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iMac 2017 using Sandisk Extreme question

S

smf88011

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 3, 2022
4
1
I was just asked to do something I don't know how it is done. A friend of mine has an iMac 2017 that has gotten slow. He said that someone at Apple suggested he get an external Sandisk Extreme 1TB drive to speed up the system. They didn't give me more information about what the "fix" was.

How do you think someone from Apple would say an external Sandisk Extreme drive can be used to speed up a system? I am guessing it has to do with something about USB-C being faster than the onboard drive. Is this a reasonable idea? If so, where might I find information on how to perform this task?
 
Wrote up a thread a few days ago about this and using external SSD's as the startup drive and as RAID for large data storage. It is easy, but it just depends on which Mac OS you have. You just need to use your friends iMac and hook up the new SSD to it, install the same OS system, and then transfer all the Home folder or other data over to the new drive using the built in migration assistant. It is a bit more complicated with Big Sur and later as the SSD needs to be formatted in APFS and there are a couple of permissions items than need to be dealt with. However with the newest OS, Ventura, there are issues as one poster mentioned in that thread, so have your friend stay away from that OS for now.

Maybe post a screenshot of your friends About This Mac screen and I can give more detailed help once I know what iMac they have and their OS.

And right now the Samsung T7 is a slightly better buy than the SamDisk Extreme. I have copies of both as you will see in the photo in the 1st post.

External SSD'd as Startup and RAID for Photographers on the go.
 
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SpecFoto said:
Wrote up a thread a few days ago about this and using external SSD's as the startup drive and as RAID for large data storage. It is easy, but it just depends on which Mac OS you have. You just need to use your friends iMac and hook up the new SSD to it, install the same OS system, and then transfer all his Home folder or other data over to the new drive using the built in migration assistant. It is a bit more complicated with Big Sur and later as the SSD needs to be formatted in APFS and there are a couple of permissions items than need to be dealt with. However with the newest OS, Ventura, there are issues as one poster mentioned in that thread, so have your friend stay away from that OS for now.

Maybe post a screenshot of your friends About This Mac screen and I can give more detailed help once I know what iMac they have and their OS.

And right now the Samsung T7 is a slightly better buy than the SamDisk Extreme. I have copies of both as you will see in the photo in the 1st post.

External SSD'd as Startup and RAID for Photographers on the go.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what I was looking for. I was just told a minimal amount of things and didn't know how to even search for the info. It is really appreciated.

I will see if I can get them to send me the "about this mac" screenshot so I can put it on here.
 
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smf88011 said:
This is exactly what I was looking for. I was just told a minimal amount of things and didn't know how to even search for the info. It is really appreciated.

I will see if I can get them to send me the "about this mac" screenshot so I can put it on here.
Click to expand...
Happy to help. Ask your friend to also click on the Storage tab in the About This Mac and see how full their internal drive is. Being close to full could be the reason the Mac is slowing down.
 
OP:

Here's what you do :

a. Buy the external USB3 SSD (or, it can be a USB3.1 gen2 SSD)

b. Find out what version of the OS is running on the iMac.

c. Connect the SSD to the iMac and open Disk Utility. Go to the "view" menu and choose "Show all devices" (VERY important step). However...
If there is no view menu, skip to step d

d. Look at the list on the left. Select the item that represents the physical SSD, and click erase.
- For High Sierra and earlier, erase to "Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format"
- For Mojave and later, erase to "APFS, GUID partition format".

e. Download SuperDuper from here:
download
(SD is FREE to use for this purpose -- will cost you nothing)

f. Use SD to "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the SSD. It will take a little while.
(it's VERY easy to use)

g. When done, open the startup disk preference pane, click the lock, enter password, select the SSD to be the new boot drive.

h. Reboot. The iMac should now boot and run from the SSD.
 
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