Hi everyone,
I’ve read quite a lot about people giving their old iMac a new lease of life by using an external SSD as their boot drive. I too want to try this option. Forgive me, treat me like I know n-o-t-h-i-n-g and you won't go far wrong! I just want to check something. I can't upgrade my iMac to Catalina because of the hardware (see specs below). If I use an external SSD as a boot drive the hardware in my iMac is no longer an issue, correct? Processor won't interfere with anything? I believe it's the processor which prevents me from upgrading this iMac.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i3
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 12 GB
I have a feeling that it can't possibly be as simple as booting from an external drive, but only because using an external drive will be about £1,800 cheaper (depending on which one I buy) than the iMac spec I've been eyeing up; seems too good to be true.
Is there anything in particular that I need to look for in the external drive? Any little gizmo (CPU, if that's the correct term?) that it needs to have for my money-saving scheme to work?
If anyone can give me any information I would be very grateful. Mine has just slowed to a crawl over the last year and I really need to do something about it now. If my only solution is to buy a new iMac, I need to start saving now. 😉
I’ve read quite a lot about people giving their old iMac a new lease of life by using an external SSD as their boot drive. I too want to try this option. Forgive me, treat me like I know n-o-t-h-i-n-g and you won't go far wrong! I just want to check something. I can't upgrade my iMac to Catalina because of the hardware (see specs below). If I use an external SSD as a boot drive the hardware in my iMac is no longer an issue, correct? Processor won't interfere with anything? I believe it's the processor which prevents me from upgrading this iMac.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac11,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i3
Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 12 GB
I have a feeling that it can't possibly be as simple as booting from an external drive, but only because using an external drive will be about £1,800 cheaper (depending on which one I buy) than the iMac spec I've been eyeing up; seems too good to be true.
Is there anything in particular that I need to look for in the external drive? Any little gizmo (CPU, if that's the correct term?) that it needs to have for my money-saving scheme to work?
If anyone can give me any information I would be very grateful. Mine has just slowed to a crawl over the last year and I really need to do something about it now. If my only solution is to buy a new iMac, I need to start saving now. 😉