Solid State Drive For Mac
Discover the world of SSD Hard Drives for Mac. Compare models and options for the office or home and shop online. If you have an old MacBook Pro with one foot in the grave, the single best thing you can do to breathe new life into it is replace its traditional spinning hard drive with a solid-state drive.
- External Solid State Drive For Mac
- Solid State Drive For Mac
- Solid State Drive For Macbook Pro Mid 2012
- Solid State Drive For Macbook Pro 2010
- Best External Hard Drives For Mac
The hard drives in the new 2018 Mac mini are PCIe which means they are
Solid State Drive (SSD) storage differs from the previous hard disk drive (HDD) mechanism in that SSD has no moving parts. Instead of using a rotating disk to store information, the SSD uses Solid State memory. When using Solid State memory, buffer space is allocated to allow all the memory locations to be used evenly. Seagate Fast SSD 1TB External Solid State Drive Portable – USB-C USB 3.0 for PC Laptop and Mac, 2 Months Adobe CC Photography (STCM1000400) 4.4 out of 5 stars 43 $166.99 $ 166. 99 $189.99 $189.99. Solid State Drives for iMac. Add a Solid State Drive (SSD) to your iMac for a huge increase in performance and capacity.
USB-C Gen 2 can handle the speeds of most (but not all) SSD drives. So unless you want a very high-end solution, you’ll be fine using an external SSD over USB. An external SSD drive plugged in via USB-C will only be 1/5 the speed of the new internal PCIe drives, but it’s still fast. The external SSD drive on my new mac mini is faster than the internal non-PCIe SSD drive on my previous mac mini.
1. Buying a drive.
My first purchase was a Samsung S5. It’s fast, it’s USB-C Gen 2, and it’s cheap. But it caused a 30-second delay each time my mac booted up. Apparently, this is a common problem The drive I ended up using was the Seagate Fast SSD. It’s fast and works well. I purchased the 500GB version. I’ve already filled it up so end hindsight I publish should have gone for the 1 TB version but I was trying to save Now that you’ve connected your drive you need to choose which data to store on it. I used to recommend using your new SSD as the boot drive, but given that the internal SSD drive is now faster, you are better off booting off your internal drive and just putting some files on the external drive. I kept OSX and my applications on my internal boot drive, as well as my users home folder. So my internal SSD drive looks like this: I moved most the large folders from inside my Users folder onto my external SSD. I did not change my home folder to be the external SSD. I copied the files out of my home folder. I did al this when I was migrating the data Here’s what I moved to my new external SSD Drive: When you move your Music, Pictures and MainStage files you need to tell iTunes, Apple Photos and Mainstage the new location. For iTunes, firstly copy all your music files across to the new SSD. (users/yourname/music/iTunes) Then go to Preferences, Advanced, and find ‘iTunes Media folder location’. Click ‘Change’ and select the new folder. For Photos you need to copy the folder called ‘Photo’s Library’ across, then restart the Photos App while holding the Option key. This gives you the option to select your new Photo library from the external SSD. Photos should open the newly copied library and you should be able to see your photos. If that is the case then go to preferences and select ‘use as System Photo Library’ to make this change permanent. There are some applications that will still want to use files from within your home folder on your internal SSD. That’s okay. I allow them to do that. I find it helpful in my own mind to know which files are where so I have my documents, my music and my photos on my external SSD and I have everything else on my internal one. But you can arrange them how you like. Hello Wayne – This article answered a question I’ve had about buying a Mac mini and its small amount of internal storage. I chatted with Apple support yesterday. They only spoke in generalities, so I said goodbye once that became obvious. Instead of needing to go into an Apple store, I have the answer in your article! I am not sure I need the speed of an external SSD, however, I will price them now. We use a 2011 iMac for using the internet, viewing photos and also watching TV. Its display is going, its internal HD is failing, and I cannot find a good repair shop. Everything about the mini seems to fit EXCEPT it wasn’t obvious about the external drive. I found your website through a link to your comment on a monitor for the mini. That was interesting, but this article gave me what I really needed to know. Thank you. Jun 25, 2012 Greetings everyone! You can find more information and discussion regarding playing Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ on a MAC in the following thread:. The Unofficial TOR and Boot Camp Discussion Thread by daemian; Since we have the above active thread on this topic, we are closing this thread to consolidate discussion. The statements and opinions expressed on these websites are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, nor are they endorsed by Bioware, LucasArts, and its licensors do not guarantee the accuracy of, and are in no way responsible for any content on these websites, and the Star Wars: The Old Republic. Star war the old republic for mac. Yes it will depend on what you want to store on it. If it’s just pictures or audio files or a time machine backup then a standard HD will be fine, if you are using it to store applications, or application data, or movies, or stuff that you access a lot, an SSD will be much faster. Thank you for the clear description in this article! I’m in the situation of using a combination Mac Mini and external SSD. Would you have suggestions for back-up configuration and software? Of course, I’d like to back up both devices, but will I have to do it to two separate back-up drives or can I combine them in one … ? Yes grab a 2TB or 4TB drive and you can time-machine both drives to it, or split it in 2 partitions and use CCC to back up each drive to it. This article was originally written in 2015 but it is still relevant. I have just updated it given that SSD prices have dropped dramatically in the last 3 years. Upgrading the boot drive on my Mac Mini to an SSD drive was by far the biggest speed enhancement I’ve experienced on any computer! The speed increase is incredible – almost hard to believe. Boot time went from 60 seconds to under 30 seconds, and applications launch instantly – no bouncing dock icon. In terms of bang for dollar, upgrading to an SSD drive is by far the best upgrade you can do. SDD stands for ‘Solid State Drive.’ SSD drives are the same shape and size as a traditional drive. The difference is that an SSD drive uses RAM chips instead of a spinning hard disk to store information. This makes it much, much faster. SSD drives are now reasonably cheap. I’d suggest you upgrade your entire hard drive to SSD. There have been issues in the past with SSD drives and there have been some brands not working with OSX, so make sure you get a good one. The first place I would recommend is macsales.com. I have one of their OWC Mercury SSD drives in 2 of my laptops. They have a screen where you choose your macintosh computer, and it tells you which SSD drive is compatible. Just click here and you will be asked what mac you have, follow the prompts. (I have signed up to be an affiliate of Macsales so I get a commission if you use these links.) Last check a 1TB drive was under $400. When I first wrote this article a 480G SSD drive was $1579.99! The second place I would recommend is crucial.com. If you do get a Crucial SSD you can go for the MX or BX series. I’ve also got a Samsung EVO drive running in a 2012 Macbook pro and it’s running fine. Buy a new SSD not a second hand one. They do degrade over time. For this you will need a cable to connect your SSD drive to your USB port. They are only about $20 and they look like this: The external drive enclosures for normal hard disks should also work with an SSD. Plug the SSD into the enclosure, and then into the Mac, and it should appear on the desktop as an ‘Untitled’ drive. After your SDD drive is plugged in you’ll need to use Disk Utility to format it – Mac OS Extended (Journaled): Now you need to copy your entire drive onto your SSD drive. You can’t do this by hand – there are hidden files that need to be copied, so need to make what is called a ‘Clone.’ Apple’s built-in Disk Utility won’t do this so you will need an app like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. Using Carbon Copy Cloner, select your boot drive as the target Disk and then select ‘Backup Everything’: Click ‘Clone’ and your boot disk will be created on the SSD disk. The other option is to use Super Duper. There’s a free version that will enable to clone your drive. Select ‘Backup -all files’ to make a clone. Making a clone of you drive can take a long time – hours – so take a break! Under System Preferences click Startup Drive select the SSD Drive, then restart! (wow – notice how fast it is!) Now that it’s working it’s time to get rid of your old hard drive and physically replace it with the working SSD. The difficulty of this varies according to what kind of a Macintosh computer you have. I’d check out ifixit.com for the best instructions according to your mac model. Difficulty: easy – 30 seconds. For a mac pro it simply connects into the spare optical bay slot – no adapters needed, a 30 second operation – see how here. I just sat the SSD drive in and added a bit of gaffe tape but there are some great adapters out there eg Angelbird SSD Adapter Difficulty: moderate – 1 hour. For a Macbook or Macbook Pro can replace the internal optical drive with your old Hard Drive or order a large SSD drive and replace your old hard drive with it. You can find instructions here. Difficulty: hard – 1/2 hr. For a new aluminium mac mini you will need to replace one of the internal drives. This involves pulling out the fan and motherboard to get the new SSD drive in. You can get the old hard disk out without pulling out the motherboard but the SSD drives are actually ever so slightly thicker and more uniform in shape so the motherboard needs to come out to manoeuvre the SSD drive in place. There’s easy to follow instructions here at mac fixit. Difficulty: hard – 1/2 hr. It’s quite complex to pull the iMac apart and you need a vacuum clamp to pull the glass screen off. This is easier than it sounds, but you still need to but the suction caps to do it. It requires some mechanical skill. There are good instructions here and crucial have their own guide here. So how fast is it? Here’s a demo of how quickly applications launch from my new SSD drive… Some Hard Drives do not come with TRIM support and so you need to download this TRIM Enabler app and run it. This will enable OS X built in TRIM support which keeps your SSD drive lean and clean. The SSD I recommend above (Crucial M4) does not need TRIM support (read this article for more information). You can turn it on anyway no problems. The OWC Mercury SSD drives do not need TRIM enabled either. STOP PRESS: There are new reports that TRIM enabler does not work with Yosemite. Read this article for more information. If you already have a Time Machine backup, when you change Hard Drives it starts all over again and won’t recognise the old Time Machine backup. Read this post for info on how to get around this. Also here is another very good article on this. I also just found this GREAT article on keeping Time Machine working when you change the Hard Drive. If you don’t have a Time Machine backup now is a great time to start! You can use your old Internal Drive as a backup drive. I am using a Seagate 250GB USB 3.0 as the boot drive (Mojave) on my 2014 Mac Mini. Seriously fast boot-up and excellent system responsiveness compared to the 1TB internal hard drive. No need to pull the Mac apart to upgrade the boot drive (just leave the internal spinning disk in place as your data drive, it works fine as an APFS volume, provided its not the system disk). Installing an internal SSD may give you optimal performance but using an external USB boot SSD still gives a much more responsive system than the old hard drive, for minimal upgrade difficulty and minimal cost. (I don’t have any trim issues either). Yes now that they have fast External SSD drives with thunderbolt/USB-C this is certainly a great option. Help….I have established the SSD as the start-up drive (Mac Mini 2012) and it works effectively (much faster). However, during the night the Mac reboots and establishes the Mac HD as the default start-up….How do I remedy this issue? Thanks. I may have solved the reboot problem by not allowing the Mac mini to transition to a sleep mode Follow-up to my prior comment. The MAC rebooted again to default the MAC HD as the start-up. I received the following error message: The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer. I did this with my wifes’ old 21′ Imac…those horrible ones that come with the built in memory. We were going to replace it , but this solution made it work like a new machine…much faster overall. I used a 256 Samsung T5, erxactly as described here. I bought a SanDisk Extreme Portable 1TB SSD dirve at Amazon. I plugged it into my USB 3.0 port on an iMac late 2014 4k system, with soldered 8 GB memory. I went through the formatting process with Disk Utility. Making sure that GUID was set. I downloaded Carbon Copy, and ran it clicking on Trial. I then closed the disks (it took about 40 minutes for 6 GB) I rebooted, when it was done, held down the Option key and selected the new disk. I was up in under a minute. I tried a few things and they run much, much faster. The SSD disk, I purchased, supports USB 3.1 and USB-C. It is also very tiny, light, and it wrapped in rubber to protect it. It is so small it can be attached, by Velcro, to the back of the monitor stand. I wasn’t that comfortable trying to take apart an iMac just to replace the disk. I do not use my iMac for heavy duty gaming, and the like, but I feel like that I have a new computer. So these instructions, at least in my situation.2. What to put on it.
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1. Order an SSD.
2. Temporarily connect the new SSD Drive to your Mac.
3. Format the SSD Drive using disk utility.
4. Copy everything onto the new boot drive.
External Solid State Drive For Mac
Solid State Drive For Mac
5. Reboot from the new SSD boot drive.
Solid State Drive For Macbook Pro Mid 2012
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6. Swap the internal Hard disk for the SSD drive.
Mac Pro
Macbook
Mac Mini
iMac
7. Check if you need to Enable TRIM.
8. Time Machine
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Best External Hard Drives For Mac
says:June 28, 2019 at 3:26 pm 
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