Imac 2013 27" and External SSD drive?

[ToecutterV8]

Hi.

I have a late 2013 Imac 27 and am interested in upgrading the slow internal 1TB hdd. I don't really want to take off the screen etc to replace the internal one but have seen a few YT vids showing how an external Samsung T5 SSD can act as main boot drive with very impressive results.

My question is this. Does the late 2013 model IMac have the basic USB3 ports (not the updated version?). If so is it best to buy a thunderbolt adapter to plug the T5 into to get better performance? over plugging it into one of the 4 USB-3 ports?


Thanks for any help.

 

[Dahoffman85]

TBH I have no idea if the USB ports are the upgraded ones or not. What I can tell you however is I have the same late 2013 iMac 27" and I have bypassed the internal 7200rpm drive and currently boot from a SanDisk SSD+ 1TB (really 960GB) internal drive that I just put in an external enclosure and it is a huge upgrade. I couple that with a WD Easystore 5TB external that I dump all media onto so it doesn't clog up my boot drive. I partitioned the WD external at 1GB for TimeMachine and 4GB for my Plex server. I then use the internal 1TB 7200rpm drive for a backup TimeMachine (redundant I know but I'm paranoid) and whatever else I want to dump into it. So far it's been worth every penny spent ($107.99 off Amazon, I already had the external enclosure). I set this all up with Carbon Copy Cloner, it was a snap!

 

[ToecutterV8]

TBH I have no idea if the USB ports are the upgraded ones or not. What I can tell you however is I have the same late 2013 iMac 27" and I have bypassed the internal 7200rpm drive and currently boot from a SanDisk SSD+ 1TB (really 960GB) internal drive that I just put in an external enclosure and it is a huge upgrade. I couple that with a WD Easystore 5TB external that I dump all media onto so it doesn't clog up my boot drive. I partitioned the WD external at 1GB for TimeMachine and 4GB for my Plex server. I then use the internal 1TB 7200rpm drive for a backup TimeMachine (redundant I know but I'm paranoid) and whatever else I want to dump into it. So far it's been worth every penny spent ($107.99 off Amazon, I already had the external enclosure). I set this all up with Carbon Copy Cloner, it was a snap!

Thank you for reply. What sort of read speeds are you getting? I read on standard USB3 with a Samsung T5 External SSD you can expect about 400-450 MBs. (Where as an Internal SSD was 500 -550 MB)

 

[Dahoffman85]

I spike at about 500mb read speed

 

[ToecutterV8]

I spike at about 500mb read speed

Thank you for info.

I read somewhere that USB 3 was upgraded to a new faster version that worked better with SSD.

Just not sure if the 2013 iMac has this or not.

 

[Dahoffman85]

So after some research that was USB 3.1 and it made it to market in July 2013 so i doubt enough time to make it into any late 2013 models. The difference was 3.0 (6 gb/s) and 3.1 (10 gb/s) transfer speeds. According to the system report on my iMac, it says I'm getting up to 5 gb/s with the current 3.0 so even with upgrading to the 3.1 you would only gain the extra 1 gb/s that the drive is capable of.

 

[ToecutterV8]

Thank you

Think I will just go for an external Samsung T5 512GB and install High Sierra or Mojave and use purely as the boot drive. Will use the Internal 1TB Spinner for data.

 

[Dahoffman85]

Just an FYI I am running Catalina with this setup and have had zero issues.

 

[ToecutterV8]

Just an FYI I am running Catalina with this setup and have had zero issues.

Thanks again.

I have a 2013 i5 3200 16gb. Not sure it it would take Catalina.

 

[Dahoffman85]

You should be fine then, I'm running the same thing with only 16gb ram.

 

[naerct]

So after some research that was USB 3.1 and it made it to market in July 2013 so i doubt enough time to make it into any late 2013 models. The difference was 3.0 (6 gb/s) and 3.1 (10 gb/s) transfer speeds. According to the system report on my iMac, it says I'm getting up to 5 gb/s with the current 3.0 so even with upgrading to the 3.1 you would only gain the extra 1 gb/s that the drive is capable of.

I sincerely question your numbers. USB 3.0 has a max cutoff at 5 gb/s, and I have never seen a SATA drive into a USB3 port on a Mac ever get even 4 gb/s with the exception of external NVMe blades getting into the low to mid 400s like the Samsung external. Just last week, I fixed a similar situation on a 2014 21" iMac that just had a slow HDD inside. I used a tiny Sabrient NVMe enclosure, and got similar results like the External Samsung, except I can swap in or out any NVMe blade depending on how big my system is, or upgrade when needed. That adds $50 to the cost of the blade, although Amazon had units at half that price. The MBP end of the cable has a choice of type A for older MBPs or type C for newer ones. So far so good, but it was impossible to use with the internal HDD, especially as it was almost 90% full. It's a great solution.

Here's the differences of USB and SATA speed
USB 2 = max at 460 mb/s
USB 3 = max of 5 gb/s
USB 3.1 gen 1 = 5 gb/s
USB 3.1 gen 2 = 10 gb/s

SATA 1 = 150 MB/s (maximum speed of most spindle drives)
SATA 2 = 300 MB/s
SATA 3 = 600 MB/s or 6 gb/s

BTW, most USB 3 cables are fine for the faster USB 3.1 gen2.

It is interesting that Apple no longer uses SATA for most of their computers...

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

You have USB3 ports, and that's all that you need to boot and run from an external USB3 SSD.

"Thunderbolt" doesn't come into play here at all.

A Samsung t5 will do fine.
BE SURE to completely erase it and reformat to the Mac OS before you use it.

TIP:
If you don't mind buying a 1tb t5, you could use CarbonCopyCloner to just "clone over" the contents of your internal HDD, and be ready-to-go afterwards.

CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days, so it will cost you nothing to do this.

Be sure to set the external as "the new boot disk" using the startup disk preference pane.

 

[ToecutterV8]

OP:

You have USB3 ports, and that's all that you need to boot and run from an external USB3 SSD.

"Thunderbolt" doesn't come into play here at all.

A Samsung t5 will do fine.
BE SURE to completely erase it and reformat to the Mac OS before you use it.

TIP:
If you don't mind buying a 1tb t5, you could use CarbonCopyCloner to just "clone over" the contents of your internal HDD, and be ready-to-go afterwards.

CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days, so it will cost you nothing to do this.

Be sure to set the external as "the new boot disk" using the startup disk preference pane.

Thank you

 

[naerct]

OP:

You have USB3 ports, and that's all that you need to boot and run from an external USB3 SSD.

"Thunderbolt" doesn't come into play here at all.

A Samsung t5 will do fine.
BE SURE to completely erase it and reformat to the Mac OS before you use it.

TIP:
If you don't mind buying a 1tb t5, you could use CarbonCopyCloner to just "clone over" the contents of your internal HDD, and be ready-to-go afterwards.

CCC is FREE to download and use for 30 days, so it will cost you nothing to do this.

Be sure to set the external as "the new boot disk" using the startup disk preference pane.

Great advice. I like CCC as well, but I use SuperDuper for cloning as it's only $28 for the complete version, instead of $40 for CCC. I think CCC is easier, but SD gives you more control. It may just be that I've been using SD for more than a decade and know it better. I had good luck with CCC 10 years ago and a few months ago when SD didn't work that well when Catalina first came out. I used the free 30 days, but didn't purchase as SD soon fixed the new OS problems. Over the years, the customer service for SuperDuper has been excellent, or better, the few times I've needed it. BTW, I'm running Catalina on my 2012 MBP with 16RAM, 500GB SSD and 750GB HDD in the optical bay. I run Photoshop and Lightroom Classic without issues for casual editing (have an old 2009 cMP 12-core 48RAM, 1TB 970 EVO as boot and 16 TB RAID5 on 5 , 4TB HDDs). I actually have a dual install with Mojave, since I have a few 32 bit apps I still use. Initially I tried Mojave on the HDD, but it was just too slow... Even on my old MBP, the SATA SSD boot is only 30 seconds in 10.15.3, compared to a couple minutes with the spindle drive. Just make sure you keep HALF of your boot drive free for the OS and other Scratch Disks (PS, LR, etc.). So, if you keep a lot of data on your boot drive, you may want to get a larger SSD. The best way to do a dual boot if you need one, is to be certain to use APFS. Then do not use partitions or indicate any sizes. Just rt click the the container Disk in Disk Utility, and click "Add New Volume" name it, and chose APFS with GUID. You will see the new volume momentarily. Then with SuperDuper or CCC, clone your 2nd OS to the new volume. This way, there is no wasted space, and the active boot volume can use all the free space on that drive. Voila. (see the attached screen shot below)