Boot and Run Monterey from ext. SSD

[Pug72]

My 2017 27 inch iMac suddenly started intermittently freezing a few days ago. It works for a about 10-20 seconds then freezes/beachballs. Tried restarts, resetting PRAM & SMC, no joy. Each restart is excruciatingly slow with the freezing still evident throughout the reboot, even safe mode. Tried recovery with no luck and finally wiped and reinstalled the OS and still the same.

Thinking about it maybe being the 2TB Fusion HDD failing so instead of cracking it open to swap HD I thought about getting an external SSD to install and run Monterey from.

Would this work and if so what SSD should I go for?

Thanks.

 

[Pug72]

Just realised I have a 1TB SSD connected to my PS5 that I don't really use so am going to try with that.

 

[Pug72]

And it worked.

 

[Pug72]

I’d now like to change over to a NVME with Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.
Any recommendations?

Is there mac side hardware speed restrictions that limit my choice of drive? I’d like as fast as possible but would be daft buying a drive faster than the mac can handle if so. Will be 1TB as the prices rocket on the 2TB ones.

Also, will I have to install the Monterey Installer and restore from Time Machine or can I simply copy over from my current external SSD.

Thanks.

 

[davidlv]

I’d now like to change over to a NVME with Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.
Any recommendations?

Is there mac side hardware speed restrictions that limit my choice of drive? I’d like as fast as possible but would be daft buying a drive faster than the mac can handle if so. Will be 1TB as the prices rocket on the 2TB ones.

Also, will I have to install the Monterey Installer and restore from Time Machine or can I simply copy over from my current external SSD.

Thanks.

See https://www.macintouch.com/
This issue has a list of OWC drives that look good. I am sure there are others on the market