Boot MacOS Off Fast External NVME SSD on a 2017 iMac - Upgrade Your Fusion Drive 

Thanks for the nice words and for watching and supporting the channel. I love making the videos and while not the best production quality I hope people get something from them. I wish you the best and thanks again for watching all my Apple videos and videos on other tech. I'll keep making them and if I had more people support me like you do it would really help.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for watching the video.

Thanks Alfred. I hope it helps. I'm glad when people can improve their systems without spending a ton of money and they can get a few more years from them. I wish you the best.

Funny, I agree. Because they can I guess but nobody should really buy one with a 5400 RPM drive. Of course, unless you just upgrade it right away without paying the Apple tax. It is crazy they ship these things and they can be crazy expensive. I think the best deal is the 27" 5K though since you can pick one up for around $1300 with a 5K screen that would normally cost $1000 for the screen. So that is the only one I think is worth the cost but of course, they have an incredible marketing department and that is why they can charge so much.

Because Apple want to laugh all the way to their bank vaults...

money -

This is my second imac. I will never buy another one.

Thanks for sharing and helping everybody out. This is a good option if you know what you are doing. There is some risk but the results look good for sure. Thanks for watching.

did you use the kit from ifixit? Taking out the screen is scary...

Tu Tran sorry for the late reply! yes I used the wheel cutter - and yes it is quite scary but if you take it slow and carefully cut it with the wheel it will be fine :-)

Craig Neidel thank you for the reply Craig! Yes it is definitely worth it - and a lot cheaper!! But I ran into some issues at first, with improper seating of the new cpu and then the need for updating the firmware of the Nvme drive before installing it into the Mac. But still now, I don’t understand how my ‘Franken-mac’ performs better than apple’s own i7.

@@much2fast4you1 hey man thanks for the reply!

Hello. I used USB3.1 Generation 2 TYPE-C connection and plugged into the type C port on the 2017 iMac . Here is a link to the inexpensive enclosure I used - www.aliexpress.com/item/32913145106.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.436637fcCMUehb&algo_pvid=f3bc6d39-fc13-44bb-8cc0-27e2e7233b7b&algo_expid=f3bc6d39-fc13-44bb-8cc0-27e2e7233b7b-12&btsid=5105873e-7f5f-470d-9df9-c348f679f2e7&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3,searchweb201603_52 . There are some better ones that will do the same thing but you just need to make sure the connection between the enclosure and your computer is 10 Gbps. This one takes about 4 weeks to get in the mail and I was just trying to keep cost under $100 but later I found a few on sites like Newegg and Amazon that are about the same cost. The drive is super fast and you can pick them up at Microcenter. In fact, they also have a 1 TB NVME M.2 drive there for about $99 you can find. Thanks for watching and please subscribe and I should have some giveaways in the future.

Oh, yeah, here is a link to the 500 GB NVME drive - www.microcenter.com/product/600420/512gb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive . It went up a few bucks but is usually on special for about $50 every now and then.

So I just found your video after making one of my own asking for help- and you seem to know what you are doing. I have a 2014 MacBook Pro with usb3.0 drives. I’m only getting about 420mb/s read/write from a Samsung nvmeevo I placed in an enclosure and tested externally in that usb 3.0 port. the same as a Samsung t5. I was expecting faster. Any reason why?

​@@Samlol23_drrich USB is slow, 2014 iMacs have usb 3 which is limited to 640 MBps... these NVME drives aren't meant to be used this way, an m.2 port on a motherboard can have read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,700 MB/s.

Thanks for watching. If you set up an external enclosure to boot from (with an SSD) it acts like a brand new Mac. So you can run the OS and store any files on it just like it was an internal SSD. When I do this I just leave the internal drive in the system and then if I ever want to boot back into that drive it's as easy as just changing a quick setting and you can boot right back to the older drive (internal). Even if you boot from the external drive you will see the internal drive in Finder and can save files there and vise-versa if you boot into internal drive. My advice is just leave the internal drive alone until you make sure everything works good with the external drive. Since you can boot into either one it's like having two different Mac computers. Thanks for watching.

Thanks for watching and supporting the channel. I'll need to check out your channel.

@@MarcellJjr I'm growing slowly and getting close to 30k subs. Many hours of work and 680 videos

Welcome

Thanks for watching Chris.

Thanks for watching Rusty. I'm trying my best. If you have any topics let me know as we are always looking for ideas.

If you are going with USB3 (5 Gbps) then the hard drive can really only go up to 5000 Mbps/8 (bytes/bits) = 625MB/s in theory. But with overhead about 550 is as fast as you can get out of that connection. Going that way with a normal SSD 3.5" would really improve performance massively over a spinning drive. No need for an NVME here since you cannot get enough speed on the line. If you do go with a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure you should be able to be about double that speed but of course that type of an external enclosure is very expensive. You just need to decide if the extra speed is worth the cost. You may not notice it too much in real world use.

Thanks for sharing and good luck. Yes, booting off the external drives can really improve the systems and provide loads of fast storage.

Thanks for sharing the additional info. You are correct. You need to get the best of all three your system can handle. The only other thing is is you build your own external SSD for the boot drive make sure the enclosure is quality and so is the drive (both). In any case I have 3 systems booting off external drives and they all work very good for me. Thanks again for the info and sharing Akash.

@@craigneidel Thanks for making this video! I switched from an internal fusion to a Samsung T7 a couple of days ago, and so far the system feels much faster. Gonna have to wait and use this more for work before calling it a success, but excited by what I'm seeing!

@@AkashAgrawal03 Thanks Craig for the video firstly. Akash I would like to hear the long term review in short about your set up. I have just purchased a used iMac 27 inch 2017 with 1TB fusion drive and also have the T7 500GB SSD bought earlier. Looking to boot from this T7.

Search for startup disk in settings and make sure boot disk is setup to boot off external SSD and not fusion drive. My guess.

Hello and thanks for watching. If you have a 2013 that means the screen is sealed up. So it's much harder to get inside of that than a 2011 that used magnets for the screen connection. If you are comfortable with that it's always better to put inside but you run the risk of issues. But, it is best. If you don't want to do that then booting off an external SSD works good. That is the second best option but just make sure you keep original drive in place so you can boot back to it and do backups. Since you have much faster USB ports on the 2013 than the 2011 you also should be able to use them instead of the thunderbolt port. Something like a Samsung external ssd would work good but in any case good luck with everything.

Thanks and I'm glad it worked out for you. It should be really quick with 64GB ram. Good luck.

Thanks for watching. Yes, you need to make this drive the boot drive by going to system preferences and then go to startup disk. In there you can select what disk you want to boot from when you reboot your system and it will stay that disk until you change it back. You can erase the fusion later but I normally leave it since you can boot back to that drive when you want to and even store files to it when on the external SSD since it still shows up as a drive. Once you feel 100% confident you don't need it you can remove it and format it later as a storage drive but I recommend keeping it bootable to keep options open or if you have any issues later. Thanks again for watching.

@@craigneidel I'm looking at the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures, since it supports a greater Bandwidth. I've built two of these so far with a WD and a Kingston NVME. Work just fine but it would be cool to push them on those Mac's above that 10gbps. Good bit of a price different on the T3 enclosures though.

Thanks for watching

I have not heard of that and I used an NVMe on my 2017 and it was much quicker. Might be an issue with the enclosure not powering on before the system boots or something else. If you checked the speeds it's weird that it would be booting slower etc. when it is benchmarking faster. Mine boots in about 35 seconds with the NVMe but it could depend on what you have on the system and the OS you are running so that won't be exact. My guess is it has something to do with the enclosure and not the NVMe drive.

Yes, you should be able to do this on any Mac that doesn't have the T2 security chip and even then I have a video for how to get around that (need to disable one setting). Although if your Mac already has an internal SSD and not a spinning drive (like a 7.2K drive) then I'm not sure you will see any speed benefits. If you have a spinning drive in the laptop then you should see speed increases for sure. If you just want to be able to boot to another drive with a fresh OS and go back and fourth it should work fine also. There are other reason besides speed people like to do this. But I guess to answer your questions yes this should work on any setup since they are all basically the same. Thanks for watching.

@@craigneidel hi Craig. Great information. I have a 2017 iMac. Does my new external need to have Mojave? Or can it run Catalina when I set it up? What cable should I use ?

That would work fine too.

Thanks for the nice words and for watching. I have a few videos if you search my channel on booting off an external SSD. I did that on my 2017 27" iMac. Good Luck DJ Deep65.

@@craigneidel Thank you so much and once again you are wonderful with your video

On the 2017 you have a few ports. Thunderbolt (up to 40Gb/s) USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s). Even the 3.1 Gen 2 is 10Gbps which when divided by 8 (bytes to bits) you get 1,250 MB/s. Of course with overhead you won't get that with an external drive but you are good both ways. Since this drive is capable of over 2000 MBps using the USB-C Thunderbolt connection to a Thunderbolt enclosure (both sides) would be even faster but way more expensive for that enclosure.

I have not see that for sure but it might be that the external ssd you are using isn't getting power before the mac trys to boot. Let me know if you are still seeing this and I would look to see if you can find a similar video on that issue but I have not seen that before and run 3 macs off externals.

To be honest I use a Samsung 2.5" SSD (only about 500 Mbps) and use an OWC external enclosure now for 5 years on my 2017 iMac. Works incredible and I have edited 550 4K videos on that machine. You can check out my most recent video for the parts (video is about M1 iMac vs intel imac) and in the description I list some items for the boot drive and disk. I would just use a normal Samsung 2.5" disk instead of the QVO (use black one not gray) and you will see even a little better performance. Of course you can also use M.2 drives but this setup is a workhorse and never get's hot.

You can only upgrade to Ventura on the 2017 but I normally start with the OS it came with and then upgrade that to highest version. It should work the same no mater the OS but of course Sonoma won't work on the 2017. I would just give it a try and don't erase your normal drive because you can always boot back into that later if you wanted to (and don't delete that). It's it's easy to try and takes about an hour. Just make sure you have an external SSD around 500 MB/s for the best results (or faster). Thanks.

For sure that would work. That would allow even more throughput to the drive and your numbers would be faster (read, writes) depending on the drive you select. I always say use the fastest drive you can use for this and the fastest connection to the enclosure which would be Thunderbolt 2. Thank you.

Craig Neidel Thanks for your quick reply. With a PCIe enclosure do you know if there are specific chips that have to be on the expansion card to get it to boot from PCIe? Or will a basic $10 PCIe to NVME work from Amazon? There’s not a lot of documentation.

@@paulolson1920 The only EXT chipsets that I could find that would bus into TB1&2 are SATA, and they are the LaCie EXT's and the OWC toasters. The OWC's are really expensive too. There were no PCI's, nor any conversion cables. TB1 and 2 ports are being phased out of the aftermarket supply chain because of the demand for USB-C/TB3 ports.

Not sure if I understand what you are trying to do but you would need to backup everything and then change the SSD. The restore back I would guess.

I didn't see any issues with video editing and it helps to speed the iMac up over the fusion drive. Just make sure you get an enclosure and SSD (NVME) that is quality and have the connection speed high enough for the NVME drive and you should be fine. It seems like it only helps and you can also boot back to your fusion drive at any time if you want to so trying this is a good option to see if it works good. Thanks for watching.

Hello and thanks for watching. Please subscribe if you have not already to help me out. Your in luck because I already did a video on adding an external boot drive to a 2011 27" iMac. In that video I show how you can boot off an external SSD but you can't use the NVME M.2 drive and instead you need to get a Lacie Drive (see model in video). On your 2011 iMac the only port that is fast enough is the Thunderbolt 1 port and I'm not sure they make those that go to a NVME enclosure since Thunderbolt 1 is much older. So you need that very specific enclosure that I cover in that video (see model number in video) so you can get really good speed to the drive. Then you can add any good SSD to the enclosure and I show you how to buy the enclosure and remove the stock drive and replace with an SSD. I is a process but very easy. I get speeds then about 350 to 450 MB/s which is way better than the spinning drive. It's also in the real world maybe 10 times as fast. Please note that if you look on Ebay you can usually get these enclosures for about $80 (new they are much more). Just buy a used one - remove the spinning drive and put in a Samsung Evo or something similar. Note that you need to buy the one I show you as many of the other ones don't have the true Thunderbolt 1 connection you need to load the MacOS off the spinning drive. Once you do this on any iMac (boot from external drive) you will see how easy it is. In fact on all my iMacs I boot to various drives. In your case if you get it to work you can reformat the original internal drive or add a larger one and use for storage but I sometimes leave it so I can boot back into that drive if I need to. In any case here is the video for the 2011 that might help you. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VyZlDwV1AOY.html - link to video. Thanks for watching and good luck. Just remember it's easy to boot to external drives. Always back up but experiment as needed.

@@craigneidel I saw your video using the Lacie SSD. Loved it!!! I thought the Apple thunderbolt to thunderbolt 3 adapter would work with your NVME. You would need to use a thunderbolt male to male cable ---> to the Apple thunderbolt to thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) cable ----> to your NVME external enclosed drive. This should allow up to 10Gb/sec data transfer. Thoughts??? I already subscribed. If this works, you need to sell this on Amazon as a kit. I would buy it.

@@kentc1020 Thanks Kent. It might work but I would need to get a cable and try it out. Also the standard ssd is sata and the NVME is different so it might have an issue with the OS. I'm not sure how much overhead there would be also in the cable but if it works it should provide about 850 Mb/s on the 2011 iMac. Just note that even with the Lacie (with Samsung EVO) it is night and day over the spinning drive. Everything loads super fast and in the real world it seems as fast as the NVME setup. Thanks again for watching.

There might be several consequences to running a replacement drive without the sensor. First, your system fan might run at full speed all the time. Second, the ambient light sensor might not work and the screen backlighting will be at max all the time. If you can live with those consequences, OK. But it might be better to leave the dead drive inside, ignore it, and use a second external drive for your bulk storage. You can avoid all the hassles involved with popping off the cover glass etc. that way, too - there’s hardly anything easier than just plugging in an external drive.

This video was a while back so I'll need to do some research on that and get back to you. I don't remember having this issue. It might come down to how you set it up. When you clone a drive it's a duplicate computer basically. When you install the OS from scratch on the drive it acts a brand new Mac so it might then not have the same issue with iCloud.

ok, thank you. Yeah, I wasn't having the sync issue before I cloned it. It started right after I started booting from the external SSD. I have a failing flash drive on my fusion drive in the iMac. It was regularly shutting down on me and taking an hour to boot. This is a bandaid fix until my new MacBook Pro arrives next week. I just want to make sure that my iCloud and internal hard drive is synced before I do a time machine migration. @@craigneidel

Ok and good luck with everything. Thanks again for watching.

I would use an NVME style drive for that. My latest iMac is the 2017 iMac but just buy the fast external drive, ssd, and connection you can and it should be all that you need.

I used Samsung 3.5 inch SSD in external enclosure from ocw. It only takes 20 seconds to boot and works great now for over 2 years. Maybe give that a shot. Good luck and thanks for feedback.

You need to get the fasted external enclosure you can to move the data to the external SSD. Once you setup your Mac to boot off the external SSD that is basically like a brand new Mac so everything needs to be reloaded on the external drive (you basically setup as a new Mac setup). Eventually you could reformat the older drive for storage once you are comfortable using the external or just leave it and boot back into the old drive when needed. Thanks.

If the cord comes undone you can always hold down the correct keys while booting and then select the correct drive to boot from (after reattaching). I should not mess anything up if it comes undone accidentally. I always leave my original boot disk operational and you can always boot into that also. From my experience booting from an external SSD has been extremely reliable for me. I assume it might depend on the external enclosure and drive you choose also but for me it has always worked good. Thanks for watching.

@@craigneidel Great, thanks!

I love to hear that and thanks for watching.

For TB2 connections, you need the LaCie externals that have the TB2 port housing. They will come with an HDD inside. You will have to take it apart, remove the HDD then mount the new SSD (not available with NVME Drive, SATA port only), then reassemble. Craig has a video on this, I think it was from last year sometime. The LaCie "take-apart" is fairly simple, but you need to take your time so you don't damage vital components. I did this with my 2011, then copied my 2011 HDD to the new SSD inside the LaCie, then started booting from it. It's now blazing fast (325r/300w). Good luck, Akos.

Just make sure the Thunderbolt enclosure you buy is the same as the Thunderbolt speed on the 2017. No reason buying Thunderbolt 4 if the 2017 can't support it. But, with that said it should work fine and you would get a bit more speed. You might just need to worry about heat more so make sure you cool it good and use good heat tape.

I'm using USB-C on this one.

Hello and thanks for watching. I found that in all my systems that I had a spinning drive when I booted off an external SSD I saw major improvements. You just need to make sure you use your fastest port (5 Gbps or 10 Gbps is best) for the enclosure and a good SSD. For example I have a video I did this on a 2011 27" iMac and it's about as fast as my 2017 27" iMac for basic tasks and just a little slower for video editing on 1080p. Anyhow Ram also makes a big difference but I only had 8 Gb on each system when testing and it ran way faster. Just make sure you have the right enclosure and drives and you will notice it. Thanks again .

@@craigneidel Okay, thanks for the response :)

If you leave the older drive alone (don't delete anything) you can always boot back into the older drive at any time. So the new external SSD is basically like a brand new Mac and if you boot back into your older drive using (Preferences --- Startup Disk) it will be like you are back to the old computer in a few minutes. If you put the new drive in the computer you will get slightly better performance for sure but it's a process with the seals etc. so this is a quicker fix.

You can easily use a 256 GB for a boot drive. Most new Macs only ship with a 256 GB drive so no issues on loading the OS. I will provide you with about 210 GB left give or take.

Thanks for watching. I heard you can do that but I have not tried it yet myself. I always do a fresh install of the OS on the external and leave my primary drive along just in case I need to reboot to it later. I'll maybe try this in the future and if I do make a video.

I ended up following your instructions and then later updating my new boot drive with Time machine. Worked out perfect! Thanks again for your well informed videos.

I don't do that but see if you have a friend or somebody you know that might have a Mac and download it that way. Not sure but the 2007 isn't going to be much of a help. Here is a link that might help but just do research on Google of people in a similar situation and there will be info - support.apple.com/en-us/102662

Hello Manu. My name is Craig not Dennis but no worries. I have not tried that but heard it could work. Sorry but since I have not restored time machine to the external SSD I really don't know for sure but I think there is some info out their on RU-vid for that answer. Thanks for watching again.

@@craigneidel sorry for that wrong name, however, I have installed mac os in an external nvme SSD and it's working incredibly fast and also I have migrated all the files to the SSD.

Welcome aboard!

You can imagine I can't troubleshoot individual setups as I get hundreds of requests. I would test speed od external and make sure all connections and cables are good. Make sure your booting to correct drive too.

I'm not sure what you are asking on this but in the end good luck with everything.

Apsf should world too. Using this method I always used journaled and had great performance and no issues but apfs did come in around this time for ssds.

Yes, depending on drive etc. you can do that also. I have a few iMacs that I boot off SSDs with an they all work very good. Just make sure you get quality enclosures (that don't turn off) and good SSD drives. But, as long as you don't delete your original drive's contents you can boot right back into that after testing if you need to.

I use a bunch like Samsung, WD, Crucial, Silicon Power, Inland, Kingston - funny but true.

Hello and thanks for watching. I must say I have not thought about that but it could work I assume. I'm not sure though since the Macs have different internals etc. but in theory it could work. On the bad Mac you can try to boot to the external drive after you install the OS or boot to a MacOS install on the external drive and choose the external drive as the drive to install the OS to. Either way it could work and the second way might work better but not sure. Either way depending on the age of your systems you can look up how to bypass the internal drive and boot into an external drive - www.tenorshare.com/os-x/boot-mac-from-external-hard-drive.html - that is just one example only. In any case good luck with everything. I have not tried what you might try but I'm sure there is a way to get that to work.

I have seen people able to get around 800 MB/s to 1 Gb/s read writes with NVME using thunderbolt if you can find the right enclosure etc. It all comes down to drive speed and connection type (Thunderbolt 2 etc.).

Hello, I have a number of systems running off externals and have not had any issues so it could be hard to troubleshoot. My 2 guesses is the SSD is having an issue or over-heating maybe or you are running a new application causing system issues. I wish I would be of more help but it would be hard for me to troubleshoot a system with so many variables. I think one of those 2 items could be something to look into and I hope that helps a bit. Thanks Yary.

@@craigneidel Thank you very much for replying to my message. I'll look into buying a new enclosure. Any suggestions? :)

Yes, on older macs no but on newer macs yes. I actually tested this a while back and didn't notice too much of a performance difference but to answer your question in a perfect world yes APFS is correct on a 2017 imac. It really depends on the OS also that you are running.

Yes, you should be able to do this. With the T2 chip there is a method for disabling a certain part so you can run the os off an external drive and I have a video on that. I would also seek other documentation on disabling that feature but afterwards the same process should apply.

hey, ya you should be able to. I just bought a refurb iMac 4k 2019 model with the stock 5400rpm drive with the plan to do something like this right from the get-go because ya... it's kinda surprising how much of a slower feel a mechanical drive gives the computer. Also, I'm pretty sure all of the non "pro" iMacs to this date still don't have a T2 chip in them, which allows us to mess with stuff like upgrading the storage drives/not having to worry about any issues with secure boot stuff.

Craig Neidel -Yes the 2019 IMac and all iMacs to date do not have the T2 chip.

Yes, when I say boot off an external SSD I mean run the OS off the SSD. That would be a new fresh install so you would be running everything off the SSD. Even the files etc. would be on the SSD. Your internal drive basically becomes a storage drive but everything is run off the ssd. As long as you don't reformat your internal drive you can boot into the SSD and then boot into your internal drive (back and forth if you wanted) and both act as a completely different mac computer with different OS's on them.

@@craigneidel Right on.. thanks. I'll subscribe. In your opinion, would it be advisable to now erase the internal drive? Or does this setup need that drive to have OS files on it to work?

Yes, using an actual Thunderbolt connection to the enclosure will make this faster, but it then becomes more expensive. A true Thunderbolt 3 external enclosure is pretty high in price but if you can swing it then I would do that. It would be faster depending on the speed of the NVME. I was really showing the way to do it but there are a ton of different setups you can use and try but the general method should work. Even the setup I used makes the iMac seem so much faster, so it really just depends on what you are looking to do. Thanks for watching Jack.

Hello Bill. I'm not sure to tell you the truth. I'll need to look into this but my guess is it should work like a normal drive once you take it out. They used to sell spinning drives with built in SSD (flash) to speed it up so I'm guessing it is the same and will fit a normal SATA connection on an external enclosure.

There are a ton of videos on this on RU-vid and I'll maybe make one in the future. I have not tested on latest OS yet or with M1 Macs yet but maybe in the future. I do see some videos on this though if you search on RU-vid.

Yes, as long as you don't reformat that drive all the data is on there. You can also boot back to the older drive when you want to so it's like having two different Mac computers in one and I recommend just keeping it like that in case you need to boot back.

@@craigneidel Thank you

Thanks for watching.

It depends on so many factors like SSD and enclosure. I get 35 second boot times but could be even faster with a thunderbolt enclosure and nvme drive.

@@craigneidel my iMac 27inch corei5 2017 takes 33 sec to boot on a new installed os I compare to nvme Samsung 980 with usb3.1 g2 enclosure which takes strangely 48sec boot time Only boot time in Ssd external is taking more time than internal Fusion Drive … But rest of operation is quite fast in Ssd . Any idea why boot time is taking more in Ssd ??

@@iosuser1174 enclosure maybe but both are great times

@@craigneidel any suggestion if nvme can fit on via mother board in iMac 2017 27 inch ????

Hello.. 20 seconds is way faster than it would be with a spinning drive and you said the Mac has new life. So it appears that it worked. It could maybe be you have FileVault on which needs to unencrypt your files when it loads on the newer versions of MacOS and that usually takes a little while. But 20 seconds to load a Mac is shorter than it would be on a spinning drive. Thanks for watching.

@@craigneidel What I mean is that is takes around 20-25 seconds after pressing the power button for the apple logo to appear while booting the Mac. Earlier with the 5400 rpm hard drive as the startup disk the apple logo used to appear on screen pretty quickly after pressing the button but the loading process would take forever. To me it seems like my Mac is having trouble choosing which disk to start up from. But hey I'm not an expert on computers so I wouldn't really know. I'm totally fine with waiting for that extra 20-25 seconds as long as it is faster than the 5400 rpm hard drive, just wanted to check if others had the same problem too. Btw I have fire vault turned off.

Thanks for sharing. Those are maybe best way to go since pre-build and pretty fast. I think those are around 500 MBps. The make the system much faster for sure. Thanks.

@@craigneidel I was also wondering if a Samsung T5 or T7 would do the same job as what you suggest with the enclosure....is it better to use one of the usbc/thunderbolt ports (on a 2017 IMac) as opposed to the USB 3.1? I’d like to save the 4 standard USB ports for other devices if possible. Thanks!

@@nealkurz6503 T/he Samsung T5 and T7 I are standard SSD drives and the one I recommended was an NVME. The NVME is going to be slightly faster but in real world use it will be hard to tell in most cases. I would try it and see what you think and just don't delete anything as you can always boot right back into your older drive and OS. I just show people how to do it but there are so many combinations of drives and enclosures out there. The key is going with the fast combo of Drive and connection to the drive you can do and you should be fine. Thanks Neal.

For sure. I'm working on this and while in lock down I make these quicker. Once I get my dedicated room setup in my new house (after this outbreak is over) I am going to take more time and make sure my delivery is more scripted. I caught that too and thanks for the info.

Can u clone with it I'm using El Capitan trying to see if it works on my operating system.

Hello and thanks for watching. I do think it will help since the Fusion drive is fast at the start but ramps down once it reaches it's small cache. Then its a spinning drive. The external SSD is consistently fast. I don't use that program but I suspect it should help. Just don't remove anything and boot off the external and if it doesn't work boot right back to your existing drive. Just don't delete original until you know.

@@craigneidel thanks for the reply! Thanks 🙏

Sorry, I missed this one. After you setup the Mac to Boot to the SSD I should be able to partition the drive etc. I think the better method is to just setup two separate accounts under the single drive so each person has their own account and login. Thanks Phillip.

NVMe will get a bit hotter for sure over a normal 2.5" or Sata M.2. I would just give it a try and see if you get any speed gains. If not return the drive.

@@craigneidel kudos to replying for a video that's a few years old keep up the good Mac content 👍🏾

Thank you.

You should be able to get it here (Scroll down just a little bit) - support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 . Thanks for watching.

Hello, and thanks for watching. In MacOS settings there look for "Start Up Disk". If you set your system to boot into the new SSD it always will boot to the new SSD and that is basically a totally different computer as it then boots from that disk. You can always go back and set this up to boot from the original disk if you don't erase that. So Start up disk is what you are looking for and make sure the new disk is the start up disk. Finally, I have not tried resorting from Time Machine but think that could work. There might be some videos on that on RU-vid etc. but I do think that could work but I have not tired it yet.

@@craigneidel Again, thank you for your videos and for your response. After much Google searching, I learned I may also have a macOS driver issue on macOS Ventura with my new Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD in an external case. The post I read said the 980 Pro wasn't compatible on newer macOSes and recommended the WD Black SN850X. So, I ordered a 1TB one. Upon its arrival (maybe tomorrow?), using an external case, I will again try to Erase/Partition it, download macOS Ventura onto it, (per your RU-vid video guidance) choose it in "Start Up Disk" and try to use it as my new boot/applications/data drive on my 2017 iMac 27". I will try to remember to post that progress (or not) back here. My Samsung 980 Pro in an external case failed during the macOS Ventura install and NEITHER my 2017 iMac 27" desktop nor 2019 Macbook laptop would recognize it (both macOS Ventura). I had to resort to various commands in macOS Ventura "Terminal" mode and also various commands in Windows 10 "Command Prompt" mode on a Windows PC. But, I finally got the 980 Pro back to being a Windows NTFS, free healthy data drive. At first, my Windows 10 PC wouldn't display the 980 Pro, but "Command Prompt", "diskpart", then "list disk" would show it, but it had 0 free space. Ultimately, I got it converted, wiped and reformatted in a Windows 10 PC. P.S. The external cases I tried were the UGREEN, Model CM559 (aluminum and black silicon) and the UGREEN Model CM578 (gray plastic and also black silicon); both purchased at Amazon. The plastic CM578 is easier to open, but I like the ruggedness of the CM559 model. So far, these external cases have worked very well on my Windows PC. Once the, hopefully compatible, WD Black SN850X arrives, I'll see how it fares in an external case with macOS Ventura on it and, hopefully, be able to use it as my primary boot/applications/data drive on my 2017" iMac 27". P.S.S. If a 2017 iMac Fusion drive ever displays as two drives (mine did as a 28GB SSD and 1TB HDD; my fault when I erased it and renamed the two drives), then one has another whole host of headaches! Using Google searches, eventually I was able to get it reset as ONE, "Macintosh HD" drive. Fortunately, a Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant saved me!

Craig, today, all went well. Successfully loaded the latest macOS Ventura onto a WD Black SN850X 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD in a Ugreen CM578 external enclosure connected to my 2017 iMac 27” (Intel i5 3.4 ghz / 40 GB RAM: 8 GB + recent 32 GB upgrade). Could NOT have accomplished this without your RU-vid video! Thank you!!! After the install, I shut it down several times and timed each boot up. Each try, it took about 1 minute 40 seconds from the Apple logo at power up to the log on screen. I’m not sure if I should expect a faster boot up or not…? Regardless, I am super happy to be off of the original, 6 year old Fusion Drive (it has been my experience that most HDDs die or become unstable after about 5 years). I’ve ordered an Intel certified Thunderbolt 3/4 cable and I’m researching possible better (re: faster) external enclosures. Maybe this could improve things even more…??? [I’m thinking of a Thunderbolt 3 dual bay M.2 external enclosure and maybe getting a 2TB WD Black SSD for the Time Machine backups to go with today’s 1TB boot SSD. Too early to know just yet.] I don’t really work this iMac all that hard, but I really want reliable (& fast) components for it. Again, thank you for your help. RB

Time Machine backup and Migration Assistant worked perfectly. Highly recommended to all.

Overall, I am very happy that my 2017 iMac 27" now boots off of an SSD in an external enclosure (thanks, Craig!). I'm just a little disappointed that its boot time still seems just a little sluggish, at least compared to my somewhat similar Windows 11 PC: - 2017 iMac 27: about 1 minute 40 seconds from power up to logon screen - - macOS Ventura, Intel i5 3.40GHZ. 40GB RAM, WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD in Ugreen CM578 enclosure (up to 10gbps), plugged into the Thunderbolt 3 port using an Intel certified Thunderbolt 4 cable - 2019 Dell Inspiron desktop: about 15 seconds from power up to logon screen - - Windows 11, Intel i5 2.80GHZ, 16GB RAM, Crucial CT250MX5 250GB SSD in the motherboard I know I'm comparing apples to oranges, but it makes me question if there might be something else I need to do to my iMac, as that's about a 1 minute 25 seconds difference...??? Might the difference in boot times mainly be that my Windows 11 PC's SSD is on the motherboard?

I always say just leave your internal drive alone and load the OS on the external SSD and boot to that. Once you do you will still see your internal hard drive is still visible when you boot into your external SSD. You can save files to it also like it's an attached drive. The best thing is that you can also just boot right back to your internal hard drive when you want to by changing the boot drive back to your internal drive so it's like having two iMacs in one if you don't erase your internal drive.

@@craigneidel cool.. thanks a lot.. that was helpful! Also would the Samsung T5 SSD work fine via the USB C port on iMac 2017 21 inch?

You can look up how to do this on a Mac with the T2 chip. There is additional steps that you can find if you put in how to boot off external SSD with T2 chip on Google.

Yes that should work but if you are booting to this then what is the enclosure you will be using? iMacs before 2020 don't have the T2 security chip and it's easier to boot off an external SSD enclosure with them. So I don't see any issues if you follow some of my other videos. Something like a Samsung T5 (external enclosure) that is pre-built are cheap (or the t7) and they will work good also. Maybe not as fast as an NVME but still will be a huge difference if you have a spinning drive in there.

Craig Neidel Would this work as an enclosure? This would use the thunderbolt hook up which would maximize speed? eshop.macsales.com/shop/envoy-express/thunderbolt-3 Prior to going over to the SSD what were your speeds? Did you see a 100% increase in read and write? Some say that having and external drive is not as fast as if it were internal? Would you be able to visually see the difference or could it only be seen on testing?

Craig Neidel and just to make it an easier build i can use this eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/S3DNE12ST05/? For $58.00 dollars i can get the 250GB size?

Since it acts like a totally different system when booting off external drive catalina should work fine. I have only loaded majove so far but dont know why cataina would be any different. Thanks for watching.

I don't have any issues but just make sure you get a good enclosure that can cool well. Thanks for sharing and watching.

@@craigneidel thank you! I have sata ssd with 460 mb write and read speed right now

@@SeanBeatsss To be honest with an older Mac I'm not sure you will see a huge difference in performance with the NVME if you are already getting 460 Mbps. On paper maybe but in real-life you might not notice it unless you are pushing the limits of the current drive. If you already have it and like to tinker with electronics then give it a try for sure. It was hard for me to notice to be honest since I wasn't using the older system for 4K video editing or things like that but I guess it depends on other factors. Thanks.

@@craigneidel thank you so much!! Have this sata right now im pretty contented with it. It’s fast enough for me. Btw im using it for music production. Paring it with 32gigs of ram . It can handle well

I haven't tested all of them and I guess you should be able to. It only takes about an hour to do so you can just test it and then you will know for sure. Thanks for watching.

The video just shows you how to boot off an external SSD and that will be a brand new mac basically. If you don't erase the old drive you can boot back into that. I have not made any videos on cloning but there are a ton out there for sure.

Yes, it should. Thanks for watching.

I'm not sure about that. Are you monitoring thermals to make sure heat isn't causing it to ramp down. I have not tried this on Ventura yet so not sure if the OS might be doing it either. I'll see if I can find something.

@@craigneidel I've not got a tool to monitor exact thermals, but I've read that it can get super hot to touch, which mine hasnt. Have tried on Big Sur and updated to Ventura which worked better but still inconsistent. Thanks for taking the time to reply! Maybe I just have a faulty component?

I have not had any heat issues but it really depends on the drive and enclosure you pick.

Thanks for watching.

Yes, for sure it will work on the 2015 also. Even using something like a Samsung T5 for the external SSD would work good and provide fast speeds to the SSD to boot off of.

@@craigneidel how about late 2012 imac 21.5? can i use this upgrade?

Yes, that should work. I have not tried it myself (that specific drive) but almost all Samsung drives will work on a Mac. You would format to APFS etc. and then load the OS on the drive. Good luck and thanks for watching. Oh Yeah... The key is to make the connection to the external SSD as fast as you can (and USB3 should be good). Thanks.

@@craigneidel amazing! will order this this week and let you know if it has worked! great content!

That is when the video was made back a few years ago.

What is the age of the Mac you are buying. If for professional work I would go with a newer M1 or M2 Mac but either way you need an SSD in any system for it to be responsive enough for editing.

@@craigneidel Well thats the hard part, I didn't want to purchase unless I knew it was going to hold up. For example --- i found a Apple iMac Retina 5K 27-inch 3.6GHz Ten-core i9 (Mid 2020) for about 1700

You could do that as well for sure. Either way it is quite a bit faster than what came in the original system. Thanks for watching Vincent.

Thanks for sharing what you upgraded to and the speeds you are getting on the ssds. It helps people out.

You can do that also. Both will work basically the same but APFS is the newer format. I used the other format since it also applies to older Macs just in case people are using older macs to do this. But on a 2017 iMac, like in the example, APFS is fine.

To be honest I have not yet tried to use Time Machine to restore a drive to the external SSD. I have only done clean installs on the SSD and then used that as my primary drive. I always keep my internal drive the same so I can boot back into that at any time and therefore you don't loose anything. Of course if you do that then the new External SSD is like a brand new iMac and won't have your other files on it. I might recommend first installing a clean version of the OS onto the SSD. At that point your older drive will be visible in Finder. Then you can access your files from that drive and see how fast it is. Again, if you do that though you would need to download all your apps etc. onto the new SSD. So that might now work good. I'll see if I can do a video on the Time Machine thing in the coming months but if you do it maybe post your results. I wish you luck on your work. Thanks for watching Stephen.

I’ve done this before and it works perfect 👌🏾 I have a 2013 imac and I used the samsung t5 as well

My enclosure was capable of 10 Gbps so it could handle about 800 MBps speed on the drive. Use the fastest connection you can to the external drive and you will see the best performance. Thanks Christopher.

I'm running Catalina off an external drive on my 2017 iMac. I have had zero issues with it. Thanks for watching.

I have not tried that but just give it a try. I'm not sure it will work and maybe see if somebody did that on RU-vid and I'm sure somebody tried that already.

@@craigneidel Okay...I was just curious if it would work. Way back I somehow got my Lion pushed up to 10.7.5 which I needed before something I had would be compatible?

@@AllenPortman thanks and good luck with everything

You will need to decide what is best. I simply let people know this is possible (booting from an external drive). With that said I have done this with about 8 iMacs and other Apple computers and never had an issue. I leave the normal drive in there so I can boot back if I need to but since it's just a hard drive I can't image it can damage something. Of course backup all your data just in case you format the wrong drive (don't do that of course). Of course I cannot say for sure so you would need to decide but since all it's doing is moving data not sure of any issues. For legal issues in this day and age I just let people know this is possible (you get my drift). Thanks for watching Leonardo.

Hello and thanks for sharing your experience. To make sure you are booting off the external drive you need to go into system preferences and then go to startup disk. In there you can highlight the drive you want to boot to. The external ssd should be highlighted if you booted off that. If you did everything correctly then it should boot into the new OS. I assume you went through the OS setup like you do with all new Macs. In any case fans will still kick in since those are for cooling things like the CPU and video card and not the hard drive so that is not an issue. Thanks again.

That video is from long time ago.

My connection was 10 Gbps and I was able to get about 800 MBps speeds on the drive. If you use a connection that is only 5 Gbps you might only get half that so the connection does matter. Yes, using the fastest connection matters so if Thunderbolt 2 or 3 use that as well.

That's my phrase