Fastest external drive I can run OSX on - 27" iMac late 2015 USB 3.0 & Thunderbolt 2?

fearby · 22 Dec 2019 at 12:02

t is a complicated wish mash of abbreviations, acronyms and hardware specs and I am just starting to understand it.

I Bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB HDD recently and as my last iMac had an internal SSD it all feels very slow. I bought an external SSD and an enclosure and it works well booting Catalina but can I get things to go faster? I got a SATA 3 SSD and a USB 3.0 enclosure and it works ok but wondered if it could be improved upon.

I keep seeing NVME drives and they seem faster but they would be throttled by the USB3 and was far as I know there aren't any thunderbird NVME enclosures.

Thanks

b0rn2sk8 · 22 Dec 2019 at 18:45

Remove the links, OCUK sell SSD's.

teknokid · 24 Dec 2019 at 14:43

I spent a good while looking into this exact thing with my iMac - in the end I got a Samsung T5 SSD and it was spot on. The USB3 interface is the limiting factor - very few true PCIe/tb2 enclosures exist..

fearby · 24 Dec 2019 at 15:16

How about Thunderbird? That is quicker than USB 3.0 but needs external power I think?

teknokid · 24 Dec 2019 at 15:58

fearby said:
How about Thunderbird? That is quicker than USB 3.0 but needs external power I think?

It is quicker, but very few drive enclosures exist that support it properly and contain a suitable nvme bridging chip. Without spending a fortune USB is the way to go - or crack the Mac open and add a faster drive internally...