Don't update to Catalina without SSD

[keinowaara]

Sorry for the quite stark wording in the title but it caught the eye, right? This is no news to most of you, and it wasn't for me either, but I just didn't fully appreciate the fact when deciding to update my rig to Catalina, having only traditional HDDs. At first, everything was quite snappy but soon it became like wading in mud: my startup from Clover screen to desktop with all functionality took about two minutes, apps opened crazy slow, even browsing Safari was laggy. Incremental updates to this 10.15.2 made things better again for a day or two but then it was the same horror.

Until I bit the bullet and bought a 2TB Crucial MX500 SSD. I cloned my HDD with CCC, installed Clover on the SSD and just copied the contents of my previous EFI folder into the new one. During the first boot I was expecting a world of trouble but it went smooth as butter! It was as if I had switched to a new CPU or something, everything was so fast. I could hardly believe the difference. What was most unexpected was that it affected my GPU speed as well. I got 4 extra FPS in Unigine Valley and 2 FPS in Cinebench, and this was while the OS was still indexing the new SSD. Now it's been several days and there's no degradation in speed, just so smooth. For example:

- boot time from Clover screen to fully functional desktop is now under 30 seconds (from Clover to login screen 18 seconds)
- apps open approximately five times quicker, depending on app
- tasks inside apps virtually never again show the beach ball
- system is much quieter (I still have a 2 TB video editing disk that spins up when needed, otherwise it's oh-so-quiet)

Only now I'm appreciating Catalina as OS. Sad to say, it's a nightmare if run from a HDD. It was a bit infuriating spending 270 euros on a drive but turned out to be one of the best tech decisions I've ever made. And I don't have to worry that much anymore about a mechanicel failure on my already aged HDD. Backups are still needed, for sure. But if you find yourself in the situation that I described at the start of this post I'd say: don't hesitate switching to an SSD. Sure it'll cost you but you can't believe the difference it makes!

Here's a good read on why HDDs are so slow on APFS.

 

[gonzolak]

Wait till you discover NVME (no offence) HDD to SSD = bike to car, SSD to NVME = car to plane hehe

 

[zangadao]

Wait till you discover NVME (no offence) HDD to SSD = bike to car, SSD to NVME = car to plane hehe

Except you buy a NVMe SSD Mode, in this case you brought a plane without wings hahahahahaha

 

[Ploddles]

Except you buy a NVMe SSD Mode, in this case you brought a plane without wings hahahahahaha

???

 

[JoelTheSuperior]

Wait till you discover NVME (no offence) HDD to SSD = bike to car, SSD to NVME = car to plane hehe

Honestly I respectfully disagree. I use an NVMe drive and I highly recommend it, but whilst HDD to SDD is a huge upgrade, NVMe, whilst on paper a hell of a lot faster (it definitely is) the real world performance improvement isn't nearly as big. Still well worth it if you've got money to burn though.

 

[trs96]

This thread goes into the reasons why the OP had such a major slowdown of the HDDs after switching to Catalina.

Using a Mechanical drive with the APFS file system may not be ideal - How to upgrade your iMac

I support many iMacs at work that are dated from about 2011 to 2013. They all came with either a 500 GB or 1TB mechanical HDD as the boot drive. It's always a good idea to upgrade them to Mojave (2012 or newer iMacs) and a new SSD. (opening one up is not a simple process though) The 2011s don't...

www.tonymacx86.com

 

[Bustycat]

Honestly I respectfully disagree. I use an NVMe drive and I highly recommend it, but whilst HDD to SDD is a huge upgrade, NVMe, whilst on paper a hell of a lot faster (it definitely is) the real world performance improvement isn't nearly as big. Still well worth it if you've got money to burn though.

The prices of SATA and NVMe SSDs are now very close. I am seriously thinking about buying a new NVMe SSD for my macOS system drive because some mid-range NVMe SSDs are even cheaper than SATA ones now.

 

[keinowaara]

Hey, great conversations here -- thanks, all! Still learning about this topic. I saw one Windows game comparison video between all three, HDD, SATA SSD and NVME, and there the only difference truly worth mentioning was between HDD and the SSDs. Difference in game startups between SSD types was from one second to 5 max. Of course it might be a different story on the Mac side? Nevertheless it didn't appear significant enough for me to even contemplate spending extra. What are your thoughts? Wrong conclusions?

 

[keinowaara]

One more thing: arriving back from Christmas family "tourné" I booted the Mac and couldn't believe my eyes: from Clover to desktop in 10 seconds, and Safari opened first uncached page 5 seconds from that. This is sweeeet!

 

[gonzolak]

Hey, great conversations here -- thanks, all! Still learning about this topic. I saw one Windows game comparison video between all three, HDD, SATA SSD and NVME, and there the only difference truly worth mentioning was between HDD and the SSDs. Difference in game startups between SSD types was from one second to 5 max. Of course it might be a different story on the Mac side? Nevertheless it didn't appear significant enough for me to even contemplate spending extra. What are your thoughts? Wrong conclusions?

I saw that comparison too (HDD, SSD, NVME loading time on games) and thought: ehh not worth it:} I needed badly new drive for Windows and realized that ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 1TB with real speeds 3500 MB/s, 3000 MB/s is priced LOWER than samsung SSD I was ready to buy. So I go ADATA route and boy, worth every penny. Windows loading time are INSANE, response in loading programs and other day to day tasks INSANE, cloning disk time INSANE . Youtube comparision doesn't do it justice and for that price highly recommend it. Next buy will be second nvme for macOS.