Solid state external drive for MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013

[WaveHunter]

I have a technical question about buying an external solid state drive for my MacBook Pro. 

 

My MacBook Pro has: 

* Two Thunderbolt 2 ports (up to 20 Gbps)

* Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)

 

I also use VMWare Fusion so that I can run "virtual windows operating systems on my MacBook Pro.  My problem is that my MacBook Pro has a non-removable solid-state drive that is only 500gB capacity, and right now I am down to only 20gB of free space.

 

Would it be possible to somehow make the external drive bootable, or in some way be able to have the VMWare Fusion & Windows operating systems running from those external drive, and not have a "speed bottleneck" from the thunderbolt connections?  I mean, 20gbps sounds pretty fast to me, but I just don't know...and I especially don't know if I can make VMware Fusion work if it is located on an external drive. 

 

My other question:  Does anybody know of a solid state external drive that connects with Thunderbolt (and not just USB 3.0).  I've been looking on Lazada and AliExpress and so far have not found one.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by WaveHunter