > Startup Disk and choose (highlight) the external as the boot disk.
 
It's not much more than child's play to add an external SSD to an iMac, and set it up to become "the new boot drive".

ANYBODY can do this.
The iMac will run much faster once you do it.

What you need:
1. An external USB3 SSD. You can either buy one that's "all put together and ready to use", or, get a "bare" 2.5" SSD (I like Crucial or Sandisk), and an external enclosure like this:
You didn't tell us how large your internal drive is.
If it's 1tb, I suggest a 1tb SSD, will make things easier.

2. Next, connect the external SSD to the iMac.

3. Open disk utility. Go to the view menu and choose "show all devices".

4. You should see the SSD "on the left". Click on it and click the erase button.

5. You need to tell disk utility HOW to erase/format it. Choose "APFS with GUID partition format".

6. When done, quit disk utility.

7. Now, go to this page and download the latest version of CarbonCopyCloner:
CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days -- this will cost you nothing.

8. Launch CCC and accept all the defaults for now.
Click through until you get to the main screen.
You will see "three boxes".
- Click on the left box and select your internal drive (the source)
- Click on the middle box and select the SSD (the target)
- IGNORE the box on the right, not needed (scheduling)
- Now, click the "clone" button and follow through.

9. CCC will take a while to "clone everything over".

10. When done, quit CCC. REBOOT, and IMMEDIATELY hold down the option key and KEEP HOLDING IT DOWN until the startup manager appears.

11. Do you see the external SSD as a boot drive choice? Good, click on it with the pointer and hit return.

12. Do you get a good boot from the SSD? When you get to the finder, it will look EXACTLY like the internal SSD. You have to go to "about this Mac" in the Apple menu to check to see which drive you're booted from.

13. IF you get a good boot, open up the startup disk preference pane and set the SSD to be the new boot drive.

14, Finally, reboot to check to see if the iMac will automatically "find and boot from" the SSD. Again, the boot should be much faster.
 
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Thanks Fisherman for the guide.
I have got the samsung 869 eve 1TB and put this in a Sabrent usb 3 enclosure.
when i plunged the usb drive in it asked me to initialise it which i did.
now the Disk utility shows 2 internal HDD both type SATA
1- iMac APFS Volume . APFS with macOS 10.15.7 on it, available 927.74 GB and used 11.24 gb ,,other volumes 62.67 GB (Device: disk1s5)
2- iMac- Data APFS Volume . APFS mac 10.15.7 on it available 927.74GB used 57.56 GB (Device: disk1s1)
remember i did upgrade this to Catalina os. might be two partitions.
3- drive is the External Samsung SSD 860 Evo 1TB (Device: disk 2)

my questions
do i have to clone both the internal drives partitions to the external usb drive and then make it bootable for the Os to be on it so it boots faster.

when i click on the drive in disk utility the following drop down options
Name -untitled
Format: Mac os (journaled) is ticked by default, other options are APFS encrypted, case sensitive encrypted and so on
the Scheme is GUID partition map , Master boot record and apple partition map show in the drop down box as the 3 options.


what's options should i be using .
many thanks
 
Thanks Fisherman for the guide.
I have got the samsung 869 eve 1TB and put this in a Sabrent usb 3 enclosure.
when i plunged the usb drive in it asked me to initialise it which i did.
now the Disk utility shows 2 internal HDD both type SATA
1- iMac APFS Volume . APFS with macOS 10.15.7 on it, available 927.74 GB and used 11.24 gb ,,other volumes 62.67 GB (Device: disk1s5)
2- iMac- Data APFS Volume . APFS mac 10.15.7 on it available 927.74GB used 57.56 GB (Device: disk1s1)
remember i did upgrade this to Catalina os. might be two partitions.
3- drive is the External Samsung SSD 860 Evo 1TB (Device: disk 2)

my questions
do i have to clone both the internal drives partitions to the external usb drive and then make it bootable for the Os to be on it so it boots faster.

when i click on the drive in disk utility the following drop down options
Name -untitled
Format: Mac os (journaled) is ticked by default, other options are APFS encrypted, case sensitive encrypted and so on
the Scheme is GUID partition map , Master boot record and apple partition map show in the drop down box as the 3 options.


what's options should i be using .
many thanks
Did figure out now doing the cloning with CCC
Will feedback once done or any problems .
Thanks to all of you for helping me
 
thanks all of you
done first diy job,
here is the speed of Sasmung 860 evo 1 TB running in a external usb 3 caddy.
any comments
 

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That's decent performance. Your computer should feel a lot faster now with most apps loading nearly instantly.
 
Yes it does, and apps load instantly.
How much more the speed can increase if I put that Samsung 860 evo 1tb inside the imac.
Is it worth taking the risk of opening it if its not going to make a huge difference.
Whats the maximum speed people have got from a setup like this.
Just asking if I try any other enclosure or TB port how much speed might increase.
Mine enclosure is a ugreen one which says

UGREEN USB C Hard Drive Enclosure 2.5" External Disk Caddy Reader USB 3.1 Type C Case Thunderbolt 3 UASP 6Gbps Compatible with 7mm 9.5mm SATA SSD HDD 860 EVO WD Blue Crucial BX500, PC Laptop MacBook​

Many thanks
 
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