? on using external SSD as boot dr. on iMac

[3wood]

Fusion Drive (1 TB hard drive/128 GB SSD)

Evening all,

The fusion drive in my iMac is ok but I have a Samsung evo500 SSD just sitting around. I’ve now velcroed it to the backside of the puter and intend for it to be my boot drive. In testing it, it’s plenty faster than the fusion. No surprise there. Now all browsers open 4x faster and much good performance is had opening everything else.

My question is once I set up the external as boot drive (all programs and data I use daily will fit on it) , what’s the correct way to format the internal fusion drive to use for storage? Do I just format it APFS? Then add the items of storage? Also, would I create 2 separate Time Machine back ups?

If you have a better idea than just using the fusion drive for storage, do tell.

I’m a pretty normal user, nothing heavy.

For you advice, many thanks.
Reed.

 

[Fishrrman]

This is child's play on the Mac.

Connect the drive.

Erase (initialize) it to either Mac OS extended with journaling enabled (GUID partition format) or APFS (GUID partition format) depending on what version of the OS you will use.

Now you can either install a new copy of the OS onto the SSD
or
You could use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the contents of the internal drive to the SSD.
(CCC can also do a "selective clone" -- you can leave stuff behind that you don't want cloned over)

Once everything is on the SSD, go to the startup disk pref pane and set the SSD to be the boot drive.

Then...
Reboot.

 

[3wood]

A reply from you is money in the bank! I read many of your replies to other posts as they answer the questions asked and are concise.
Great to to have answers from you and others. Much appreciated. Ya'll know your stuff!

Thank you.

 

[robo456]

Thumbs up here as well...

I have a 2015 21.5 that I connected a Samsung Evo 850(?, it's been a while) to a USB3 enclosure I picked up from Amazon years ago. For me, the extra bonus was that my iMac backs up against the wall, so I took two long zip ties and mounted the drive to the "monitor arm". I can't see it at all, and I get fantastic performance!

 

[3wood]

Having the external boot drive and cable off the desk is good. Great minds.....

 

[3wood]

Just to add a couple things....I just transferred a 168GB iPhoto library from the new external boot drive to the internal fusion. Time - 14 1/2 minutes. I'm very pleased with that and doubt I'll have the need for faster any time soon. I'd thought about buying a 1TM nvme drive and enclosure. Glad I didn't because I just don't need faster than what I currently have and of course using my available evo850, I didn't lay out any $......now that's a deal. Thank you all for your replies.

 

[Velin]

what’s the correct way to format the internal fusion drive to use for storage? Do I just format it APFS?

APFS was designed specifically for SSDs. I actually did a test using APFS on platters (like your Fusion drive). Performance was horrendous. In fact, it was so bad I erased all my HDDs and switched over to M2. NVMe external SSDs. Of course my internal drive also is SSD.

For your HDD, go with Extended Journaled. And in the future, no more Fusion drives. They suck. All HDDs suck. Storage sticks are the only way to go now, both internal and external.

 

[weaztek]

All HDDs suck. Storage sticks are the only way to go now, both internal and external.

I use HDDs for my archives and backup and they work great esp. for the money. My system & apps run on my internal SSD and I also have an external SSD T3 for huge projects that need more space.