Booting from an external SSD with a new Mac

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Level 4

2,271 points

Booting from an external SSD with a new Mac

I still use a 27” 2017 iMac running Ventura 13.7.1, as far as it will go. I regularly boot from one of my external SSDs with OS Mojave installed, so as to use software that won´t run with Ventura. Everything works fine, it´s a wonderful machine. My question is: if I were to buy one of the new Macs (the new Mac Mini is very appealing!) would I still be able to boot from my external SSD running Mojave? I rather think not, but hope for some clarification from you experts! I plan on buying a new Mac next year, so need to think carefully about this. Thanks so much in advance! Cheers, Ian.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.7

Posted on Nov 21, 2024 5:06 AM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

51,022 points

Nov 21, 2024 9:41 AM in response to Ian Leckie

Ian Leckie wrote:

I plan on buying a new Mac next year, so need to think carefully about this. Thanks so much in advance!

To double-down on that, make sure you buy a big hard drive. Apple's new Macs are just crazy fast. And the built-in SSDs are also crazy fast. They are 10 times as fast as the first SSDs that used to ship in Macs.

But people always find a way to sabotage themselves. I see many posts from people who don't like the prices that Apple charges for storage and think they can outsmart Apple with an external SSD. Sometimes they want to move their home directory to the SSD. Sometimes they want to boot from the SSD. It's always a disaster. It's fine if you want to use an external SSD as a Time Machine backup, or as an archive for files you want to keep, but don't need to use every day.

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

210,615 points

Nov 22, 2024 11:27 AM in response to Ian Leckie

OWC (MacSales.com) says its Envoy Ultra will achieve read and write speeds of 6000 Mbs when used with an M4 Mac. I don't know how that stacks up with the internal SSD on an M4.

Being stuck on an Intel iMac with read and write speeds of 2600 and 1900 Mbs that sounds pretty fast to me.

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Answer 3

Ian Leckie Author

Level 4

2,271 points

Nov 23, 2024 9:05 AM in response to etresoft

Thank you for your sound advice, and sorry for not replying sooner...I´ve been away from my Mac and my iPhone was turned off! Yes, I certainly will be ordering a large internal drive to be installed by Apple, like the 512 GB drive on my present iMac. And for years I have been using two additional external drives exclusively for Time Machine backups, and another two for archiving large Photos libraries etc. BTW, I´m not sure, but if you´re the developer of EtreCheckPro then thank you...an invaluable tool! Cheers, Ian.

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