Calling George (or other Mac people here)
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George, in a thread on the other forum board, you said:
"However, what I've done (I think I posted this earlier) is invest in a 2 TB SSD. Dropped into an external thunderbolt dock and made that my boot drive. It's very fast, and very nice. My 5 ½ year old iMac is running like new."
Can you explain a bit more how you did this? I have a 6(?) year old iMac with a 500 GB internal hard drive. I have gone much over that, so have an extneral hard drive. However, I am almost out of storage on the internal drive because of applications, etc. and "system" (whatever that is) files. Everything I have read said not to move these files to external drive, nor to delete any system files, etc.
I am not sure the above is the reason, (but think it is) but the computer is quite slow, and was thinking that maybe your solution would help.
HOw easy is it to do? I am not 100% technical savvy, but more like medium. How to move the boot drive to a new drive? Is it as simple as just copy the internal drive to the new SSD drive? Thanks!!!
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What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
Thunderbolt is a lot faster, and would help with slowness, though Firewire is passable.
I would go to www.macsales.com and hit the "chat" button to see what kind of solution they recommend for an external drive for your computer.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@taiwan_girl What model of Mac do you have?
If you're not sure, click on the Apple icon at the top left corner of your screen and select "About This Mac" ... that will call up a window that tells your (among other things) the model/year for your Mac. -
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
Thunderbolt is a lot faster, and would help with slowness, though Firewire is passable.
I would go to www.macsales.com and hit the "chat" button to see what kind of solution they recommend for an external drive for your computer.
@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
George, I have a Mac with RS-232 serial port. What kind of solution would you recommend?
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@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
George, I have a Mac with RS-232 serial port. What kind of solution would you recommend?
@Klaus said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
George, I have a Mac with RS-232 serial port. What kind of solution would you recommend?
AFAIK, no Mac ever had RS-232 ports.
But if you're looking for connectivity, may I suggest GRINDR?
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@Klaus said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
George, I have a Mac with RS-232 serial port. What kind of solution would you recommend?
AFAIK, no Mac ever had RS-232 ports.
But if you're looking for connectivity, may I suggest GRINDR?
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@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
George, I have a Mac with RS-232 serial port. What kind of solution would you recommend?
@Klaus said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
What model is your mac? Does it have Thunderbolt, or Firewire connectivity?
George, I have a Mac with RS-232 serial port. What kind of solution would you recommend?
While technically correct, the Mac did have RS-422 ports that looked identical to an RS-232 port.
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George/Ax,
I have a 21.5 inch mid 2014 model
Processer 1.4 GHz Intel Cor i5
Memory 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Startup Disk Macintosh HD
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB
So, it appears that I do have the Thunderbolt.
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OK, @taiwan_girl , you have "Thunderbolt 2" ports on your computer, that's the best among all the ports on your computer to attach an external hard drive to.
This is my recommendation:
- Get something like this: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/drive-dock-thunderbolt-2 ... this lets you connect additional hard drives to your computer. You can use any hard drive with "SATA 3" interface with this thing.
- Get your SSD, I recommend Samsung's 860 EVO series, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078DPCY3T/ ... there are multiple sizes, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc. Buy the biggest one your budget allows, or buy two (the dock referenced above allows you to plug two drives in at the same time). The one I link to has "SATA 3" interface.
Everything above is "plug and play," you should not need to buy or install any additional software to use them. (But when it comes time to "clone" the content of your internal drive to your new SSD, some 3rd party software can make this easier ... we can deal with that later.)
Good luck.
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OK, @taiwan_girl , you have "Thunderbolt 2" ports on your computer, that's the best among all the ports on your computer to attach an external hard drive to.
This is my recommendation:
- Get something like this: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/drive-dock-thunderbolt-2 ... this lets you connect additional hard drives to your computer. You can use any hard drive with "SATA 3" interface with this thing.
- Get your SSD, I recommend Samsung's 860 EVO series, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078DPCY3T/ ... there are multiple sizes, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc. Buy the biggest one your budget allows, or buy two (the dock referenced above allows you to plug two drives in at the same time). The one I link to has "SATA 3" interface.
Everything above is "plug and play," you should not need to buy or install any additional software to use them. (But when it comes time to "clone" the content of your internal drive to your new SSD, some 3rd party software can make this easier ... we can deal with that later.)
Good luck.
Excellent!!! Thanks for teh advice. I will look into those and keep you update.
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OK, @taiwan_girl , you have "Thunderbolt 2" ports on your computer, that's the best among all the ports on your computer to attach an external hard drive to.
This is my recommendation:
- Get something like this: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/drive-dock-thunderbolt-2 ... this lets you connect additional hard drives to your computer. You can use any hard drive with "SATA 3" interface with this thing.
- Get your SSD, I recommend Samsung's 860 EVO series, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078DPCY3T/ ... there are multiple sizes, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc. Buy the biggest one your budget allows, or buy two (the dock referenced above allows you to plug two drives in at the same time). The one I link to has "SATA 3" interface.
Everything above is "plug and play," you should not need to buy or install any additional software to use them. (But when it comes time to "clone" the content of your internal drive to your new SSD, some 3rd party software can make this easier ... we can deal with that later.)
Good luck.
@Axtremus said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
OK, @taiwan_girl , you have "Thunderbolt 2" ports on your computer, that's the best among all the ports on your computer to attach an external hard drive to.
This is my recommendation:
- Get something like this: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/drive-dock-thunderbolt-2 ... this lets you connect additional hard drives to your computer.
That's the dock I have. OWC (macsales.com) is a great outfit.
A 2 TB SSD would probably cost about $150 now - look at Newegg.com for what you want.
After that, the process will be to install MacOS onto the new hard drive and use migration assistant to transfer everything from you old (internal) hard drive to your new (external) SSD.
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OK, @taiwan_girl , you have "Thunderbolt 2" ports on your computer, that's the best among all the ports on your computer to attach an external hard drive to.
This is my recommendation:
- Get something like this: https://www.owcdigital.com/products/drive-dock-thunderbolt-2 ... this lets you connect additional hard drives to your computer. You can use any hard drive with "SATA 3" interface with this thing.
- Get your SSD, I recommend Samsung's 860 EVO series, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078DPCY3T/ ... there are multiple sizes, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, etc. Buy the biggest one your budget allows, or buy two (the dock referenced above allows you to plug two drives in at the same time). The one I link to has "SATA 3" interface.
Everything above is "plug and play," you should not need to buy or install any additional software to use them. (But when it comes time to "clone" the content of your internal drive to your new SSD, some 3rd party software can make this easier ... we can deal with that later.)
Good luck.
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@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
@Axtremus why do you recommend that particular SSD?
The Samsung 860 EVO series hits what I consider a "sweet spot" that balances performance, durability, and cost.
If I want higher durability (more "write cycles" per cell), I can shift up to the 860 PRO, the trade off is I pay more money per GB to get that higher durability.
If I want to save money, I can shift down to the 860 QVO; I will get more GB per $, the trade off is the sustained "write" throughput will be materially slower than the 860 EVO.
Why do I stick to Samsung's 860 series? Because I have been using the Samsung 850, then the 860 for many years and they have yet to fail me.
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@George-K said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
@Axtremus why do you recommend that particular SSD?
The Samsung 860 EVO series hits what I consider a "sweet spot" that balances performance, durability, and cost.
If I want higher durability (more "write cycles" per cell), I can shift up to the 860 PRO, the trade off is I pay more money per GB to get that higher durability.
If I want to save money, I can shift down to the 860 QVO; I will get more GB per $, the trade off is the sustained "write" throughput will be materially slower than the 860 EVO.
Why do I stick to Samsung's 860 series? Because I have been using the Samsung 850, then the 860 for many years and they have yet to fail me.
@Axtremus thanks for your thoughts.
I'm using a WD Blue 3D NAND 2TB Internal SSD. I believe I paid about $200 for it.
You said your Samsung drive has yet to have an issue. How will I know if my WD drive starts to have problems, other than a complete failure?
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Calling Ax and George again!
@Axtremus ; @George-KI have finally receive the docking station and hard drive. Thanks for teh recommendations!!
Now, do you have directions to a "tutorial" that could help me transfer the entire current hard drive (including start up information) to my new external hard drive.
If the current hard drive becomes no longer usable, that is okay, as I have plenty of space. If it is available to use as an extra drive for storage (or something like that), that is okay too.
Thanks again!!!
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Calling Ax and George again!
@Axtremus ; @George-KI have finally receive the docking station and hard drive. Thanks for teh recommendations!!
Now, do you have directions to a "tutorial" that could help me transfer the entire current hard drive (including start up information) to my new external hard drive.
If the current hard drive becomes no longer usable, that is okay, as I have plenty of space. If it is available to use as an extra drive for storage (or something like that), that is okay too.
Thanks again!!!
@taiwan_girl said in Calling George (or other Mac people here):
Calling Ax and George again!
@Axtremus ; @George-KI have finally receive the docking station and hard drive. Thanks for teh recommendations!!
Now, do you have directions to a "tutorial" that could help me transfer the entire current hard drive (including start up information) to my new external hard drive.
If the current hard drive becomes no longer usable, that is okay, as I have plenty of space. If it is available to use as an extra drive for storage (or something like that), that is okay too.
Thanks again!!!
Here's what I've done in similar situations.
Boot from the "Recovery Partition" of your hard drive, if you have one. Restart the Mac holding "command-R". It should give you a minimal startup with several options.
If your hard drive doesn't have a "Recovery Partition" you can start up from an internet source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314
Then, it'll ask you what you want to do.
Tell it that you want to restore from your time machine backup.
More tips at the link I included.
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You current internal hard drive still works fine, right?
You just want to put an "exact copy" of the content of your internal hard drive in your new, external SSD, right?For that, a piece of software you can use is Carbon Copy Cloner.
That lets you create "Bootable Backup" - meaning after you copy the whole internal drive over to your new SSD, it also makes it possible for you to boot up from that new SSD in the future.
See this article: https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/best-practices-updating-your-macs-os
Step-by-step instruction under the subheading "Make your bootable backup before upgrading"After Step 6 completes, Step 7 tells you how to set the computer to start-up from your new SSD, Step 8 is to check that you have indeed started up from your new SSD. If your intention is to have faster start-up by using your new SSD as the start-up drive going forward, then there is no need to go through Step 9 and Step 10.
After Step 8, your new SSD will be your start-up drive.
If you want to, you can retrace Steps 1-6 to have Carbon Copy Cloner "copy" from your (new SSD) start-up drive to another drive (that other drive can be your old/internal drive, or if you get another SSD that you plug into the other slot of the docking station, that other SSD can also be your backup drive).
Good luck.
