Indigo Domotics

Ok, not so old, a 2017 27”. A few years ago the Fusion Drive was getting really slow and I got a local shop to put in a 2.5” sata ssd that was better but not amazing.
It was ok until 3+ months ago when it started crashing regularly, breech balling all the time and randomly freezing then carrying on a few minutes later with no obvious reason.
No errors, all disk tests came back normal. I even ran some full on memory tests.

My wife has resigned herself to me buying a new machine and screen, but in amongst decision paralysis between M2 mini pro and M1 studio I tried a Thunderbolt ssd. Stupidly bought a too small one, but migrated my setup onto it and it was amazing. Read and write at 500-800 (better than internal ssd) and no more problems!

I was looking at just buying a larger version when I started looking at blade ssd for internal but decided the cost and effort vs risk of damage was too much when I saw nvme external enclosures.
Fast forward and I have 2TB Samsung 980 pro in a external Thunderbolt enclosure running at 2400-2700 read and write!

My iMac is lightning fast again and thankfully none of the slow boot speeds I’ve read about.
Plus 2TB for price of a slower 1TB external drive. Ok mine isn’t rigged and portable but I don’t need it to be.

Wish I had done it sooner!! Cheaper than a new machine!


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Thanks for sharing this. I have a 2017 iMac that has been "not quite right" from just about the time the warranty ran out. It still works, but it is slooooow. I've done all the usual stuff (clearing RAM) formatting and reinstalling from scratch, etc. and nothing has sped it up. I might give this a try just to see what happens. I won't need anything near that large.

I started with a LaCie portable 500gb for £70. Works well. Boot was slow, maybe 30-45 seconds. Didn’t try and fix as was temporary solution.

This is my enclosure and it’s great.

Deal: 40Gbps NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure Compatible with USB 4.0/3.2/3.1/3.0/2.0 Type-C, 40Gbps Mobile M.2 NVMe Enclosure to PCIe 2280 M-Key (B+M Key) SSD Aluminum Alloy External Enclosure, Up to 2700MB /s https://amzn.eu/d/j69mfPv

I read a lot after purchase that Samsung has trim issues on Macs, or used to. I went with the 980 pro to get max speed and it certainly is. Same as native Apple ssd on my 2020 mini. Some, maybe old, advice is to go with another brand for Macs. oWC is US or maybe WD.
Thankfully mine works and runs as fast as Thunderbolt allows.

You can certainly do smaller and cheaper but I think I read some 500 GB drives aware slower than larger.


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But in short definitely do it. You’ll be blown away with what your iMac can do again.


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My overall concern is not that the machine has a capacity issue (capacity in terms of being able to do things quickly, not available storage) but rather that it might have a main board issue of some kind which (I don't believe) a Thunderbolt drive could overcome.

But I'll admit, I never even thought to try!

Hence the reason for my post. I had assumed my machine had a major fault as every test said that the drive was fine, and I assumed the worst. So why I was considering paying out for a Studio and Apple display! Rather glad that it was a much cheaper fix.

Worst case I figured I would then have a super speedy timemachine drive, or just return it, hence testing first with a much cheaper drive. £70 vs £300.

I appreciate you sharing this. I have a 2017 imac that has been on solely Indigo duty for 3 years now. This sounds like a great improvement. Does it boot off the external drive? Can I use the internal drive as a back up to the boot drive (I have carbon copy clone my fusion drive to an external SSD every night now, and want to continue to have nightly bootable clones).

Yes it boots off the external drive and a week it doesnt seem to have problems

I did mess up the permissions on my user folders significantly but think that was due to 2 migrations and overwriting users incorrectly.
Had to boot to single user mode and create a new admin account to transfer ownership and then back again. All seems good now.

Tbh I haven't deleted the internal drive but yes that's the plan to wipe it and use as backups maybe. With a 2tb SSD I don't need extra storage! Will double check all ok before I do. Maybe keep a usb recovery drive on hand just in case.

Lots on line about people long term booting from external drives.

edit: I wrote this on my phone, came down to log into the iMac and it had restarted overnight due to an error. Not sure if its a dodgy app, other hardware or drive related. But still much more reliable than it was.

I'm sure this would make Jay and Matt shudder, but I have to shout out to Open Core Legacy Patcher.

I have a 2013 MBP with a busted screen that ran my Indigo setup for many years, but it could no longer be updated past Big Sur I think it was. After decommissioning it as my Indigo box, I experimented with OCLP on it and I have to say that the results were very impressive. Monterey runs *just fine* on it, and it is quite stable. If I had tried OCLP a few weeks earlier, I would not have had to purchase the M1 Mini I'm typing on now, because I have a spare i7 mini that I didn't want to use because it couldn't be updated past Big Sur. But with OCLP it can run Ventura!

If you've got old Macs sitting in a box somewhere, pull one out and try OCLP on it.

Interesting. I've a very old one that I might try that with.


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Different Computers wrote:

I'm sure this would make Jay and Matt shudder, but I have to shout out to Open Core Legacy Patcher.

We'll just pretend I didn't read that.

This just came up on my youtube having watched a video of his on the M2 Mini and is the enclosure I have, and he shows the speeds it can achieve,.

https://youtu.be/67wRuhZmyv4


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There may be something to this slow I/O business. My Acasis enclosure and WD Black SSD (says it'll do 4,000MB/s) are on order. I was able to grab the SSD for US$40 and got a 14% coupon for the enclosure. Hopefully, this will do the trick.

The iMac I'm having trouble with:



Thanks again for the tip -- you may have saved me thousands.

Wow. That’s crazy slow. Must take an eternity to boot!
You won’t get that speed over Thunderbolt but it will be getting there.
In theory it allows 40 gbps = 5000 MBs but I read somewhere that up to 10 gbps is used for other purposes so theoretical top speed is more like 3750 but even that’s probably unlikely.
However even an external usb 3 drive at 300MBs would have been massive change. If you get 2000 it will be huge!!

I’ve just done the same to a 2014 mac mini with 4GB ram that I put in a drawer years ago as was painful to use.
Took 2 days to get it upgraded from Mojave to Monterey as the drive was so slow but then migrated Monterey to external ssd (only runs at 300MB) and suddenly I have a machine I can give my children to learn to code on.

siclark wrote:

Wow. That’s crazy slow. Must take an eternity to boot!

Measurable in epochs.