Old 2012 iMac SSD recommendations

[WrightBrain]

Hello all,

My wife is running an older 2012 27 in iMac and it's getting a tad slow. We are not ready to upgrade just yet...but soon. I wanted to try a little experiment. I heard that some people have success using an external Thunderbolt 1 SSD as a boot drive for their older iMacs. Has any one done this successfully, and what drive are you using or would you recommend? This is a critical machine which is why I don't feel comfortable swapping out the internal drive.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[iTurbo]

I have a late 2012 27" iMac (13,2) and I use a Samsung T5 connected via USB as a boot drive. It works great, but I have to hold down the option key at startup. I have wondered if a Samsung X5 connected via Thunderbolt would be any faster.

 

[jerwin]

It works great, but I have to hold down the option key at startup.

Check out the "Startup Disk" in System Preferences.

 

[iTurbo]

Check out the "Startup Disk" in System Preferences.

I have, but the T5 won't show up in the Startup Disk window.

 

[Juicy Box]

I have, but the T5 won't show up in the Startup Disk window.

I'm nott sure if this would work for you, but I experienced something similar where my intended start up disk was not in the start up disk window. I unlocked the "padlock" in the corner and more start up disks appeared.

 

[iTurbo]

Yup, I tried that too.

 

[Fishrrman]

If the 2012 iMac you have has USB3 (I understand that some do, and others don't), "the answer" to your question is to buy an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD, then plug that in and set it up to be the boot drive.

Things should go much faster.
You'll see reads of 420-430mbps and writes in the 330-360mbps range.

A Samsung t5 would be a good choice.
Or, buy a "bare" 2.5" SSD (any brand will do), and put it into a 2.5" USB3 enclosure like this:

https://tinyurl.com/y5ucqfaj

Thunderbolt costs more and will do no better.

 

[WrightBrain]

Thanks, guys. This is very helpful. I might try the USB3 enclosure route. It would be easier (and cheaper) to upgrade drives. Good for an experiment anyway.

 

[iTurbo]

I *think* I figured out why my Samsung T5 does not show up in Startup Disk control panel. I'm pretty sure it's because mine isn't formatted with GUID partition map. Can anybody confirm?

Last night I installed Catalina on a 64 GB SDXC card and it works. It is bootable and shows up in the Startup Disk control panel. I formatted it with APFS and GUID partition map.

 

[Juicy Box]

I have a Late 2012 iMac with the 1TB Fusion Drive.

Using an external drive to boot your Mac from is perfectly fine.

I have used external drives to boot Macs for many years. I have even used iPods as a portable external boot drives before.

The cheapest way would probably get an internal SSD and an USB enclosure or use one you already have.

I purchased a few used LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 drives that came with HDDs. I removed the HDDs and put SSDs in them. Takes maybe 5 minutes if you take your time.

You could most likely be able to get a cheaper USB 3.0 only drive than a used LaCie or Thunderbolt Drive, but I like having the Thunderbolt ones so I do have to use up one of my USB ports.

and it's getting a tad slow.

If you wanted to really speed things up, you could get two external drives and set them up as a Software RAID0. It is really easy and it can speed things up a lot.

I set one up a few minutes ago using a good SSD over Thunderbolt and a very cheap SSD over USB 3, and here are the results on my iMac:




If you had this set up or just one external boot drive, you could use your internal HDD as a back up using something like CCC or TM.

 

[WrightBrain]

Walp, I have this set up and it seems to be working fine. I know it's not as fast as if the drive was an internal drive. But it is much zippier. Thanks for your help all!