Booting from a thunderbolt drive possible?

Discussion in 'iMac' started by Zellio, Feb 18, 2014.

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  1. Zellio, Feb 18, 2014

    Zellio macrumors 65816

    Zellio

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    #1
    My newest iMac has a 3 tb drive. I have lots of steam and pc stuff, and I have a 1tb usb 3.0 external for storage, so the 1 tb partition for the mac is quite unused.

    What if I got a 256-512 ssd and a thunderbolt connector and used it as a boot up drive for osx, and removed the osx partition? Would it be possible?
     
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  2. WilliamG, Feb 18, 2014

    WilliamG macrumors 604

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    #2
    I've been booting off a Thunderbolt 256GB Samsung 830 SSD for well over a year now. Zero issues.
     
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  3. Zellio, Feb 18, 2014

    Zellio thread starter macrumors 65816

    Zellio

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    #3
    Do you get full 830 speeds?
     
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  4. sahni130, Feb 18, 2014

    sahni130 macrumors 6502

    sahni130

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    #4
    Also, which enclosure are you using?
     
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  5. WilliamG, Feb 18, 2014

    WilliamG macrumors 604

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    #5
    No, but it's very fast: 360MB read, 325MB write, give or take. Blazing fast in any case.

    Seagate Backup Plus 2.5" enclosure.

    This setup has not given me a single issue at any point. I actually have the fusion drive setup inside my 2012 iMac (1TB + 128GB SSD). The external Samsung 830 is my OS X disk, the 128GB internal SSD is my Windows 7 disk, and the 1TB internal disk is other data.
     
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