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

51,016 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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