SSD/ Flash Storage combo suggestion help.

[johnqt30928]

I was just able to acquire a late 2015 27" iMac (non-fusion) iMac. Already have 32GB Ram OWC coming in this week. I am not a power user other then just emails, messages, online streaming and usually have up to 10 tabs open on safari/chrome. My current setup is a late iMac 2011 booting off a 120GB Samsung SSD with the 1TB HDD as storage. I don't use a lot of storage other then 30GB of music and large iPhone backup files.

For my new 2015 iMac (I'd like to keep all the features of sleep/hibernate) so I guess 3rd party NVME are out of the question. Can I use any OEM Apple Samsung flash SSD I find on ebay and if so what combination would people recommend as far as flash and SSD combo. should I keep the 1TB HDD and find a 256 or 512GB original apple flash ssd or should I just use only a 1TB SSD to replace the HDD. I also have a spare 3TB Red Label western digital SATA HDD that I pulled out of a WD Mycloud, is that better or worse then the current 1TB in the iMac. Again I probably wont ever use up this amount of storage but I do foresee myself keeping this iMac for a long time. I don't have any issues with opening up the iMac myself since I did so on the 2011 iMac, so id rather just go with a direct install then the external SSD boot direction and since its going to be open I might as well put the 3TB HDD in there right?

 

[4sallypat]

I'm a bit squeamish about opening up the sealed glass front and having to replace out the tape - afraid of air bubbles, not aligning and just scared of not having it start up.....

Here is what I have done to my wife's iMac:
external LaCie Thunderbolt (TB2) drive - changed out LaCie's rotational HDD with a 500GB EVO SATA SSD.

Now booting from the external Thunderbolt SSD that is a fast screamer unit - no more spinning beach balls, no more 60 second boot times, etc...

No sleep / hibernate issues running Catalina on the SSD while also having High Sierra on the internal HDD.

She is now happy that she can store all her archived photos, music, and videos on the internal 1TB spinning HDD but at the same time boot off, use all her photo & scrapbooking software from the external Thunderbotlt SSD drive.

I have mine which I am selling on eBay which also is the same iMac model but has 256GB Transcend SSD Thundebolt drive:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/114252176911

 

[Fishrrman]

Why not just plug in the external SSD you have NOW, see if it boots?

If it does, just keep using it.

Use the internal drive on the 2015 iMac for storage.

Plenty of time to explore your options once you get up and running...

 

[johnqt30928]

Why not just plug in the external SSD you have NOW, see if it boots?

If it does, just keep using it.

Use the internal drive on the 2015 iMac for storage.

Plenty of time to explore your options once you get up and running...

Sorry I wasn't clear on that, its a Samsung EVO 850 SSD thats actually inside the 2011 iMac that I placed behind the disk drive, but I just realized I do have a USB 3.0 external case so I think I might just take it out and try it and see how it goes and if that will be sufficient enough for now. One other question is the SSD is only 120GB in the past it would get full very quickly until I moved my iTunes music and iPhone backups to read from the 1TB HDD. When I go to check my storage it shows 47GB being system with 67GB free. Is there anything I can do about the systems storage, I've searched before in the past and found out other people also have high amounts of GB considered as system storage but not really any way to check and fix that.