External SATA disks on MBP 15"

Hi all,
Is there any adaptor that I can buy that would allow me to connect an external SATA II disk or array to an MPB 15" Core 2 Duo?
I know that these machines have an expansion port, but it's not PCMCIA. Is there an adaptor that will do what I want?

Sonnet makes a Sata card for the MBP 34 port.

Similar Messages

How do i retrieve file vault protected files from an external hard disk that used to be my mbp's hard drive? the hard disk got corrupted and will no longer boot. I put it in an enclosure and attempted to copy my files but failed because of FV encryption.

This external hard disk used to serve as the main drive of my mbp. It got corrupted and the OSX would no longer load. I upgraded to a 500gb hd and used the old hd as an external drive. I tried to copy my files but i could not access them because of the filevault encryption. 110gb of hd space appears as used which means that my files are still in the drive. Is there a way to retrieve these files? thanks

According to your post, you're using Leopard, so FileVault only encrypts your user folder (unlike Lion). On the mounted external drive, in your user folder, you should see a file called username.sparsebundle, with username being your user name. Double-click that file to open it and it should prompt you for a password. Type in your password and the file will mount as a volume in Finder. You should be able to copy all of your files over.

Finder freeze when opening folders of my Western Digital external hard disks

I'm facing a big issue. I'm runnin' Mac Os Lion, I realized a clean install a few days ago. Everything is going fine, but every time I plug an external hard disk on my MBP, I can see the disk appearing on my desktop or in the finder, and when I open it, the finder freezes, I have to reboot manually, or wait to relaunch the finder. My disks are in HFS format, used to work great on Snow Leopard no longer than a week ago... What is weird is that my time machine (external hard disk usb) works fine... Moreover, I can see the disks in the Disk Utility, I can't click on "verify permissions" but on "verify disk" and it says that the disks are fine... Any idea ?
PS : I could have erase everything on them and reformat, but I need the files inside...
Thanks

Hi!
Here's a suggestion from BDAqua:
In finder, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and go to "/volumes".
Volumes is where an alias to your hard drive ("/" at boot) is placed at startup, and where all the "mount points" for auxiliary drives are created for you to access them. This folder is normally hidden from view.
Drives with an extra number on the end have a side-effect of mounting a drive with the same name as the system already think exists. Try trashing the duplicates with a number, and reboot.
cornelius

No longer can write to my external SATA drive...

I was editing in FCP Studio 2 on a my MacPro 2x2.8 Quad Core, running MacOS 10.5.2, connected to a Highpoint X4 SATA drive, via the Highpoint RocketRaid 2314MS card. At some point the MAC detected a problem with the drive, and apparently it has changed the drive to read only. My timeline plays OK, but a lot of clips are marked as off-line, although I re-rendered them and they play. I ran the internet verification check from Highpoint, and it said the drive was normal. MAC disk utility will not let me change permissions on the external SATA. What should I do? Edit deadline approaching...there goes the weekend.

Well, the tech-support guy at Highpoint was going to e-mail me some steps, after he talked with someone about some MAC procedures. He thought that I would have to insert some code. There are three UNIX files on the drive that are trying to"fetch" something. Since my permissions have changed, I can't delete them. The e-mail from tech support never arrived last night. I'm in tthe CST zone, so it's still about two hours until Highpoint opens their doors. The RAID warning lights gave never changed from green to red. No beeps or chirps either. The on-line drive verification that took 3 hours, said the drive status was Normal.
Paul

Very slow external sata HD (lion)

Hi everybody!
It has been a while I am using a Netstor external HD (NR710C) 4x2TB WD Caviar black, RAID 10 (4TB total space, 2.71 Available, MacOS Extended Journaled).
It is conntected with the MacPro (MacPro 4,1 - early 2009) via a Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P pci card (drivers updated)
The OS installed is Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50d) on a OCZ SSD 250GB
What happen is that randomly the access to the external RAID HD is very slow and while finder try to open subfolder the entire system freeze for a minute or so. Soemtimes the opened folders looks empty and I have to wait a minute or so to see the content.
When I used Snow Leopard (installed on a 1TB HD) the access was always fluid and fast.
What I've done to try to solve this issue is:
Unchecked the "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible) in the Energy Saver panel.
Changed slot of the PCI card
Changed sata plug and cable
Performed all the check disk possible
It happens as well that the copy/move of big folder (up to 800GB) is not always as fas as it should be.
Also, working with Lightroom (cache is on the SSD hd) is really frustrating due the slow access to all the files.
I was used to work directly on the external sata HD but now seems like if I have to move everything back on an internal HD.
Is there any other check I can perform to address this issue?
So many thanks.
Luca

The case has an eSata port and cable.
I've run a speed test (Xbench) on a 2TB internal drive and the external RAID.
Here is the result. It seems the speed is good.. is it correct?
System Info
Xbench Version
1.3
System Version
10.7.3 (11D50d)
Physical RAM
16384 MB
Model
MacPro4,1
Drive Type
WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0
Disk Test
98.66
Sequential
175.94
Uncached Write
212.82
130.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
181.19
102.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
123.16
36.04 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
227.40
114.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
68.55
Uncached Write
21.96
2.33 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
441.42
141.31 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
155.38
1.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
242.86
45.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
System Info
Xbench Version
1.3
System Version
10.7.3 (11D50d)
Physical RAM
16384 MB
Model
MacPro4,1
Drive Type
Netstor H/W RAID10
Disk Test
97.50
Sequential
150.65
Uncached Write
182.92
112.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
144.62
81.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
104.63
30.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
216.80
108.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
72.07
Uncached Write
22.29
2.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write
205.88
65.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read
360.62
2.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read
332.37
61.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Is it possible to boot or Time Machine restore from an external Thunderbolt disk drive?

(There are several questions - search for "?".)
I purchased a Seagate Backup Plus for Mac Desktop Drive 3 TByte with default USB 3.0 interface, and also acquired the Seagate Thunderbolt Adapter for Backup Plus Desktop Drives and Thunderbolt cable.
I do a redundant backup to the Seagate Drive using both Carbon Copy Cloner (nightly) and Time Machine (hourly) using its Thunderbolt adapter. BTW: One never knows when Time Machine will choke - see discussion titled, "UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion", which I had; Rest In Peace Pondini (James Lewis Pond).
Booting from the external Seagate Backup Plus via Thunderbolt inteface from System Preferences -> Startup Disk:
I select the Time Machine OS X, 10.8.5 Startup Disk (Thunderbolt attached drive), click Restart, confirm my choice, the computer reboots, however, it reboots from the internal Macintosh HD OS X, 10.8.5, NOT the selected external Thunderbolt drive. The SSD drive was used as the Startup Drive, not the selected external Time Machine volume as indicated by the display free disk space command (df(1)) and seeing that the Macintosh HD OS X, 10.8.5 volume is mounted as root. That is very deceptive in that both the internal and external drives will appear in the same manner from a GUI point of view! OS X doesn't even inform me that it did not boot off the selected volume. This is the first half of the problem, that is, Is it possible to boot from an external Thunderbolt disk drive? In my case, the answer is deceptively No. Can anybody else boot off a Thuderbolt attached disk drive? Note that if I remove the Thunderbolt adapter, and attach the drive via its USB 3.0 cable, the MBP boots off the external Seagate Backup Plus just fine, as is expected.
Booting from the external Seagate Backup Plus via Thunderbolt inteface from boot-time "Option - Select startup disk" method:
When I restart the MBP using the startup Option key to select the startup volume, the externally connected Seagate drive ONLY SHOWS UP if it is attached with the USB 3.0 cable, not when it is attached with via the Thunderbolt interface. Can anyone else boot off a Thunderbolt drive with the startup Option key sequence? At least the MBP doesn't deceive me in this case - I know right away that the external Thunderbolt drive is not an option when connected as such.
Time Machine restore from the external Seagate Backup plus via Thunderbolt interface from the "command-R - Recovery Parition" method:
After booting from the recovery partition, I attempt to perform a Time Machine restore from the Thunderbolt connected Seagate Backup drive. When Time Machine attempts to present me with a viable backup Time Machine volume, the external Thunderbolt drive is never offered as an option. So I switch the Time Machine volume to use its USB 3.0 interface, and then Time Machine displays that drive as an option, and the MBP proceeds with the restoration as expected. The interesting thing to note is that while booted in the recovery partition via the Thuderbolt cable, the MBP Disk Utility may be selected, and the Thunderbolt attached drive may be operated on just fine. Can anybody else restore their MBP using Time Machine and the Recovery Partition via the Thunderbolt interface?
This is also a big problem for me in that I am forced to restore my MBP via Carbon Copy Cloner using the USB 3.0 interface, because I cannot even boot off that volume's Thunderbolt interface. Of course, the option may be that I could use yet another eternal USB 3.0 drive, boot from it, and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to restore the Macintosh HD via the aforementioned drive connected by a Thunderbolt cable, but that is less than ideal and not elegant, so I'm not going there.
Another side issue is that the commercially available program, TechTool Pro 7's eDrive, which I installed on the Time Machine volume, will not boot off that eDrive as advertised, but I won't got through those steps here, because that would be beyond the scope of this issue, however, I must say, It does not work either when the Time Machine volume is connected via the Thunderbolt interface, but works just fine when connected via the USB 3.0 interface.

If this helps anybody else make a decision about whether to consider Apple because of Apple's superior customer service:
Apple sells this entire line of drives right in their store, from 1TB to 4TB. I spent 1 and 1/2 hours, yesterday, confirming that the 3TB model IS NOT 100% Thunderbolt compliant. A MBP cannot boot, nor can it Time Machine restore from this drive, though EVERYTHING about the drive is normal.
Apple's South Coast Plaza store management had at least two responses to me personally about how to proceed:
1. Buy a different drive from another drive manufacturer, and to attempt to return the drive to COSTCO. A lead genius suggested going with GTech drives, for instance.
2. Wait for Seagate to fix their problem.
I told Apple management in the store that the drive is advertised as Mac Compatible (see picture) and that it is advertised as being a Thunderbolt drive (see picture). I pressed management that my purchasing decsion to get the best possible MBP Retina was based on the availablity of Inexpensive Devises (raID), and that not having this complete compatibility is a show-stopper for my needs, and that I wanted a refund. Their response? They needed to talk with "Merchendising" to see if they are on or off the hook for these kind of 3rd party assertions, and would get back to me.
I am not holding my breath.
Note: I do not hold this against the Geniuses that helped me, nor against the management I've dealt with, nor the upper level engineers that I've corresponded with through Apple Care - their problem solving skills were helpful - although I could have arrived at similar conclusions given enough $$$. (For instance, try a Lacie TB drive and see if that works - we did, and it did not work. Or, we have a different TB cable and a different TB adapter, let's try those - we did, and it did not work.) I blame myself for not doing enough homework before going with Apple's solutions.

I have a 1TB WD external hard disk, which suddenly cannot be detected in my system. When i connect the hardisk to the macbook, the disk appears and immediately disconnects with the message "Disk not properly ejected". Any advice ?

I have a 1TB WD external hard disk, which suddenly cannot be detected in my system. When i connect the hardisk to the macbook, the disk appears and immediately disconnects with the message "Disk not properly ejected". Any advice ?

verify on another Mac if the same
WD is having issues with mavericks as you can see on the WD forum, did you install any WD software (never do that) when you connected the drive for the first time?
possible issue is a dead SATA bridge card or the new WD firmware w/ Mavericks.
SATA card issue
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/bd-p/passport_mac
verify on another Mac if all possible

Is it safe to keep downloaded movies in the Macbook Pro or do I need to use an external hard disk for those ? Please suggest.

Is it safe to store the downloaded movies from iTunes in my Macbook Pro or do I need to store those separately in an external hard disk ? Please advice.

It will be no better or worse than any other video file and should not be responsible for any system instability. As I alluded to earlier, video takes up a lot of space and you can quickly use up that 200 GB of space. Download a few files to you MBP and see what impact it has. I have a couple of external HDDs dedicated to video files (and backups of same) due to the large file sizes.
If you find that space is getting tight on your MBP, then get an external for the video files and another one to back them up. I have a couple of external HDDs dedicated to video files (and backups of same) due to the large file sizes.
Ciao.

External SATA drive setup

Just ordered a G-Tech external SATA with a PCI card:
G-SATA - 500GB 2-drive external SATA with cooling.
Any warnings, suggestions, formatting issues?
While I am here...any suggestions on scratch disc assignment
for this set up:
- 2 internal SATA (the original plus the Maxtor)
- 2 external firewire 800s
- (and soon) the g-tech external SATA

Verify the new disk is formatted Mac OS Extended. Journalling can be either on or off. It doesn't seem to matter with the faster drives.
Working media and render files should be on either your second internal disk or the new sata disk(s). Everything else should be distributed as your personal whims dictate.
cherrios,
∏

How to change SATA disk controller on Toshiba Satellite A135 s2276

Hello guys, I know that there was a similar question already (kindly answered by Mike), but my situation differs a little.
I'm trying to install the SSD intead of my hard drive.
Problem is that even though BIOS can see the SSD I cannot install Windows on it (tried XP and 7). Cannot even format it from installation disk (it just hangs).
When I hook it up on a usb cable, it works fine (SSD). I can format it (from windows) and copy files on it like and external drive it doesn't have any issues.
When I try to install windows on it (either from a CD or usb) it hangs. The same situation is if I try to install the system when the SSD is in usb port or if I put it inside, where my hard drive originally is (SATA connection). It just seets there. Comes to copying files and then stops.
I think I'd need to change the SATA disk controller in BIOS (sata to ide or compatibility mode) in order for it to work, however there's no such an option in the latest BIOS for this model (1.60).
Any help appreciated, thanks Miki
ps. update - I succesfully installed windows on another Toshiba (which has the option to change the sata controller in bios), using the same SSD so I think this is definitely the problem. Any ideas apart from buying a newer comp?

Hi
If such option is NOT available in BIOS then you will be no able to change this!!!
In such case the HDD controller will say in SATA mode and if you want to install an operating system then you need to install the SATA drivers firstly!
Bye

How does the security model work for external USB disks attached to an AEBS

I've attached a USB disk to my AEBS after partitioning it first on my MBP using Disk Utility. I created a single partition with a GUID partition table covering the entire disk. Next I deselected the "Ignore ownership on this volume" checkmark and assigned myself and my wife read/write access, my group read access, and the rest no access. Next, I hooked it up to the AEBS and created some test files. I noticed in Terminal that the files I created all had rwx access for user, group and others. Trying to chmod that into something less open, like rwx for me, rx for the group and nothing for others didn't work. Also I noticed that when I was logged in the files I had created had my name as the owner, but when my wife logged in, those same files were owned by my wife.
What is happening here ? Who is the actual owner of the files on the external USB disk on my AEBS, and what are the real access rights (as they seem to depend on the actual user). On my AEBS I've setup "File sharing", "With accounts" and created accounts for both me and my wife, as well as disabled guest account access.
I get the impression that the owner and access rights seem to depend on the actual user connected to the AEBS, but I'm not sure.
Can anybody please enlighten me on the subject of AEBS access rights/ownership for USB disks ?
With kind regards,
Aloy

All that I can provide is what has worked for me for years.
The Time Capsule is setup as the router for the network, connected to a simple Zoom 5431J cable modem.
Static Internet IP connection from the cable provider is 12.34.567.89
By default, the Time Capsule is at 10.0.1.1 on the local network
Port Mapping setup for the Time Capsule is......
Public UDP Port 8884
Public TCP Ports 8884
Private IP 10.0.1.1
Private UDP 548
Private TCP 548
The hard drive on the Time Capsule is accessed from a remote location at afp://12.34.567.89:8884
The AirPort Extreme is connected by Ethernet to the Time Capsule and is it setup to operate in Bridge Mode
The AirPort Extreme always receives a reserved local IP address of 10.0.1.2 from the Time Capsule
The Port Mapping setup (on the Time Capsule) looks like this for the AirPort Extreme.......
Public UDP Port 8888
Public TCP Port 8888
Private IP 10.0.1.2
Private UDP 548
Private TCP 548
The USB hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme is accessed from a remote location at afp://12.34.567.89:8888
If you are still having difficulty, I would delete all of Port Mapping settings on the Time Capsule and Update the Time Capsule. Then, go back and setup the Port Mapping for the Time Capsule, check that to make sure that it is working, then setup the Port Mapping settings on the Time Capsule for the AirPort Extreme.

External SATA recommendations

All,
Can anyone recommend an external SATA solution for my Powermac G5? I have a card with external ports, but I need advice on the following:
1. Decent enclosure that will allow spindown of disks
2. Cables
3. Disks
The other option would be for a NAS solution, but I don't believe that would be suitable for photography or video editing, but I guess it would be ok for archival storage ?
I'm preferably looking for gear available in the UK and known to work with the G5... Ever since finding out that a WD400GB disk was going to cost me an additional SATA controller, I've been a lot more cautious about this kind of thing

Wayne,
Your shopping in the same area i have been exploring recently. I'm looking for much more storage, possible with RAID AND backup options. I use Aperture extensively - as extensively as the hopeless and unapgradeable 6600 nVida video card allows. I also have a large itunes collection and do video creation on FC. I need more spindles!
I've settled on the Sonnet E4p PCIe card for my quad offering 4 external SATA ports, and it also support Port Multiplication (PM). PM is a means of clustering bunches of drives physically and connect them to one eSATA port. This particular card £200, supports up to x5 SATA drives per port, thus 20 external drives. However PM is slightly slower than direct connect to each drive. My view is that PM, possibly with RAID within it will be fast enough AND give me a backup option.
After the I/O card there is the choice of enclosure. I have done a lot of reading on what is out there and again i'm falling back to one of two Sonnet products, the 400A and 500P. The former offers x4 SATA drives and supports direct connect to each drive which would make a screaming I/O sub-system. However i also want lots of on-line data capability so speed is not the only priority. This moves me to the 500P enclosure, a x5 SATA PM-only setup. It allows sleep, drive temp monitoring and S.M.A.R.T. What i like about this is i can run a 2-3 drives of 4-500GB SATAII in a fast RAID leaving 3-2 drives for rolling (daily) and (weekly) backup processes as well as one left for x. All within one enclosure. And i still have three eSATA ports to expand on !
AMUG has some good detailed reviews of this and similar equipment:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/home_frame.html
I've not settled on software to run my backups yet, but the above represents my theoritical approach for on-line storage expansion of my Quad. What i am hesitant about is whether i will stick with my mac setup. No matter how much screaming about the lack of video upgrades from Apple, i've been totally hacked-off at the attitude of Apple towards me and others on this Aperture-critical issue. Its a long and very sad story that Apple should be ashamed of. Its 2 days short of 1 year since Apple launched the G5 quad and still they have done NOTHING grrrrrr...
PS One other useful benefit you get from the seperate SATA controller is you can choose and gain from SATA II drives. I'm looking at the WD RE2 drives, 400 or 500GB.
PPS I've been 'stalking' macheaven in the UK, they had the 500P on a ~12% discount, but missed it. Scan seems to have the best prices on drives.
Hope this helps, and appreciate the thoughts of actual eSATA users.

SATA Disks Issues with OEL 5.8 uek 64Bit

Hi Oracle Linux Experts/Tech Gurus!,
We are facing lot of issues with SATA disks at both Internal and External,
if we use any SATA USB External Disk it make server hang and sometimes restart
We face this issues with external SATA ARRAY connected at DS-3400
1. Files under this SATA disk partition is gone.
2. Disk free space not release after deleted files
3. Server got hang and restarted many times
4. Disk IO Performance is very slow
(hdparm -t result 70MB/secs earlier it was 130MB/secs with RHEL32)
This issues we are facing with this SATA disk array on SAN DS-3400 connected via QLA2460 Qlogic 4G Fiber HBA Card.
We are not faced any issues before with RHEL32Bit OS on this same HW Setup, once we changed to OEL5.8 64
Please help us to fix this issue with SATA Disks on this OEL 5.8.
Thanks & Regards,
Prabhakar.D
Edited by: dpprabhuindia on May 14, 2013 7:08 PM

And here is the output of scli -i (SANSurfer cli tool)
~]# scli -i
Host Name : xxxxxxxx
HBA Instance : 0
HBA Model : QLA2460
HBA Description : QLA2460 PCI-X 2.0 to 4Gb FC Single Channel
HBA ID : 0-QLA2460
HBA Alias :
HBA Port : 1
Port Alias :
Node Name : 20-00-00-E0-8B-8B-25-F8
Port Name : 21-00-00-E0-8B-8B-25-F8
Port ID : 61-09-13
Serial Number : GFC0640H84421
Driver Version : 8.03.07.08.32.1-k
BIOS Version : 1.12
Driver Firmware Version : 5.03.13 (496)
Flash BIOS Version : 1.12
Flash FCode Version : 1.16
Flash EFI Version : 1.04
Flash Firmware Version : 4.00.18
Actual Connection Mode : Point to Point
Actual Data Rate : 4 Gbps
PortType (Topology) : NPort
Target Count : 1
PCI Bus Number : 6
PCI Device Number : 1
HBA Status : Online
Host Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxx
HBA Instance : 1
HBA Model : QLA2460
HBA Description : QLA2460 PCI-X 2.0 to 4Gb FC Single Channel
HBA ID : 1-QLA2460
HBA Alias :
HBA Port : 1
Port Alias :
Node Name : 20-00-00-E0-8B-92-FB-B6
Port Name : 21-00-00-E0-8B-92-FB-B6
Port ID : 61-0B-13
Serial Number : RFC0641M26491
Driver Version : 8.03.07.08.32.1-k
BIOS Version : 1.12
Driver Firmware Version : 5.03.13 (496)
Flash BIOS Version : 1.12
Flash FCode Version : 1.16
Flash EFI Version : 1.04
Flash Firmware Version : 4.00.18
Actual Connection Mode : Point to Point
Actual Data Rate : 4 Gbps
PortType (Topology) : NPort
Target Count : 1
PCI Bus Number : 10
PCI Device Number : 1
HBA Status : Online
Please advice how to upgrade firmware for this HBA Card
Edited by: dpprabhuindia on May 14, 2013 7:14 PM

External SATA Port Multiplier

Hi to all, I have an HP PAVILLON DV3550EL and I would like to buy an External SATA Port Multiplier in order to connect more than one hard disk to the eSATA port, but I don't know if the laptop is esata port multiplier compatible.
Can anybody tell me if it is compatible or not? Is there also some other information that I should know in order to purchase the right product?
Thanks in advance for your availability!

Hi to all, I have an HP PAVILLON DV3550EL and I would like to buy an External SATA Port Multiplier in order to connect more than one hard disk to the eSATA port, but I don't know if the laptop is esata port multiplier compatible.
Can anybody tell me if it is compatible or not? Is there also some other information that I should know in order to purchase the right product?
Thanks in advance for your availability!

How to move my boot disk to an external Thunderbolt disk?

So my wife and I both have Late 2010 iMac's. Her's died. We got a new thin-style iMac one and restored her from time machine. It was perfect - except for one thing. The 1TB disk drive that's not replacable in her iMac *****. It's just the 5400 RPM model and it's REALLY sluggish. She's been using it a year now, and complains about the speed of her computer.
I know there are USB3 and Thunderbolt disk options out there - so I'm thinking that perhaps moving her boot disk to an external thunderbolt disk makes total sense - a little big disk for instance, is light-years faster - and she'll be able to work better with that.
The question is - how do I move her boot disk over to an external drive? I'd also want to make sure the external disk is the default boot disk for this until it's time to replace the thing - is that possible?

This is meant to address several comments:
Of course, preferring a 7200 vs. 5400 rpm drive is a matter of personal preference (as is preferring an MBP over an iMac or whatever). My personal preference: the best quality (and that includes speed) I can afford/decide to spend for the intended task). I also do not buy drives that do not include their own power source.
And - to me - the 5400 is noticeably slower in everyday tasks. I had a malfunctioning external 7200 rpm drive; the mfr sent me another under warranty. I did not know that they had switched to 5400 rpm drives until I did my first clone to it. I was surprised that it seemed to take longer than usual, so I tested it: did one clone each from the same machine to two drives (same mfr, one 5400 and the other 7200) using CCC (did not use the machine or add/delete anything in between). The result: the clone to the 7200 drive finished in 38 minutes, the clone to the 5400 drive took 50 minutes. To me, that is a noticeable difference; I believe that cloning can be considered an everyday task.
The fact that the OP's drive is sluggish may, indeed, have another/different cause. I addressed his question whether or not he would be able to run his iMac from an external source. And yes, he can if he wishes to do so - I outlined the how-to steps.
For me personally, a 5400 drive will not do - for someone else, it might be just right. You may not perceive the difference in speed, but I do. Since that is a matter of preference and everyone has their own and is therefore entitled to their opinion - mine may be different than yours; however, that does not make it less valid.
That is my last post re. the differences of opinion; I'll be happy to discuss any technical issues related to the OP's concerns.

External SATA disks on MBP 15"

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