Internal vs External SSDs

external ssd using USB3... don't

I sadly found out that using an external ssd isn't the best way to go. I use a Lacie Porsche Slim ssd for my vmware images. The performance dropped considerably after some usage. The solution to restore the original performance was to do the following steps:
- copy everything to another disk
- get the ssd out of the enclosure
- attach it using sata to a windows pc
- format the ssd to ntfs
- run disk optimiser on the ssd (=trim)
- put it again in the enclosure
- format it to an apple format
- copy everything (vmware images) to the ssd again
I dont even dare to think about the consequences of those steps to the lifetime of the ssd...

A better solution (but much more expensive) would be a ssd in a thunderbolt enclosure... If you can find one that you can afford. "Trim can be enabled" using thunderbolt.

 

I have a usb 2 ssd 250gb, boots to osx just fine. It is actually an internal drive hooked up to a usb adapter. Run great... Boots way faster than the spin ing internal imac drive. This is a 21.5inch model i bought last month.

 

It won't be much cheaper if you want the same performance. To get anything like what you will get internally you'll need a pair of SSDs in RAID on USB3 or Thunderbolt, which is going to be a lot more than just upgrading the SSD.

 

It will only work over Thunderbolt.