External SSD on iMac

Any mac that has at least a USB3 connection, and an internal rotating hard drive will benefit from an external SSD.

You should install the OS and applications on the SSD. Depending on the speed of the HD, you may still use it for extra data. Putting your iMovie library and your video files on the SSD will certainly help with speed, if space allows.

You could put only the content you were working on at the moment on the SSD, and when finished with a production you could copy that material off to the HD or a second external HD for archiving.

You could also have two SSD, say a 250GB for the OS and a larger one, say 1TB for media.

Those 16GB of RAM, as TheLittles wrote, might also help.

Itz_Fartacus Said:

"External SSD on iMac:[...] I’ve heard that attaching an external SSD drive through one of the USB ports and transferring everything over to that makes it run more smoother and faster than the built in hard drive:[...]"

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Two Steps:

I. Increase Storage Space on Internal Hard Drive:

When the hard drive gets quite full to it highest capacity, your Mac will slow in speed. Hot much RAM do you have - if less than 16GB, then that would be another reason it could be running very slow. It all has to do with multitasking.

Then...

II. Run it Off of an External Drive:

With little free storage space available and less than 8GB of RAM, videos would open slower and make it skip. But, move many items over to another external Hard Drive, and keep this video on it, and it should play just fine.

FWIW, you cannot upgrade the RAM on a Late 2015 21.5" iMac. The RAM is soldered on and it has no memory slots.

dialabrain wrote:

FWIW, you cannot upgrade the RAM on a Late 2015 21.5" iMac. The RAM is soldered on and it has no memory slots.

Good point. In my haste, I missed that we are talking about the 21.5".

It happens. 😎

It seems everyone missed the user stated they have 8GB Ram. Well, except me of course. 😀

+ 🧠.