Yeah, the USB3 external SSD will be much better across the board. ??
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Late 2012 iMac 21.5 SSD upgrade options
- Thread starter Souponastick270
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yeah, the USB3 external SSD will be much better across the board. ??
Even if your USB3 drive only clocks around 350-380 megs per second like mine did, that speed is still 10x faster than the numbers you posted above. That old drive looks pretty damn slow even by the standards of spinning hard drive.
You will really enjoy the SSD experience with apps such as Safari and iTunes. It's a completely different universe, haha. The SSD will be around 2 seconds to load an app instead of 20-60 seconds.
Last edited:
Even if your USB3 drive only clocks around 350-380 megs per second like mine did, that speed is still 10x faster than the numbers you posted above. That old drive looks pretty damn slow even by the standards of spinning hard drive.
You will really enjoy the SSD experience with apps such as Safari and iTunes. It's a completely different universe, haha. The SSD will be around 2 seconds to load an app instead of 20-60 seconds.
Don't fully understand whyI get different Read/Writes with the Black Magic test, just run it again now and its up to
First pass:
Write: 56.3
Read: 77.7
Second pass:
Write:67.4
Read:65.1
That test I did earlier after the machine had been turned off was in the pits though ?♂️
Don't forget my current HDD is a non-fusion 5400 rpm so doesn't even have the joy of the teeny tiny bit of SSD Apple were using at the time when they introduced fusion drives
Yeah, seems like that drive is a real piece of crap. My 2009 iMac spinning drive was 7200 rpm. At least your machine has USB3 and the older Thunderbolt. I had no option available other than internally replacing the drive or buying a new computer.
The best I could do initially with my 2009 iMac was to get a USB3 SSD drive that featured Firewire 800. Running this drive with Firewire 800 was a solid upgrade, but not mindblowing. Firewire 800 is a solid amount faster than USB2, but Firewire 800 is a lot slower than USB3 and obviously Thunderbolt.
It's amazing how cheap the USB3 drives are nowadays, and it's also amazing how easy it is to create a bootable external version of your computer. You're about to have an incredible speed upgrade for your 2012 machine and it's cheap/easy to setup.
Yep, given that my iMac won't be getting the Big Sur update (officially that is?) , this SSD bump will see me over the next year or two probably, I'll get Catalina at some point if Apple sorts it out and I'll be watching the gen 1 ARM iMacs to see how well they are received and may go for a gen 2 if things are looking good ? at least I'll have an SSD boot drive to load up to make life 10 times easier haha
And it never hurts to have a bootable backup of the computer in case the crap hits the fan, haha. You can always hook it up to new machine and copy the data to new machine if you need to.
I now have 2 external bootable SSD's, one of them sitting on the shelf and the other being used as I type this message. If this one goes to crap, I still have a ton of my data (such as all my music) sitting in the other SSD on the shelf. And it has the added bonus of featuring Mac OS Catalina with all the apps I have been using in recent years.
I've been waiting on doing this for my 2012 21.5. Got the 1 tb 860 evo ready to go for your option number 3. I've done this once before on another machine so I know what I'm getting into (mostly). I'd like to avoid extra clutter (external drive) with this beautiful all in one. Thinking I might do the ram upgrade this time. Really my biggest issue right now on the 5400 internal HDD is that wake from sleep takes about a minute to get going. And other things feel slow too.
Good luck with the upgrade ? I've looked at doing the ram on my 21.5 but it means taking out the power supply which if it isn't discharged can give you a nasty shock, the fan, the HDD and moving the speakers just to slide the motherboard out to get at the slots, if you've gone this far then might as well get the i7 3.1Ghz and go the whole way, that's what I would do if I had the confidence to do the job with out ***** it up lol
What is the best way to discharge the power supply? Have it off for a day or so (unplugged) before taking it out?
Since you have already carefully removed the screen and going after the RAM, you might as well upgrade the CPU. I will do this, because it looks like I will need to reapply the thermal paste to the CPU anyway (after eight years) to last more. Bought at a use shop for $350 with 16 GBs of RAM i5 in great condition. Also bought a i7 CPU to add along with a SSD to replace the Fusion HDD.
Might as well do an overhaul (cleaning also) so you don't have to do it again. My thinking...confident...no...but need to try if I want it to last some more years..
Right, I've got my SSD and formatted it to macOS Extended (Journaled) GUID Partition Map
And I'm getting a Black Magic score of:
Write: 422.6
Read: 432.3
With CCC does it matter if Safety Net is on or off ?
That's what I call a noticeable improvement! How does the machine feel?
Haven't started the clone yet just wondering if Safety Net makes any difference given that its a clone going onto a blank formatted SSD
Sorry those read/writes are Black Magic running on my internal HDD and are targeting the SSD via USB 3
Safetynet makes most sense for backups. Since you want to clone the drive, I’d switch it off.
Thanks, just wanted to check before starting the clone.
Also once done does it make a difference is I choose the boot drive going through System Preferences and restart or via the option key on start up ?
I always do it through System Preferences. Then restart machine and it works great.
Great, clone running at the moment and I'll post back once I'm booted from the SSD and everything is up and running ?
Nice. Those 400+ speeds you posted are going to provide an extremely noticeable difference for you in loading apps and everything else with your daily tasks on this computer. You will love it!
"Haven't started the clone yet just wondering if Safety Net makes any difference given that its a clone going onto a blank formatted SSD"
For "the first pass" (the initial clone) -- NO, no difference.
For later, "incremental" updates to the clone -- YES.
But if you're just using CCC to clone from the internal to the SSD, you don't need "safety net".
I ALWAYS turn it off when I run CCC -- I want my cloned backup to be "a clone" of the internal drive, no more, no less.
For "the first pass" (the initial clone) -- NO, no difference.
For later, "incremental" updates to the clone -- YES.
But if you're just using CCC to clone from the internal to the SSD, you don't need "safety net".
I ALWAYS turn it off when I run CCC -- I want my cloned backup to be "a clone" of the internal drive, no more, no less.
Sweet ?
Still cloning at the mo but I've noticed that although its copied 190GB according to the bar on the top, the destination has only used about 53GB
Still cloning at the mo but I've noticed that although its copied 190GB according to the bar on the top, the destination has only used about 53GB
Did you finish? The source drive & destination drive should be using an identical amount of gigabytes after you finish the cloning process.
No, still going, its says its copied 540GB out 770GB odd but the destination SSD still says it has 947GB free
That does not sound very good. Looks like you posted this a few hours ago. How does it look now?
On the last two gigs now, says its copied 774gb but the destination says it still has 947gb free, ill let it finish and see what it does and what has actually been transferred to the SSD