MacFormat UK – June 2019

^ Speed up your Mac

The simple option:

An SSD over USB

The harder route:

Make a Fusion Drive

External SSD

Fusion Drive

32 | MACFORMAT | JUNE 2019 macformat.com @macformat

USB 2 isn’t fast enough to use an external
SSD as a startup disk. You’re better off
starting up from your Mac’s internal hard
disk. However, USB 3 (regardless of being
a USB-A or USB-C port) and all versions of
Thunderbolt work well. Prices have come
down over the last few years, and you can
now buy a 500GB external SSD for £100.
Using an external SSD as a startup
disk is as easy as plugging it in, cloning
your existing system to it, then choosing
it in System Prefs’ Startup Disk pane.

Apple introduced its Fusion Drive tech

with the late 2012 iMac and Mac mini.

The idea is that you combine a low-

capacity SSD with a hard disk to get the

benefit of speed from the SSD where it’s

needed, and the capacity of a large hard

disk. The drive appears as one volume.

Data is stored on the SSD until it runs

out of room. What you use less often is

then moved to the hard disk. This works

at the block level, so it can shift parts of

large files between the two as needed.

A pure SSD is the fastest storage option.

It also benefits from APFS, Apple’s

modern file system, which was designed

with this kind of technology in mind.

The most cost-effective way to add SSD

performance into a Mac. It requires no

intervention on your part to decide

what’s stored on the SSD and hard disk.

Very fast at startup and in macOS

Robust: there are no moving parts

Expensive compared with a hard disk

SSDs can suffer from their own

performance issues over time

(^) Image credit: Western Digital
Image credit: Transcend Information
Storage upgrades
Newer storage tech equals a better-performing Mac
pgrading the storage on your
Mac can massively improve
its performance. Whether
your aim is more space in
which to store your files, or to swap
an ageing hard drive for an SSD,
you’ll notice the benefit. There are
three main options, assuming you
don’t want to just swap one hard
disk for another: fit an internal SSD;
add an external SSD; or make your
own Fusion Drive.
Of these, the external SSD is the
simplest option. When connected to
a USB 3 or Thunderbolt port, there’s
no reason you couldn’t use it as your
startup disk on a desktop Mac.
Fitting an SSD internally is trickier,
but can be done at home – even on
some portable Macs. OWC (macsales.
com), for example, sells kits for this
and has excellent instruction videos.
U
Various companies sell storage upgrade kits for
select Macs. Some models just can’t be upgraded.
Cheaper than same SSD capacity
Can give a good enough boost
Needs Mojave to format as APFS
Trickier to repair if one part fails
Pros & cons