Hi everyone, I'm looking at getting an SSD set up for my iMac, it's going to be 8 years old in December and is still running on the original 5400 rpm non-fusion drive HDD (yes I know I bought the upper spec iMac and cheaped out on the HDD ?) so there are three main options I'm looking at,
1) Samsung T5 1TB via USB 3.0 type A
2) Samsung EVO 860 1TB via external enclosure (also looking at the QVO and MX500 as alternatives)
3) Samsung EVO 860 1TB but open up the iMac and install within the machine
Options 1 and 2 are the easiest / lowest risk options, but I've read of people having issues with running Mojave on the T5 with Apples file format running APFS and getting black screens for ages on boot up. I know the work around that is supposed to work is to format the T5 to HFS+ and clone your Mojave to an HFS+ formatted volume, and the format will not change to APFS.
In an ideal world I'd just like to have an identical clone of my HDD as it is today on an SSD and use the SSD for the whole system.
So here are my questions:
1) Does an internal SSD like the EVO 860 being used in an external enclosure suffer the same file format issue as the T5 when used this way ?
2) If I clone my HDD with say SuperDuper! is it a perfect 1 for 1 copy ? ie: plug into iMac select the clone as a boot drive and run off it without issue
3) Is there any benefit to using the Thunderbolt 1 port >Thunderbolt cable >Thunderbolt 1 & 2 to the Thunderbolt 3/USB Type C adapter > T5 which has a Type C interface ?
System Spec:
Late 2012 iMac 21.5 running Mojave 10.14.6,
2.9 GHz Intel Core i5,
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3,
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB.
With 224GB left on the original 1TB internal HDD
Cheers
1) Samsung T5 1TB via USB 3.0 type A
2) Samsung EVO 860 1TB via external enclosure (also looking at the QVO and MX500 as alternatives)
3) Samsung EVO 860 1TB but open up the iMac and install within the machine
Options 1 and 2 are the easiest / lowest risk options, but I've read of people having issues with running Mojave on the T5 with Apples file format running APFS and getting black screens for ages on boot up. I know the work around that is supposed to work is to format the T5 to HFS+ and clone your Mojave to an HFS+ formatted volume, and the format will not change to APFS.
In an ideal world I'd just like to have an identical clone of my HDD as it is today on an SSD and use the SSD for the whole system.
So here are my questions:
1) Does an internal SSD like the EVO 860 being used in an external enclosure suffer the same file format issue as the T5 when used this way ?
2) If I clone my HDD with say SuperDuper! is it a perfect 1 for 1 copy ? ie: plug into iMac select the clone as a boot drive and run off it without issue
3) Is there any benefit to using the Thunderbolt 1 port >Thunderbolt cable >Thunderbolt 1 & 2 to the Thunderbolt 3/USB Type C adapter > T5 which has a Type C interface ?
System Spec:
Late 2012 iMac 21.5 running Mojave 10.14.6,
2.9 GHz Intel Core i5,
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3,
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB.
With 224GB left on the original 1TB internal HDD
Cheers