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CarlosNino

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 5, 2020
11
4
First of all hello to all the community :)
I'm about to get a Mac Mini and I wonder if I can use an external SSD via USB-C for Cache, work and Temporary files both from the system as for the applications (like Photoshop, Lightroom, web browsers, email etc)

Thank you.
 
Any or most any external is much much slower. SCSI array drive setups made sense - in decades past. Of course your prjects and and files might put on external media but you might want to move project files to the internal drive.

Internal drive expect to get in excess of 2,000MB/sec. and just get 1TB model and 32/64GB (upgrade it from 8 or 16 yourself)
 
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Any or most any external is much much slower. SCSI array drive setups made sense - in decades past. Of course your prjects and and files might put on external media but you might want to move project files to the internal drive.

Internal drive expect to get in excess of 2,000MB/sec. and just get 1TB model and 32/64GB (upgrade it from 8 or 16 yourself)
With an external Samsung T7 (for example) you get half the speed of an internal SSD but I'm not going to edit 4K video, you think performance would drop so much?
 
There is no need or reason to do what you proposed. Putting swap on its own drive or partition is gone. I spent today moving 200GB to internal drive and it did so without any effort.

Blackmagic: T7 500GB ~500MB/sec
T7 1TB 900MB/sec - both fresh erased APFS connected via Thunderbolt
vs 2500MB/sec matter internal

Did you ever work on Mac Pro? Photoshop = memory and fast drives. Truth is the Mini 2020 can be a real gem and workhorse - though not sure eGPU would help. http://www.macperformanceguide.com use to to be great for custom config and get the best setup.

You aren't going to stress Mini with Safari, Edge, 100 tabs in Chrome
 
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With an external Samsung T7 (for example) you get half the speed of an internal SSD

Actually, I only get about one third of the speed of the internal SSD on my Mini. Nothing really wrong with that, very happy with my T7's and they may be fine for you, just pointing out that the speed difference is significant. :)

mini-2018.png


samsung-t7-2tb.png
 
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There is no need or reason to do what you proposed. Putting swap on its own drive or partition is gone. I spent today moving 200GB to internal drive and it did so without any effort.

Blackmagic: T7 500GB ~500MB/sec
T7 1TB 900MB/sec - both fresh erased APFS connected via Thunderbolt
vs 2500MB/sec matter internal

Did you ever work on Mac Pro? Photoshop = memory and fast drives. Truth is the Mini 2020 can be a real gem and workhorse - though not sure eGPU would help. http://www.macperformanceguide.com use to to be great for custom config and get the best setup.

You aren't going to stress Mini with Safari, Edge, 100 tabs in Chrome
I see. Actually I'm moving from a 2009 Mac Pro which I got for video back then and just wanted a simpler option for Photoshop. I thought about the Mini because I want to use my 2 Eizo monitors AND not spend so much after buying a new Mac Pro for video... :eek:
 
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If you want something almost as fast as the internal, then you'll have to go for an SSD in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure rather than a USB3.1/2 one. It will use the same port on the MacMini, but is abut twice as fast as USB (upto 2000MBps with the º

If you want something almost as fast as the internal, then you'll have to go for an SSD in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure rather than a USB3.1/2 one. It will use the same port on the MacMini, but is abut twice as fast as USB (upto 2000MBps with the right SSD/enclosure).

Or you could look to Lacie and pay £400 for a 1TB 2800MBps TB3 drive.
x075aax_3.jpg
x075aax.jpg
Actually I was just looking at it right now. It's 402€ here in Spain. I looks like a good option but let me explain exactly what I'll be doing with the Mac Mini.
I use a Nikon D800 that gives me a maximum 75-80MB RAW (Nikon's NEF) files. On Photoshop I work with light, color, sharpness, tones and pure photography matters, I do not hassle with hardware burning filters or processes. So in my experience I thought the Mini with the 6 core i7 processor, 2X32GB 2666MHz OCW RAM and the 250GB internal SSD + the external Lacie should be more than enough.
What do you guys think?
 
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I don't know what your pricing is like, so I'll just use US prices. Was just looking on Apple's site and I don't see the option to get a 256gb SSD on the i7 model, the 512 is the minimum. That surprised me, can you actually get the 256 in Spain?

Anyway, in the US it costs $600 to upgrade to a 2tb internal SSD. I see the 2tb Samsung X5 external thunderbolt SSD on Amazon for $550. To me it would be a no-brainer to go with the 2tb internal SSD on the Mini. As you can see from the screenshot I posted, it still out-performs the write speed on an external thunderbolt SSD and it just isn't as "kludgy". Aside from that, the internal SSD can never be upgraded so it makes a lot of sense to get the biggest possible.

That is what I did with my own Mini and I have absolutely no regrets. Even if it was (for example) $200 more for the internal 2tb SSD, would do the same thing. I don't think you would ever regret having a bigger internal drive. Now, I do understand that saving a couple hundred dollars might make a big difference for some people, but I would buy the biggest internal disk you can possibly afford. If you are keeping the Mini for a number of years, it really isn't that much.


Screen Shot 2020-11-06 at 12.15.23 PM.png
 
I don't know what your pricing is like, so I'll just use US prices. Was just looking on Apple's site and I don't see the option to get a 256gb SSD on the i7 model, the 512 is the minimum. That surprised me, can you actually get the 256 in Spain?

Anyway, in the US it costs $600 to upgrade to a 2tb internal SSD. I see the 2tb Samsung X5 external thunderbolt SSD on Amazon for $550. To me it would be a no-brainer to go with the 2tb internal SSD on the Mini. As you can see from the screenshot I posted, it still out-performs the write speed on an external thunderbolt SSD and it just isn't as "kludgy". Aside from that, the internal SSD can never be upgraded so it makes a lot of sense to get the biggest possible.

That is what I did with my own Mini and I have absolutely no regrets. Even if it was (for example) $200 more for the internal 2tb SSD, would do the same thing. I don't think you would ever regret having a bigger internal drive. Now, I do understand that saving a couple hundred dollars might make a big difference for some people, but I would buy the biggest internal disk you can possibly afford. If you are keeping the Mini for a number of years, it really isn't that much.


View attachment 1443508
This is the Apple website in Spain for the smallest Mac Mini as I described: i7 6 core processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD
 

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That is interesting, like I said, I was surprised you can't get the 256 in the US. Nevertheless, that does not change my opinion. Get the biggest SSD if at all possible, I think you are off to a bad start when you buy a new machine that already does not have enough storage for your needs. We have countless threads here in all the forums where people bought less than they needed and later came to regret it.
 
That is interesting, like I said, I was surprised you can't get the 256 in the US. Nevertheless, that does not change my opinion. Get the biggest SSD if at all possible, I think you are off to a bad start when you buy a new machine that already does not have enough storage for your needs. We have countless threads here in all the forums where people bought less than they needed and later came to regret it.
Actually the internal main drive is for the OS and the applications. I keep all data in a NAS system and some external HDDs. Bu I will try to get the biggest SSD possible with the Mini.
 
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With SSDs you generally see more bandwidth for r/w with larger drive capacity, more channels for I/O.

With a 500GB and 1TB Samsung T7 external using the USB-C Thunderbolt 2 interface I was surprised they did differ. Notsure if warrants 2TB though internal. I assume the system will be holding large cache files as you work. I like to have twice the capacity I might ever need, and allow for the drive to use its spare SSD cells or pages.
 
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With SSDs you generally see more bandwidth for r/w with larger drive capacity, more channels for I/O.

With a 500GB and 1TB Samsung T7 external using the USB-C Thunderbolt 2 interface I was surprised they did differ. Notsure if warrants 2TB though internal. I assume the system will be holding large cache files as you work. I like to have twice the capacity I might ever need, and allow for the drive to use its spare SSD cells or pages.
This might be a good option:
 
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