Smoking fast bootable external SSD on a budget.

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Level 5

5,448 points

Smoking fast bootable external SSD on a budget.

I used a 128GB Crucial CT128M4SSD2 2.5-inch SATA 6GB/s and hooked it up to my Seagate Portable GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter, and it works flawlessly.

I installed OS X to the drive and booted to it, and ran a myriad of tests. No problems. And is this thing fast! It boots from the external drive from the option menu to login in about 9 seconds. Much faster than using the twin 7200 RPM LaCie LittleBigDisk RAID 0 drive.

It makes a great testing-ground drive for my Dev work.

Cost for 128 GB external SSD setup:

$124.00 for the drive

$99.00 for the Thunderbolt adapter (which I already had, and use)

$46.00 for the Thunderbolt cable (which I already had)

$269.00 TOTAL if starting from scratch

That's a heck of lot less than Elgato's or La Cie's solution. I'd put the crucial in a case, but I'd need a donor housing from a Seagate GoFlex.

Granted, it's not as "pretty" as the Elgato

Mac OS X (10.7.2), MBP 13" OS X & Win7(Fusion) 2.66 C2 Duo, 4.0GB RAM, 320 HDD

Posted on Jun 5, 2012 2:22 PM

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Answer 1

Kanad

Level 1

5 points

Oct 31, 2012 8:25 AM in response to SP Forsythe

Wow. thats an excellent idea !! I have just got myself an iMac 21.5''. I'm planning to do similar setup after I save up enough money. But I would like to know if the powered version ( GoFlex Thunderbolt Desktop adapter) is better as it can be daisy chained ? And does the SSD get hot?

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Answer 2

SP Forsythe Author

Level 5

5,448 points

Oct 31, 2012 9:49 AM in response to Kanad

I don't know much of anything about the desktop adapter.

The SSD gets warm, but not any warmer than I would expect is completely normal.

It's interesting that you chose to post this today. I was seriously considering LaCie's new Thunderbolt Rugged drive. (HDD, not SSD). Until yesterday. I can't believe those morons decided on a 5400 RPM disk drive for a Thunderbolt interface! The thoroughput is a measly 110 MB/s.

Since my post above, I have bought a couple more SSD's which I use with this setup. Still have not found anything faster in a portable setup-anywhere. The SSD version of the LaCie T-Bolt rugged is as fast, but it'll cost $100 more. Too bad they max out at 250 GB.

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Answer 3

Kanad

Level 1

5 points

Nov 1, 2012 6:47 AM in response to SP Forsythe

Its only recently that i started using discussion so i'm a bit of a neub 🙂 But thats for your idea. I'll probably do the same. When i do it, i'll definitely post .Also you could consider arranging the SSD's in RAID so you get the maximum throughput.

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Answer 4

Kanad

Level 1

5 points

Jun 18, 2015 8:14 AM in response to SP Forsythe

Sorry for the late reply, but I have purchased an SSD and plonked it into my mid 2011 21 iMac 2 days ago. I made a 256GB + 500 GB Fusion drive with it. Used the custom ssd power cable (asked a relative to bering it from USA since unavailable in India) and a SATA 3GBPS cable. Boot time reduced from a minute to 10 secs. Best value for money considering I saved money by not buying a new iMac 😝 . Also opening up iMac was a breeze since I followed the excellent iFixit guide.

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