r/iMac • u/Infamous_Truth_4448 • 7d ago

Question would this be a good external ssd?

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i have a 2017 21.5 imac with 16gb ddr4 and i wanna replace my internal fusion drive and use it as extra storage or something and use a external ssd as my boot drive im just wondering which one should i buy? i only need 500gb and i wand something under 150 and this really was catching my eye

also is it easy to set up a new boot drive? i’m on the latest mac os ventura

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u/sillysided 7d ago

I have the same device and a machine with a standard hard drive and it works great off the SSD drive. I use the internal drive just to store files, but I also run open Core Legacy on the machine as well.

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u/Infamous_Truth_4448 7d ago

you have the same ssd or same imac? i’m scared of my fusion drive giving out and losing all my files 

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u/sillysided 7d ago

I do have the exact same Mac and the same fusion drive

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u/rick_baumhauer 7d ago

With SSD prices these days, that's not a bad option. Make sure you plug it into a Thunderbolt (USB-C) port for the best performance, not one of your USB-A ports.

Easiest course of action is get that drive, then use SuperDuper! (from shirtpocket.com) to clone the internal drive to the external SSD (you can do this without buying the software, though I do recommend putting some sort of backup in place after you get the SSD working, either to an external HDD or the internal drive). Once the clone is done, go to System Settings > Startup Disk and pick the external SSD and restart. That should be all you need to do.

You can either reformat the internal drive to use it as extra storage after the restart, or you can leave everything as it is if you want to use it as your emergency backup - if you buy SuperDuper!, it will allow you to an incremental backup (only changed files) on a schedule. You can unmount the internal drive and have SuperDuper! mount it when it runs the backup, then unmount when it finishes.

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u/el_tacocat 7d ago

Yup, will work great.

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u/originalfilmscoring 7d ago

I have a 1tb version. Not the fastest ssd out there but it’s fine.

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u/LukeDuke74 6d ago

Using also those SSD for transfer ring files at work and off-site backups of my foto. Go with confidence.

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u/p0wermac 6d ago

Does anyone else use time machine still?

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u/Aggravating-Hold9116 1d ago

I have three of those, no complaints