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I have an old 2013 iMac and it is very slow because the hard drive is corrupted. I want to replace the hard drive with a new ssd, but before I do that I want to see how the computer would run with an ssd. Unfortunately, I don’t have any free ssds laying around to install macOS on, so I am wondering if using a flash drive would work well and as smooth as an ssd as long as I left enough room available?

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  • A common flash drive is going to be much slower than an SSD, primarily because they use a cheaper form of storage. I would expect most spinning hard drives to be faster or about the same. It will, however, technically work in a pinch.
    – Wowfunhappy
    Commented Feb 15, 2019 at 0:26
  • Unless you purchase one of the faster USB 3 flash drives which can do 5Gb/sec, you'll be limited to USB 2 speeds of 480MB/sec where as SATA (internal) is limited to 6Gb/sec. It's inherently slower out of the gate. That said, this is good for diagnosing issues, not for performance benchmarks. I can pretty much guarantee that it will be significantly faster with an SSD.
    – Allan
    Commented Feb 15, 2019 at 0:28
  • HDD => SSD was really night and day for me. Much, much, faster, esp at boot. MBP late 11. What I also did was to swap out the CD drive and put the old HDD in its place using a caddy. (about $40). Do backup frequently, SSDs can die unexpectedly wo any chance of data recovery (it’s happened to me once).
    – JL Peyret
    Commented Feb 15, 2019 at 1:11
  • Would there be a significant difference between using an external harddrive to run macOS using USB 3.0 and running it internally?
    – Sebastian
    Commented Feb 15, 2019 at 15:52

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Yes and no, Let me elaborate. Most USB 3.0 drives could run it almost as good as an hdd, If you have a SSD, that would be the best option and is usually faster than the hard drive the comes with any mac. Usb 2.0 can technically work but is very slow as the read/write speeds aren't the best. Im currently running mac os x 10.11.6 on a usb 3.0 flash drive i got from walmart for $17. I will mention however, that the newer OS your using, The slower it will be on os x. I still think that USB booting is great though because of the portability. Just install the OS on the usb flash drive, and hold down alt at startup and it should work perfectly fine. If you have any questions or want me to make you a bootable image for your flash drive, hmu.

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We can’t know the speed of your flash drive. Now any storage is better than no mac running, so go ahead and give it a shot, but “best” depends on your needs and expectations. Details like bus interface, drive controller and flash media you buy matter greatly. If you are looking to spend money on an external drive to be sure the value per performance is acceptable. There are vast differences in options that fit under the “external flash” umbrella.

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