iMac upgrade strategy to SSD

[golfgirlgolf]

Soon to be 3 years ago I bought a new 2019 27" iMac 3.7GHz 64GB w/2TB spinning internal HDD - (the internal SSD versions were insanely expensive so I opted out).

The internal was too slow and too small so I moved to a bootable system on an external 1TB Samsung 970 Evo+ in a OWC Thunderbolt 3 enclosure - It's working great and a major speed upgrade... however, 1TB is pathetic so I dedicated it to the system only and have been keeping all user files on redundant/synced externals. I'm not even using the internal 2TB HDD at this point. There are some things MacOS doesn't like about my doing this (no useful Time Machine - and Adobe work files need to be on the boot volume so I have to tinker with syncing them a lot), so it's a bit of a PITA, and makes things much more complicated that I would like.

My intent is for replacing the internal HDD with a SSD when AppleCare expires (June 2022) - I am not going to even try this myself - it looks way too intimidating on the the breakdown videos!

I'd like to install an internal SSD - at least 2TB. Any concerns with compatibility - or heat?
Am I able to keep a spinning HDD in there as well? (or does it come out?)

Suggestions in general to move my bootable SSD external to an internal version and gain more capacity?!?

Alternate plan would be to just upgrade the current bootable SSD to a larger size and keep dealing with the extra chaos.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you have a bootable external drive that boots and runs well
and
You also have a 2tb internal drive
then
Why not "split your storage needs" between the two drives?

The external SSD would contain:
- OS
- applications
- accounts (less large libraries, which can be located anywhere)

The internal drive would contain:
- large libraries (such as movies, photo archives, etc.)
- other data that doesn't need to be on the boot drive.

I keep several volumes mounted on my desktop at all times.
Been doing it for many years.
I'm continually amazed by users who think that "everything has to be on one drive"...

 

[golfgirlgolf]

Thanks Fisherman - I think maybe you missed the part where I mentioned...

"have been keeping all user files on redundant/synced externals." (about 30 TB worth going to be 46 soon) the 2 TB is pretty useless to me. Too small to contain my central work folders/assets - or archival files.

"I'm not even using the internal 2TB HDD at this point. There are some things MacOS doesn't like about my doing this (no useful Time Machine - and Adobe work files need to be on the boot volume so I have to tinker with syncing them a lot), so it's a bit of a PITA, and makes things much more complicated that I would like."

Lightroom CC in particular is death if you're not working from the mounted SSD drive. Internal HDD is slow and beachballs in LR - external is worse. In addition to this - Time Machine AFAIK cannot run multiple volume backup - and I'd like to have my last several months -6 - or more of work to be restorable. I'm doing some syncing with Chromosync between external volumes - but it's NOT Time machine - one bad file synced goes to all file copies on all drives and there's no going back. I learned this the hard way - so this is part of the adjustment strategy I'm undertaking.

 

[Dc2006ster]

Re Time Machine. I have it backing up two volumes : my internal SSD boot drive (2027 iMac) and selected folders on an external spinning hard drive.