Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

PeterGos

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 20, 2019
8
0
Hi Hoping you can help. I want to upgrade my mac to ssd and was wondering what is the best way to this.
1. replace internal mechanical drive. Is this faster than external usb3 or thunderbolt 2.

2. add PCIe stick and use as boot disk. Is this faster than internal ssd

3. External? usb3 SSD or thunderbolt 2 SSD and use as boot disk??? Pro and cons??? Obvious pro to me is external is just plug and play... no surgery!!!
Also the external is cheap in that you only have to pay around £100 for a decent usb3 drive and my machine will be 5 times faster than the standard mechanical drive??? Am i correct?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Peter
 

sebastienc

macrumors newbie
Oct 14, 2019
12
2
Background: Just installed a PCIe NVMe SSD and a SATA SSD (2017 iMac 27)

USB-C (TB3) and a very good external SSD (SanDisk, Lacie...) should give you R/W in the 300/350MB/s range. Not quite 5x in speed, but close.
Therefore, if it's sufficient for your needs, then I would go with that as it's the easiest. And you can always decide for internal drives after testing it.

I'm posting my Blackmagic R/W values for you to compare. However, opening the damn thing and installing the drives is not trivial. In particular the NVME M2 drive. That being said, it's worth the effort. In my case, video editing is noticeably improved and faster.

Good luck.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 7.01.59 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 7.01.59 PM.png
    745.5 KB · Views: 97
  • Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 7.01.08 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 7.01.08 PM.png
    758.9 KB · Views: 89

rickpoet

macrumors member
Jul 22, 2002
92
51
Los Angeles, California
USB-C (TB3) and a very good external SSD (SanDisk, Lacie...) should give you R/W in the 300/350MB/s range.

Following this thread as I have the same iMac as the original poster which I’m looking for thebest way to upgrade to SSD that gives me the right balance between speed, cost, and ease. I’d like to avoid doing the surgery if possible as it seems like if you go the internal SATA route you won’t get as fast a speed as you could from external Thunderbolt. (though if you go the extreme surgery route you could install the stick version of the SSD in place of the original SSD with an adapter…but that’s taking apart literally everything.)

I’m wondering if there is an external drive option that works with the TB2 port (even with an adapter) and would still be faster than using an internal SATA.

And which would work as a Boot Drive.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,232
13,295
QUESTIONS for the OP:

What kind of drive is in the iMac right now?
Is it fusion or a platter-based hard drive?
If it's a fusion drive, what kind of read/write speeds are you getting RIGHT NOW?
(download the free Blackmagic Speed Test from the app store and post them)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.