Using External SSD as Primary Disk on iMac

Please excuse my lack of computer experience as I ask this question. Could you explain or point me to how I could make a setup like yours where the whole operating system is on an external drive? I am running out of space on my 2007 imac and would like to do what you are trying to do. I don't mean to hijack your thread but I am just so interested in what you have done.

Thanks

 

The 2007 iMac don't have a Thunderbolt (or USB3) port, so you can do this but you'll be bottlenecked for speed. Your best bet if you must do it is over firewire, but the system will be slowed by the speed of the firewire bus.

To do it just hook a drive up as normal and select it as the destination drive when installing OS X (format it if necessary, use Mac OS Extended (Journalled) ).

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Yes, you could do this. There's nothing stopping you using your internal HD as a Time Machine volume - you can use any volume that isn't your active boot volume, whether it it internal or external. There are Mac Pro users, for example, who have their OS on the drive in bay 1 and the time machine backup on another internal drive in bay 2 etc.

The only downside to using your internal drive on the iMac as the TM drive is that if you need to physically get at it (eg, if you were swapping out the iMac if it has a hardware fault) it's inside the machine so it's not as easy to just put to the side during a hardware change as an external one would be.

In terms of the actual function of Time Machine though, no problems at all.

 

Interesting, because I've read in the past that 512GB SSDs used too much power to be used as a boot drive... maybe the 840 Pro uses less power than most. I'm now using a 256GB 840 Pro as my boot disk, with my internal Fusion drive as a backup. Not really much difference in speed (FAST) but I figured, why not?

You can rebuild from the internal HDD that's being used as a Time Machine backup drive, but AFAIK, it is not directly bootable.

What *I* do is use SuperDuper! (but Carbon Copy Cloner will work too) to make BOOTABLE backups of my SSD to:
1) My internal Fusion drive
2) Another external Thunderbolt SSD
3) An external USB 3 SSD
and the backups are done automatically on a schedule.

I have more backups, but those 3 are directly bootable.

 

This sounds like an odd claim unless they were trying to power the SSD from the Thunderbolt bus. In which case it should be in a case with it's own power supply.

 

Could you guys please tell me how long the boottime is? I have a 840 256 with a thunderbolt adapter from Seagate. Boottime is 32 seconds....

 

Yes, it was for a bus powered SSD.

 

i boot with buffalo's ministation thunderbolt, totally bus powered, 500 GB samsung ssd, and have never had a problem with the power.

flcikering when using the imac in target display mode is another problem, however. but in testing i've pretty much ruled out the external ssd.

 

Thanks for that! I guess startup is just slow on the Imac.....

 

How much was this thunderbolt adapter
Can you post a link

 

Google Seagate Thunderbolt STAE126 adapter. There's also a desktop version....

 

A small part is magnetic. What i did was attach the ssd to an old metal laptop harddrive holder to hold it in place.

 

I used an open? plastic spacer for the alignement. Just a small part of the adapter is magnetic and without the metal plate it has no effect. I would worry more with a standard drive.

 

Damn $100 for that adapter and then another $100 for the ssd
I'm just gonna man up and install it myself inside

 

I already had an ssd. I went the external round because I didn't want to bring in a brand new Imac and getting it back scratched, waiting 5 to 7 days and pay 80€ an hour. This way my Imac is pristine and I have options open.....Peace of mind alone worth the 130 bucks.

 

I couldn't find any sources on MacRumors that talk about a possible issue with Thunderbolt SSDs as boot drives when powered only by the Thunderbolt bus, but I did see the reference here first, and then went looking elsewhere for possible reasons and/or solutions. Here's one such link: http://wolfgangtechnology.blogspot.co.at/2012/06/mac-with-seagate-thunderbolt-adapter.html where a *powered* Thunderbolt housing works fine, but a non-powered Thunderbolt connection has issues.

 

Here is another possible option, this one is bus powered and while USB 3.0 might be a good option, it is much cheaper and has the correct chips to run a SSD.

http://www.amazon.com/Uspeed-Extern...UTF8&colid=128939SPM3H7H&coliid=IAWJLH1O264BW