Best way to expand storage? (Tiny USB drives?)

[Gregintosh]

I was wondering if anyone has found any good USB drives to help expand storage for the M1 MacBooks. I got the 512GB model, but I feel it is not enough.

As a frequent traveler in places without reliable internet (currently writing this post from a resort in the Philippines where the wi-fi is barely good enough for a web browser), I can't just rely on streaming/iCloud for storage.

I would prefer to save the internal capacity as much as possible for video or audio files I would work on and offload things like the Photos library, backups from my DSLR, and the occasional movies or tv shows to a semi-permanently mounted flash drive (where speed/performance is not going to be an issue).

I saw some really tiny USB drives that barely stick out up to 512GB in capacity. For example, the SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1. But the only options I found are USB type A.

Type-C USB sticks exist, but I wouldn't be able to leave that in 24/7 like one of the tiny drives. The last thing I want is another loose accessory I can lose as I pack/unpack and travel between destinations.

Hoping someone here has some good solutions.

 

[Gnattu]

How about buying an SD-Card reader and use your camera's spare card?

 

[leons]

Great idea!

 

[ed.]

I work a lot with video especially in AE, and a long standing advice is to have your OS and apps on a different drive than your work files. Not sure if that's the case for all apps, but in my case I've set up my systems a long time ago with all my work on fast external SSD drives. That allows me to work seamlessly from my iMac to the laptop just by moving the disk. As for tiny drives: check whether the drive speed is enough: I've tried offloading data on an SD card in my old macbook and it was painfully slow. If you don't mind the cable, fast and tiny usb drives like the t7 are now affordable and I don't think they're much bigger than an SD card reader.

 

[Significant1]

I would like to know too. I have the SanDisk Ultra Fit on my old 11" air. No usb-c key/card reader I have found is just a sleek. I don't think side-mounted hubs work with my hard case, But not really interested in the extra bulk, since I mostly move around the house at home.

But the speed of Ultra Fit is not very fast and it gets quite warm. I mainly use it for timemachine, so as long as it does it work, I don't notice the (lack of) speed.

I have usb-c hub, with card reader for my MBA M1, when using external display. I just keep getting warning about not ejecting sd-card. An neither Ejectify nor Jettison really work that well for me. Maybe I just need to do a bit more fine-tuning. I would have like a physical button on the dock to press for ejecting.

All this hassle originate from my time-capsule breaking and looking for alternative. But even the smallest NAS solution is more than I want. My next plan is to buy a raspberry pi 4, set it up as nas and use my usb-key + sd-card attached to it.

 

[leman]

I was wondering if anyone has found any good USB drives to help expand storage for the M1 MacBooks. I got the 512GB model, but I feel it is not enough.

That is a great way to lose data (especially if you put your photos library on it). USB drives are meant for data transfer or redundancy, they are not reliable enough for data storage.

I cannot in good faith advice you to use any of the "semi-permanent" storage extension solutions, they are a terrible idea and they will make you lose your data.

I would prefer to save the internal capacity as much as possible for video or audio files I would work on and offload things like the Photos library, backups from my DSLR, and the occasional movies or tv shows to a semi-permanently mounted flash drive (where speed/performance is not going to be an issue).

I assume that most of your storage needs comes from your professional work with audio/video? In this case I would recommend you to get a fast external SSD (thunderbolt preferably) that you use for your projects + an additional portable HDD for backups. This way you have proper data separation, only need the external disk when you actually have to work on a project, and only use the internal SSD to manage the OS and your basic data. Not to mention that this kind of work usually generates a lot of I/O, so you will be saving your SSD from deterioration as well (although that is secondary concern as Apple SSDs have very good write endurance).

 

[Leon1das]

Just get yourself Samsung T7 (evolved T5 external SSD).

T7 is NVMe drive with great speed and not bigger than a stack of 5 credit cards...

Got 1Tb on sales for 135 eur in Europe..

I have it formatted to carry external bootable BugSur (if internal one gets corrupted) + still have large chunk for TimeMachine and one large exFAT partition for exchange with Windows/Android.

 

[Fishrrman]

You could buy an nvme "blade" drive, and put it into a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure (many available).

The result will be a small external drive that should give read speeds in the 700-800MBps range (or even a little higher).

Good enough for "general storage" of files, media, etc.

 

[Significant1]

You could consider somthing like this.

USB C Hub, 8 in 1 Multi-port Type C Hub with MiniDP 5K@60Hz MiniDP Video Output, SATA III M.2 SSD Storage Design, Thunderbolt 3 &TF/SD Card Reader, USB-C Power Delivery, 2 USB Ports, Compatible with type-C Devices - EXCUTY.COM

Price: £32.99 UPC: 826705174781 brand: Excuty ➠【8-in-1 USB-C HUB】: USB-C(Type c) to MiniDP 5K Apdater with USB 3.0 port/2 USB…

www.excuty.com

I don't know anything about that product, it is just an example I found by searching for macbook usb hub with ssd.

 

[junkw]

buy a 1TB M1

 

[gogogo2]

TB3 case + Sn750, you got read and write speed>2000m,