Best way to use an Nvme m.2 4 TB drive with mid-2011 iMac

[Sealinski]

Hello. tL;dr at the bottom,

I am in music production and just had to sell my m1 Mac Mini 16 gb ram 256 gb storage music machine. In which I booted Ventura from an OWC Envoy enclosure with a 4 TB Nvme m.2 TeamGroup SSD.

I am blessed to have found (at a thrift store of all places) a mid-2011 21.5 inch iMac. It had 2 (2 gb) *Elpida* ram stick and 2 (8 gb Crucial ram sticks) (20 gb altogether) and someone had also installed a 250 GB Crucial SSD.

There is no damage and it works fantastically.

I just removed the 2X2 Elpida eam, and installed 2X8 TeamGroup 10600 1600mhz ram (worked great, and the system shows 32 GB of 1333mhz Ram, some obviously just downclocked the ram (or something).

Anyways, it runs high sierra at the most, and the Logic Pro 10.7+ I’m used to is now at most going to be 10.4.8 (which is actually pretty close, but my separate issue is getting at least the structural versions of my other Logic projects…I digress.

On my Mac mini I booted Ventura on an OWC Envoy holding a 4 TB TeamGroup Drive (not the fastest, but with Thunderbolt and its threshold, it makes little difference as far as speed). So, now that I had to sell the mm, my question is thusly:

Because I can’t just use a small adapter to plug the thunderbolt cable into a usb-a port, (it’ll say it needs more power). Is there any way to get the iMac 2011 to recognize the Nvme m.2 SSD via a different device, or some way to get the iMac to recognize the OWC Envoy SSD enclosure (bus powered so no way to add power normally)?

TL;Dr
How can I get my mid-2011 to recognize my 4 TB Nvme m.2 so I can utilize the data on it, OR EVEN BOOT High Sierra FROM IT!?!? How can I get it to recognize the TB3/4 envoy bus powered enclosure or do I need a special adapter, or a special TB2 to TB 3 (female) adapter of some kind? Thanks so much for any help, I really appreciate it.
There’s a lot if data on there and a bootable Ventura I used for my Mac Mini I had to sell.

 

[Sealinski]

Just get a TB2 to TB3 adapter, and then use that setup through a TB2 powered hub, and then hook it to a usb-c 3.1 or 3.2 Orico enclosure, or some other cheap enclosure that is just USB (not Thunderbolt)

 

[Yebubbleman]

Hello. tL;dr at the bottom,

I am in music production and just had to sell my m1 Mac Mini 16 gb ram 256 gb storage music machine. In which I booted Ventura from an OWC Envoy enclosure with a 4 TB Nvme m.2 TeamGroup SSD.

I am blessed to have found (at a thrift store of all places) a mid-2011 21.5 inch iMac. It had 2 (2 gb) *Elpida* ram stick and 2 (8 gb Crucial ram sticks) (20 gb altogether) and someone had also installed a 250 GB Crucial SSD.

There is no damage and it works fantastically.

I just removed the 2X2 Elpida eam, and installed 2X8 TeamGroup 10600 1600mhz ram (worked great, and the system shows 32 GB of 1333mhz Ram, some obviously just downclocked the ram (or something).

Anyways, it runs high sierra at the most, and the Logic Pro 10.7+ I’m used to is now at most going to be 10.4.8 (which is actually pretty close, but my separate issue is getting at least the structural versions of my other Logic projects…I digress.

On my Mac mini I booted Ventura on an OWC Envoy holding a 4 TB TeamGroup Drive (not the fastest, but with Thunderbolt and its threshold, it makes little difference as far as speed). So, now that I had to sell the mm, my question is thusly:

Because I can’t just use a small adapter to plug the thunderbolt cable into a usb-a port, (it’ll say it needs more power). Is there any way to get the iMac 2011 to recognize the Nvme m.2 SSD via a different device, or some way to get the iMac to recognize the OWC Envoy SSD enclosure (bus powered so no way to add power normally)?

TL;Dr
How can I get my mid-2011 to recognize my 4 TB Nvme m.2 so I can utilize the data on it, OR EVEN BOOT High Sierra FROM IT!?!? How can I get it to recognize the TB3/4 envoy bus powered enclosure or do I need a special adapter, or a special TB2 to TB 3 (female) adapter of some kind? Thanks so much for any help, I really appreciate it.
There’s a lot if data on there and a bootable Ventura I used for my Mac Mini I had to sell.

For what it's worth, without soldering, you don't have internal drive I/O for anything that isn't SATA III (or SATA II in the case of the optical drive). You MIGHT be able to solder on an adapter onto the main logic board, but good luck with that. Otherwise the only M.2 drive you're likely going to be able to use with ANY adapters are ones that are SATA based rather than NVMe based.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

TL;Dr
How can I get my mid-2011 to recognize my 4 TB Nvme m.2 so I can utilize the data on it, OR EVEN BOOT High Sierra FROM IT!?!? How can I get it to recognize the TB3/4 envoy bus powered enclosure or do I need a special adapter, or a special TB2 to TB 3 (female) adapter of some kind? Thanks so much for any help, I really appreciate it.
There’s a lot if data on there and a bootable Ventura I used for my Mac Mini I had to sell.

Hardware: An nVME to USB 3.0 enclosure will get your iMac 2011 to recognize the SSD via old-school USB protocol.
Software: If you what to run Ventura, use OCLP
1. Boot High Sierra from internal SATA disk. Download OCLP.
2. Connect the USB enclosure with Ventura preinstall, check if it's recognized by your iMac and file system. If not, try updating Mac OS High Sierra on the internal SSD.
3. Run OCLP to generate EFI configurated for your iMac. Copy that EFI (using a menu on OCLP) to the external disk.
4. Now boot from the external disk to see if all things runs nice.
5. Read OCLP guideline about how to remove OCLP from the external disk when you want to move it to boot on another Mac computer.

Another option is to use the below connection:

iMac 2011 <=> TB2 to TB3 adapter <=> TB3 powered dock => TB3 OWC external enclosure + nVME SSD.