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Anyone using Thunderbolt to boot from?

R

ri0ku

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 11, 2009
952
0
Just wondering if anyone is using a Solid State Thunderbolt drive to boot from on their iMac ? (or any mac in general that has TB)

I purchased my iMac with the 1TB HDD as I couldn't afford an SSD however somewhere down the line when more Thunderbolt stuff becomes available I would like to buy a TB SSD and boot osx from it.

I was just wanting to see if anyone could confirm the performance of doing this being much faster than the internal 7200rpm HDD.
 
Thunderbolt is PCI Express, so it should boot the same as an internal would...
 
Thunderbolt Boot

Yes, I found a way to do it online where I got a GoFlex TB converter, then got a GoFlex USB drive, swapped it with an SSD and now I can boot from the TB on the iMac to that drive. Super fast!
 
I want to do this with a MacBook Air and an iMac. Got the 2011 air...just waiting for the new iMac to come out...
 

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ri0ku said:
I was just wanting to see if anyone could confirm the performance of doing this being much faster than the internal 7200rpm HDD.
Click to expand...

It works at the same speed whether it's plugged in via Thunderbolt or the internal SATA port. The only thing to be wary of is the fact that some of the SSD TB drives available now actually only utilise SATA II in the enclosure as opposed to SATA III. This has nothing to do with TB. It's because the manufacturers are cheaping out (I am looking at you Elgato). If a TB enclosure with SATA III comes out, it will be just as fast if you had plugged in the SSD via an internal SATA III port.

----------
philipma1957 said:
works great with lace little big disks



https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1280118/
Click to expand...

If I remember your thread correctly, the Lacie also only runs SATA II in the enclosure?
 
philipma1957 said:
works great with lace little big disks



https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1280118/
Click to expand...

I used it with two Lacie Thunderbolt external enclousures with SSD's replacing the hard drives. It was great speed wise but I went back to internal drive as boot. I was having some problems with programs not working properly, drives not being found, etc. I had origianlly cloned the drives from hard disk to ssd. When I changed my User folder to the internal iMac hard drive that is when the problems started. Worked fine if I left everything on the SSD. I may take the larger 480Gb OWC drive and mount it internally and see how we do.
 
police340 said:
I used it with two Lacie Thunderbolt external enclousures with SSD's replacing the hard drives. It was great speed wise but I went back to internal drive as boot. I was having some problems with programs not working properly, drives not being found, etc. I had origianlly cloned the drives from hard disk to ssd. When I changed my User folder to the internal iMac hard drive that is when the problems started. Worked fine if I left everything on the SSD. I may take the larger 480Gb OWC drive and mount it internally and see how we do.
Click to expand...

Any particular reasons why you needed the User folder on the interal drive as opposed to the external boot drive?

My plan is to go external SSD. I would leave everything on it, and use the internal HDD as backup. So long as there is a reliable backup, I won't worry about the SSD failing.
 
DeF46 said:
Any particular reasons why you needed the User folder on the interal drive as opposed to the external boot drive?

My plan is to go external SSD. I would leave everything on it, and use the internal HDD as backup. So long as there is a reliable backup, I won't worry about the SSD failing.
Click to expand...


I just thought I'd keep user files on separate drive and system files and such on SSD boot drive. It worked fine when all was on SSD.
 
police340 said:
I used it with two Lacie Thunderbolt external enclousures with SSD's replacing the hard drives. It was great speed wise but I went back to internal drive as boot. I was having some problems with programs not working properly, drives not being found, etc. I had origianlly cloned the drives from hard disk to ssd. When I changed my User folder to the internal iMac hard drive that is when the problems started. Worked fine if I left everything on the SSD. I may take the larger 480Gb OWC drive and mount it internally and see how we do.
Click to expand...

YES owc are not the best choice for the lacie.

samsung 810 series are really good. I did a lot of ssd 's in the lacies and a lot in the seagate adapter

see this thread;

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1317577/


some ssds are better then others.
 
Fantastic thanks for all the replies guys. I have been thinking of getting the goflex adapter then buying a sata/6GB SSD drive and hooking it to the goflex adapter.

Wanting to boot lion from that then use the internal TB hdd for data.
 
ri0ku said:
Fantastic thanks for all the replies guys. I have been thinking of getting the goflex adapter then buying a sata/6GB SSD drive and hooking it to the goflex adapter.

Wanting to boot lion from that then use the internal TB hdd for data.
Click to expand...

I've got the goflex desk TB adapter, best purchase I've ever made! You can find them at Apple Stores...
 
ri0ku said:
Fantastic thanks for all the replies guys. I have been thinking of getting the goflex adapter then buying a sata/6GB SSD drive and hooking it to the goflex adapter.

Wanting to boot lion from that then use the internal TB hdd for data.
Click to expand...

I would get the 1TB Thunderbolt LBD($349 on amazon) and install 2 SSD's of your choice inside. Screw the warranty. It's like 10 screws and you're done and very simple to do. My iMac boots up in 15 seconds and I have no complaints about the setup. I'm buying another one to have the same setup on my other iMac. I'm getting 341mbps write and 496mbps read.
 
Bootable SSD, using seagate tbolt adapter, not mounting drives

I'm using a sandisk extreme 120gb bare SSD connected to a seagate TB adapter and I'm having some issues after booting from it (cloned the internal drive using CCC). I can't seem to mount any drives, including the internal HD. Disk utility comes up with "the disk 'Macintosh HD' could not be mounted'... for every drive...

Do any of you have this problem? Verify and repair disk give a clean bill of health on every drive.... very strange.

I can't seem to find anyone else having the same problems booting off the SSD from a seagate thunderbolt adapter. :(

Cheers

Troy
 
tjmckay said:
I'm using a sandisk extreme 120gb bare SSD connected to a seagate TB adapter and I'm having some issues after booting from it (cloned the internal drive using CCC). I can't seem to mount any drives, including the internal HD. Disk utility comes up with "the disk 'Macintosh HD' could not be mounted'... for every drive...

Do any of you have this problem? Verify and repair disk give a clean bill of health on every drive.... very strange.

I can't seem to find anyone else having the same problems booting off the SSD from a seagate thunderbolt adapter. :(

Cheers

Troy
Click to expand...

I definitely don't have that problem, despite a similar setup -- (OCZ SSD in Seagate TB) and about 4 other drives that are mounted

Maybe the permissions on /Volumes got screwed up? Have you tried having disk utility fix permissions on the SSD (not the other drives)?
 
omvs said:
I definitely don't have that problem, despite a similar setup -- (OCZ SSD in Seagate TB) and about 4 other drives that are mounted

Maybe the permissions on /Volumes got screwed up? Have you tried having disk utility fix permissions on the SSD (not the other drives)?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply omvs. Just repaired the permissions on the SSD and it's still not mounting the drives.....

I think the problem lies with how I'm doing the clone in CCC as I booted off another clone on an external HDD using firewire and yielded the same results...

In CCC it's all pretty straight forward, I even created the recovery HD partition. It should work.....:confused:
 
tjmckay said:
Thanks for the quick reply omvs. Just repaired the permissions on the SSD and it's still not mounting the drives.....

I think the problem lies with how I'm doing the clone in CCC as I booted off another clone on an external HDD using firewire and yielded the same results...

In CCC it's all pretty straight forward, I even created the recovery HD partition. It should work.....:confused:
Click to expand...

Not to encourage you to switch tools, but I used SuperDuper! numerous times to do that with no problems. No experience with CCC, though I've read good things about it from others (?)

Are you Unix-savy enough to use the Terminal? If so, I'd suggest checking /var/log/system.log and see what happens when you attempt to mount a drive.
 
omvs said:
Not to encourage you to switch tools, but I used SuperDuper! numerous times to do that with no problems. No experience with CCC, though I've read good things about it from others (?)

Are you Unix-savy enough to use the Terminal? If so, I'd suggest checking /var/log/system.log and see what happens when you attempt to mount a drive.
Click to expand...

It's all good! Fixed!

It was the version of CCC that I was using that wasn't allowing the mounting of the drives. A user on the CCC forum had the exact same problem and the developer posted the latest version.

Thanks for your help.
 
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