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Is moving SSD from USB3 to SATA worth it?

I've been running my late 2014 mid grade Mac Mini via an external Sandisk SSD hard drive for nearly two years. But I have noticed boot times are much slower since upgrading to Mojave. The upgrade to the previous macOS did not show any slow downs. General disk access appears to take a little longer. But it's not as unbearable as the Mini's stock 5400rpm hard drive. Etrecheck thinks the machine's OS disk access is great. But I have noticed a slow down.


I recently purchased a Samsung EVO 960. I've cloned the Sandisk to that drive. I was planning on replacing the 5400 drive with this one. Then only use the SanDisk as a pure external drive for extra storage. Given Apple has made it difficult to get to the Mac Mini's hard drive, is it worth moving this SSD to the SATA port inside. Will there be that much of a performance boost to run it off of SATA instead of USB3? The speed difference shows SATA is 6mbs vs USB 3's 5mbs. But I keep seeing bandwidth talk. But don't understand how that will affect casual computer operations.


Thanks,

Glenn

Fort Worth, TX

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 23, 2019 7:47 PM

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Posted on Mar 23, 2019 8:14 PM

The SATA port is rated at 6Gpbs while USB 3.0 is rated at 5Gbps. The SATA port is about 20% faster.


To help with what you describe as a slow boot I suggest you do some spring cleaning. Clone your startup volume to a spare drive. Erase the startup drive then reinstall macOS on it. Be sure to format using APFS if the drive is an SSD. Restore your files and data from the clone backup. Restore your third-party software fresh from the original media. Be sure to keep the number of concurrently running apps within the limits of your physical RAM.

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Mar 23, 2019 8:14 PM in response to NFTW2267

The SATA port is rated at 6Gpbs while USB 3.0 is rated at 5Gbps. The SATA port is about 20% faster.


To help with what you describe as a slow boot I suggest you do some spring cleaning. Clone your startup volume to a spare drive. Erase the startup drive then reinstall macOS on it. Be sure to format using APFS if the drive is an SSD. Restore your files and data from the clone backup. Restore your third-party software fresh from the original media. Be sure to keep the number of concurrently running apps within the limits of your physical RAM.

Mar 25, 2019 4:15 AM in response to tbirdvet

USB 3.0 is 5Gbps vs SATAIII which is a theoretical 6Gbps. On top of that an external USB enclosure containing a 2.5" SATA drive has to convert to and from SATA commands which adds an additional overhead so yes, it will be slower due to both these reasons.


The Evo 960 is a PCIe SSD using NVMe and could give a speed of more than three times as fast as a SATA SSD.


With regards to Mojave yes I see this as well, I however don't think it is purely down to being external, I think it is that any slow(er) drive shows up as such due to Mojave behavior. I use a USB3.1 memory stick - admittedly one with twice as fast chips as 'normal' ones and it is 'acceptable' whereas a traditional USB3.1 with the more common slower chips is painful. My guess is that Apple in the past did some optimisation to allow reasonably performance on slower hard drives whereas now Apple only optimise based on the assumption all Macs have fast SSD drives. (It is true that all new Macs do have fast SSD drives but not obviously older Macs which are supported for using Mojave.)

Mar 25, 2019 7:00 PM in response to NFTW2267

Thanks for the information. My apologies for the errors. I don't have the 960, but the 860. I recently put a 960 in a laptop and was mixing them up. If I get annoyed enough with it, I'll open it up. I used to not fear opening a computer. But these iMacs are packed so tightly and the cables are so thin, it makes me nervous. But it is five years old. So it may need a good dusting.

Is moving SSD from USB3 to SATA worth it?

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