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Best Way to Add external to iMac?

A

AAP&L

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 20, 2014
4
0
earth
I'll be buying a new iMac after Christmas, and want to add an external drive. Reason is I think I can save money instead of paying Apple for a internal 1TB Fusion or SSD.

Unsure if it will be too difficult for me to move OS to external SSD and use internal 7200, or just add Thunderbolt SATA3/enclosure SATA3 7200 hdd for storage. Lots of photos and music. I'm a desktop guy.

I can follow directions easily, but if the directions are missing a single step, I'm lost. Its been a long time since I have used a Mac, since way back in the 80's. Thanks for any help in advising me.
 
A

asriznet

macrumors regular
Dec 21, 2013
241
0
Singapore
AAP&L said:
I'll be buying a new iMac after Christmas, and want to add an external drive. Reason is I think I can save money instead of paying Apple for a internal 1TB Fusion or SSD.

Unsure if it will be too difficult for me to move OS to external SSD and use internal 7200, or just add Thunderbolt SATA3/enclosure SATA3 7200 hdd for storage. Lots of photos and music. I'm a desktop guy.

I can follow directions easily, but if the directions are missing a single step, I'm lost. Its been a long time since I have used a Mac, since way back in the 80's. Thanks for any help in advising me.
Click to expand...

You can easily clone the data to your external SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner. Before formatting the internal HDD, attempt to boot into the SSD by holding down option on startup. Once you confirmed everything is intact on the SSD, go ahead and wipe the internal HDD and you can use it as your storage drive.
 
G

geeksified

macrumors newbie
Nov 29, 2014
1
0
Exactly what I am looking for, actually. I really need to know. I am planning to buy 840 Evo for my late 2012 iMac because it drives me crazy like hell while opening apps!

I also wanted to ask what's better between thunderbolt and USB 3 for the SSD? Does Evo 840 include these type of connectors?
 
matreya

matreya

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2009
1,286
127
geeksified said:
Exactly what I am looking for, actually. I really need to know. I am planning to buy 840 Evo for my late 2012 iMac because it drives me crazy like hell while opening apps!

I also wanted to ask what's better between thunderbolt and USB 3 for the SSD? Does Evo 840 include these type of connectors?
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt is in my experience slightly faster and more reliable than USB3.

I've done this twice, for two different iMacs, so they would have bootable clones of the system volumes...

Bought these two items:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTGTBH5T1.0/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTGS3U3/

Took the hard drive out of the first item and put it into the 2nd enclosure, and set it up as a Time Machine backup drive.

Then put an SSD (750GB 840 EVO) in one thunderbolt enclosure (item 1)). The 840 EVO, like other SATA3 SSDs needs an enclosure like the ones above.
 
skyline r34

skyline r34

macrumors 6502
Oct 10, 2005
397
33
San Diego
I ordered a new iMac 5K with 512GB Flash storage and i'm also using an external hard drive I bought a WD 2TB MY Book Velociraptor Duo with 10,000rpm hard drives, I caught it on sale for $279 on B & H Deal Zone
 

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matreya

matreya

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2009
1,286
127
skyline r34 said:
I ordered a new iMac 5K with 512GB Flash storage and i'm also using an external hard drive I bought a WD 2TB MY Book Velociraptor Duo with 10,000rpm hard drives, I caught it on sale for $279 on B & H Deal Zone
Click to expand...

Bear in mind with that unit, that if you want the full 2TB, then the drives are in RAID 0, so if either drive fails, you lose all your data.
 
skyline r34

skyline r34

macrumors 6502
Oct 10, 2005
397
33
San Diego
matreya said:
Bear in mind with that unit, that if you want the full 2TB, then the drives are in RAID 0, so if either drive fails, you lose all your data.
Click to expand...

Yea i'm not planning to use it that way, 1TB will go to my iMac and other 1TB will goto my 2013 Mac Pro but i'm gonna have to buy a second thunderbolt cable
 
matreya

matreya

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2009
1,286
127
skyline r34 said:
Yea i'm not planning to use it that way, 1TB will go to my iMac and other 1TB will goto my 2013 Mac Pro but i'm gonna have to buy a second thunderbolt cable
Click to expand...

You can't connect the MyBook Velociraptor up to two different macs via thunderbolt at the same time...
 
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