Use an external SSD as primary OS

I have ordered the new 2012 iMac but dont want to pay £200 more for the fusion drive and I already have an external SSD (120gb)
How would I go about installing Mountain Lion on that and making it the primary drive.
Thanks !

1. Press Command and R keys while your Mac is starting and open Disk Utility.
2. Select the SSD, go to Erase tab and erase the volume with Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
3. Install OS X. After installing, open System Preferences > Startup Disk and choose the SSD. If you want, you can erase the internal disk

Similar Messages

Can I use an external SSD drive as main drive?

I would like to use an external SSD drive as my boot/operating drive. Basically a clone of my current HD but have the option of booting to and using the external SSD drive for system and apps and data. Is it possible and if so how?

Certainly can, however its a bad idea due to extreme cost and having to buy an awkward external enclosure for the microSATA or PCIe SSD
SSD and an enclosure like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-mini-pci-e-mSATA-SSD-adapter-external-Enclosure- case-with-cable-driver-/221178575483
OWC sells better SSD enclosures however.
Also a bad idea due to BUS SPEEDS, and SSD are far too expensive, and you cant get enough storage to cover your internal conventional HD in its size
Clone your internal HD with an external 1TB conventional HD for $70

Hey, can i clone my Macbook Pro internal hard drive and then paste it all onto a formated external hard drive, then make the Mac use the external as the primary hard drive?

hey, can i clone my Macbook Pro internal hard drive and then paste it all onto a formated external hard drive, then make the Mac use the external as the primary hard drive? please help for i only have around 618mb left out of 189GB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If what doesn't work?
If cloning your internal drive to the external drive is not successful, I expect CCC will tell you so. Assuming that doesn't happen, you will have a bootable replica of the internal drive on the external drive once CCC has finished.
You can then do any of several things:
1. Replace your internal drive with a much larger one (320GB or 500GB, or even larger), and clone the external drive's contents onto the new drive so you'll have all your data in one place. Note that if you do this, you'll also need to buy an external drive that's large enough to back the new internal drive up on.
2. Boot from the external drive as a temporary measure while you clear at least 30-40GB of data off the internal drive, allowing you to keep using it and saving small amounts of data to it. The external drive will then contain the only copies of the files you've deleted from the internal drive, so you'll need a seond external drive large enough to back both the other drives up on.
If you can't comfortably clear a minimum of 30GB off the internal drive, you really need a larger internal drive right now, and you shouldn't bother fooling around with the inadequate one you have — you'll just quickly overfill it again.
3. Replace the optical drive in your MBP with a large conventional hard drive, giving you two hard drives inside the machine. You will then need one or more external drives large enough to back up both of the internal drives.
If you sense a theme here — back up, back up, back up — you are correct. It's flat-out foolhardy to own or use a computer without maintaining complete, up-to-date backups of everything at all times.

Use an external screen as primary screen while the lid is open

is it possible to use an external screen as primary screen while the lid is open on a white MacBook (Lion)?

I can't get this to work either, and I really want it too!
Noisy fans, and overheating laptops are not a pleasant experience when working next to one all day.
Please apple, at least give us the choice!?!
I presume running two screens rather than one also puts more of a drain on the graphic card.

Buying a new iMac - can you use an external SSD drive as boot drive?

Here is the question: Can you attach an external SSD and use that as your boot drive accompanying an iMac? This way all the Apple warranties stay valid but I am not saddled with the expense of the Apple installed SSD price?
Now for some background ...
I am looking to buy a new iMac replacing my loved but woefully underpowered Mac Mini. In a perfect world I would like the following set-up based on how today's iMacs can be configured:
Processor: 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
Memory: 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
Hard Drive: 1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
Optical Drive: 8x double-layer SuperDrive
The problem is I'd rather not spend $3200+. I would imagine most people plug something similar in and then begin to ID must vs. nice to haves. So, here are my must haves:
Memory: Minimum 16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB (I was thinking of starting with minimum and then purchase the right RAM and installing myself)
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 1GB
Hard Drive: 256GB Solid State Drive
I like to work the graphics side and have a media library of almost 1TB (uploading, downloading, converting, editing, etc.). With my existing setup I have 3+TB of external storage but again, am suffering massively in the horsepower department as it takes hours for me to do what I believe a new iMac can help me accomplish in a fraction of that time. This is not my profession so while I looked at the towers I still need this computer to serve as a family computer as well. Appreciate your thoughts and feedback.
Cheers,
-Jim

Ok this is great as we are progressing through.
So yes it can be done but there's the caveat of the "pipes" once you go external. The only option for an external SSD Drive with thunderbolt that I know of is LaCie's 240 GB version ... Priced at $800.
I think what I will need to do is suck it up. The new MacBooks have the core technology I'd like but we really want the larger screen.
Last question - should I wait/when might we expect an updated line of iMacs? In a few months or not for a while? That answer may provide some direction if it is anticipated to be sooner vs later.
Thank you!

Using External SSD as Primary HDD?

Hey everyone,
My current hard drive is constantly grinding away, and I know it won't last much longer. I need my 500 gigs of space, but can't afford the outlandish $1800 for an internal SSD with that much space.
Is it possible to just buy a standard external drive like a WD Passport for a hundred bucks and utilize this as my primary drive instead of the internal?
If so, will I be reaping any speed benefits comparable to a standard internal SSD? Or is the fact that the external connected via FireWire or USB going to be slower than the SATA Connection of my iMac?
Much obliged...
- Chris

Assuming your internal HD is in good shape the performance will be similiar not identical. If your internal drive isn't in good shape then you will probably see some improvements. When you say "7200 grind machine" are you saying you can hear it making noises? Here is a link to what failing HD's sound like:
http://datacent.com/harddrivesounds.php
If yours sounds like any of those you should get it replaced. At the very least you should check it's S.M.A.R.T. status in Disk Utility (it should be Verified) and you can also run Apple Hardware test. You don't say in your profile what iMac you have or what version of OS X you are running so I can't give you the correct link on how to run AHT.

Boot from external SSD cause freeze

I bought a Samsung 830 SSD ( 256 GB model MZ-7PC256D )
I planned to connect it to my 27" 3.5 GHz Intel i7 iMac (mid 2011) via thunderbolt with the Seagate GoFlex adapter and use it as primary boot drive.
I installed Lion (I'm running OS X 10.7.5) on the new external drive using the OS X Recovery.
Everything runs fine and very fast except that system randomly freeze.
I can't open/close apps and the spinning beachball appears. I can't do anything other than power-off holding down the power button.
I disabled the "disk sleep" option, disk seems ok (I checked the status and said verified) but system keeps freezing.
It appears that after the first freeze, soon occur a second one.
Also, I noticed strange(?) sound (something like tock) from the adapter/SSD during the normal use.
I searched for the word error in the Console at the corresponding freeze time and this strings came out:
17/12/12 18:04:06,000 kernel: SMC::smcInitHelper ERROR: MMIO regMap == NULL - fall back to old SMC mode
17/12/12 18:04:09,043 WindowServer: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.
17/12/12 18:04:09,888 Finder: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 31
17/12/12 18:04:09,888 Finder: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.
17/12/12 18:04:09,888 Finder: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSRemoveSurface: Invalid window 0x1f
17/12/12 18:04:17,891 talagent: CGSConnectionRelinquishWindowRights(cid, newWindowNumber, reservedRights): CGError 1001 on line 619
17/12/12 18:04:17,891 talagent: CGSReleaseWindow(cid, wid): CGError 1001 on line 759
[Here the complete error log]
Any suggest?

I'm not certain this is the culprit, but the overall consensus that I've read online points to the fact that most (or all?) available external Thunderbolt drive enclosures that are *bus-powered only* (so no independent power brick with the enclosure) have difficulty providing enough power to SSD's that exceed ~240GB. And without enough power the system freezes or causes other errors.
Here's at least one thorough examination that came to this conclusion:
http://wolfgangtechnology.blogspot.com/2012/06/mac-with-seagate-thunderbolt-adap ter.html
The solution, from what I've read at least, is to find a Thunderbolt adapter with an independent power source or use a smaller SSD (under 240GB it seems) that is capable of running on bus-power only.
I'm looking into doing the same as you (using external SSD as primary boot drive) but there aren't that many relatively-affordable enclosures to choose from at this point (off the top of my head just the Seagate GoFlex, Buffalo Ministation, and Lacie offerings come to mind) and there's still an outstanding question as to whether the available enclosures support the SATA III spec to really get the most out of the fastest SSD's available today.
Of note, I believe this version of Seagate's adapter (the "Desktop" version) does come with its own power brick and could solve your problem, at least according to the article I linked above.
Hope this helps, good luck!

How Do I use my External Drive for my iTunes Library without adding anything to my Mac's HD?

I have a new MBP and have transferred all of my music off my old pc (250+ gigs) to a Lacie 1TB thunderbolt external drive. How do I use the external as my primary itunes library with out using any of my Mac's HD? I'm new to mac so I have a few more questions...
1. The initial question above
2. will this work or will there be extra steps every time I disconnect and connect the external (other than ejecting)?
3. Will I be able to access it remotely / home sharing?
4. Would this work with itunes match?
Thanks All !!!

DevonC wrote:
I haven't set up Time Machine yet because it wants me to completely format my external hard drive, and it seems to want to use it for TM backups exclusively?
However, I would also like to use it to store stuff that I don't want to keep on my computer, eg tons of photos, videos, stuff from my sister's computer, etc.
Is there a way to do Time Machine but also use the external hard drive for storage? I don't mind temporarily copying the photos etc that are on there to my computer while I format, so that's not the issue. I just don't want my EHD rendered completely useless to everything else.
Thanks!!!
There are several ways to do exactly this.
If you partition the external drive, you can use one partition for TM and the other for anything else.
Even if you do not partition the drive, you can safely store other data in folders on the drive. Just to not use the folder that TM creates for anything. And it's best not to put files directly on the drive, in my opinion, but use folders for storage.
Just remember that whatever you put on the drive takes up room from TM and when the drive gets nearly full, TM will start automatically deleting older files from it's own folder.
I have my Tiger clone on my external TM drive in a separate partition and everything works fine.

External SSD drive not working with mavericks anymore!

The second I upgraded to Mavericks and used my external SSD drive, my external drive stopped working. I also doesnt want to initialize anymore either in disk utility! Can someone from apple please tell me whats going on?

These are user forums and are not monitored by Apple.
Lewis

Boot from internal Fusion or external SSD?

My wife surprised me with the base level 5K iMac. It has the 1TB Fusion drive. I wish it had been upgraded to an SSD but it's too late now, I'm stuck with it. I self-upgraded to 32Mb RAM already.
To get the best performance, would you recommend using an external SSD as a startup/boot disk, and running everything - OS X, apps, etc - from there?
Would I see meaningful performance benefits, or should I just stick with the Fusion Drive?

Fusion is SSD (at least in part).
It combines the SSD with a spinning HD. I think you can opt to divide it into 2 separate disks if you are willing to reinstall the OS (or do some major juggling).
I think the OS installer will try to force a fusion drive on supported Macs, but you may be able to clone or restore to each disk instead.
You could buy a large SSD & run it from Thunderbolt if you want, but fusion is intended to put the most used files on the SSD with the rest on the HD.
Some people don't like Fusion since it uses Core storage (& is new and confusing). Personally I'd give it a go to see if it performs well enough.

Using an external HD for both storage AND Time Machine?

Bear with me guys, I'm not sure where to put this question. I figured that because my Macbook Air (and it's limited storage space) was the reason for my needing an external HD I thought this would be the best place.
My MBA has run out of storage and I bought a Seagate External HD to move my stuff onto. I guess my question is: What's the best way to combine the external HD with the MBA? Here are a few of the things on my mind:
-Most of the space is taken up by my user folder right now such as itunes, photos, etc. If I copy that folder to the external drive it would alleviate a large part of my issue, at least for the time being. Eventually I will hit the storage capacity as I add applications over time I guess, so this is a temporary solution (although I free up 27gb of space this way). Can I designate a folder on the external drive as the default for programs like imovie and iphoto like I can with itunes?
-I KNOW there is a way to set the external drive as some kind of default drive but is this feasible? It would be a hinderance if I needed to have it connected at all times to access even applications (which I assume to be the case?
-I also wondered about partitioning the external HD and using one partition for additional storage and the other for time machine? It's a 1TB hard drive, and I figure I could make a 100GB partition to use with time machine (my MBA only has a 64gb capacity) and use the other 900GB for files. Is this even possible or does time machine need it's very own separate drive?
Anyway, this doesn't necessarily ask many specific questions and I apologize if it appears a little disjointed. I'm looking for help and opinions on the best way to use this new piece of equipment to compliment my MBA. Any thoughts are appreciated.

While it is possible to partition an external drive and use one partition for files and the other for Time Machine, there's actually very little point in doing so. The reason is that in your scenario, you'd be storing all your files on the external, meaning that pretty much all there would be on your MBA internal drive is MacOS and your applications - the very things you can easily restore in the event of failure - while all your files would be on the external, where they are not being backed up.
It is also possible to use an external drive as the boot drive for the MBA (easiest done by cloning the internal drive to a partition on the external, and then setting that partition as the startup drive in the Startup Disk preference pane) but that would still require you to wipe at least some of your files from the internal, and mean that the contents of your external drive are not being backed up. It would also mean that your MBA would run pretty slowly when booted from the external.
Rather better, in my view, would be to use the external as the primary store for all non-essential files - your complete iTunes library and all your documents, files, video, photos etc, and then copy back to the MBA just those items you actually need for any day or week's activities. Then get a second external to use for backing up the first!

Old 2008 iMac external SSD upgrade

If I put a Samsung Electronics MZ-7PD128BW 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive in a Acomdata Tango Pro Firewire 800 2.5-Inch Hard Drive Enclosure, and boot my early 2008 iMac on it, will it improve speeds? Currently the hard drive is running at around 30MB/s. Will the SSD and the 2.5-Inch Hard Drive Enclosure work together?

Using a external SSD on that old a machine is a waste of time. The reason for getting an SSD is to improve performance, using FW as the connection will be a bottleneck. If you want to make the 2008 work well, install an internal SSD.

External SSD-Memory Samsung TB1

Hello I have a new WD My Cloud and will use an external SSD-Memory via USB. But I cannot see this device anywhere.Can you helb, what is wrong? Access from Mac an IOS devices needed br Raymond

Has it worked before? The USB device should appear as a share in the list of share in the device dashboard.

How do I use an external hard drive as my primary itunes library?

I am trying to move my primary itunes folder to an external hard drive to free up space on my C drive. I moved all applicable folders and made the appropriate changes so that all the music and movies would play from their new location. But, when I shut down and then restart itunes, it recreates the folders on the C drive and makes me reestablish the links all over again. Can't I make it start up using the external drive folder as its primary location?

The most effective way to do this is to copy the entire iTunes folder from the <User's Music> on the C: drive to the root of your external drive, without making any changes to the iTunes Media folder. You would then press and hold down shift while launching iTunes so that you get a prompt to choose or create a library. You click choose and browse to the new copy of the library on the external drive.
If you have ny iOS devices their backup still get stored within your profile folder on the C: drive.
You should also consider backing up the library to another drive.
tt2

How do i use an external display with my macbook pro?

How do I use an external display with a macbook pro?

Just buy the proper adapter cord, such as MiniDisplay port to HDMI for example. Plug it in and it will be automatically recognized. Use System Preferences > Displays to set options.
The display can Mirror your primary desktop or Extend the Desktop.
Regards,
Captfred

Use an external SSD as primary OS

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