Ext SSD, Boot Drives & Docks

[bravozulu]

The single most daunting impediment for me acquiring an SSD to be used as an external boot drive for my iMac is finding a reasonable and workable dock for the darned thing,

It seems that a number of drive docks with TB cabling don't work for booting the OS. At least, those the complaints/advice heard on a number of forums.

Well, a friend in Japan (of all places) has a solution that works. He obtained it from a supplier here on the East Coast. And it costs a fraction of the docks/cases advertised online.

This will house a Crucial 2.5" SSD that I am ordering. Hope this is of use to others.

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www.memorydepot.com

 

[Martin.au]

Failing that, I can verify the seagate 2.5" adaptor works fine. I pull 350/390MB/s using a samsung 840pro 512gb and a samsung 830 512gb.

The LaCie rugged enclosure also works .

 

[Mike Boreham]

The link in the OP gives 404 for me but I suspect it is an external SSD adapter/enclosure.

I hosed two Crucial 512 M4 SSD by using them in Seagate portable thunderbolt adapters. I told Crucial what I had done and they said SSD are more sensitive to power supply blips than HDDs and are meant for using inside computers or with separate power supplies. Even though it was my fault they kindly replaced them both with new M500 480 SSD.

Googling found support for this, especially with larger SSD. I used a128 Crucial SSD in an adapter without problem although Drive DX found some SMART issues with it.

I have used the Thunderbolt adapters plenty with the Seagate HDD drives they are intended for and they work fine. But I am now very wary of putting SSDs in any form of external enclosure/adapter.

In view of the second post, maybe the problem is one with Crucial SSDs and other brands are OK.

 

[bravozulu]

Mike, try this link. This shows their hard drives. Tabs at the top of webpage will take you their housings. Which include the 2.5" enclosure with ThunderBolt port and cable and power brick.

http://www.memorydepot.com/list.asp?maincat=SSD

This is the link to the TB 2.5" drive dock w/ power supply.'

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www.memorydepot.com

 

[noirdesir]

Here is another Test in French of external 2.5" TB cases (Google translation). What is particular, is that they are bus-powered. The second test even creates an external fusion drive with them (translation).

 

[Mike Boreham]

You may well be completely OK...I am just a burnt child who fears the fire!.

Here is the link to the experience which matched mine: "Warning: Large SSDs and Seagate Thunderbolt adapters". Note the blog linked in that was reporting on a Samsung SSD not a Crucial.

Certainly wall powered may be a crucial factor (hoho), and maybe something else was going on with my bad experience. Maybe my problem was related only to the Seagate adapter (although there were the SMART errors when I put it a 128 in a USB enclosure).

Good luck.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Here is another Test in French of external 2.5" TB cases (Google translation). What is particular, is that they are bus-powered. The second test even creates an external fusion drive with them (translation).

None of those links are working for me at the moment, so all I can say is that the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter is bus powered as well. As I said in my other reply just now, maybe there was something else going on in my bad experience, or maybe there is a problem with the Seagate TB adapters.

In doing a lot of experimenting in topics like this, I have found Drive DX with the SATsmartdriver installed (enables full SMART data to be retrieved from externals) to be invaluable. I had one set up which appeared to be working fine, but the detailed SMART data from Drive DX showed that a huge number of UDMA CRC error were occurring....these are recoverable so not seen by user).

 

[Martin.au]

You may well be completely OK...I am just a burnt child who fears the fire!.

Here is the link to the experience which matched mine: "Warning: Large SSDs and Seagate Thunderbolt adapters". Note the blog linked in that was reporting on a Samsung SSD not a Crucial.

Certainly wall powered may be a crucial factor (hoho), and maybe something else was going on with my bad experience. Maybe my problem was related only to the Seagate adapter (although there were the SMART errors when I put it a 128 in a USB enclosure).

Good luck.

That is actually a good point that I'd forgotten to mention. I had a similar issue with a Samsung 840 Pro 512GB and the Seagate adaptor. After messing around with it a bit I pinpointed the issue to the Elgato TB cable I was using. That cable is now going to a hard disk raid, and I'm using Apple TB cables to the Seagate Adaptors. Since changing cables it's been very stable.