Can I boot Mac Mini M2 from an external drive ?

[poj]

Can I boot Mac Mini M2 from an external drive ?

I'm thinking about upgrade My Mac Mini 2018 / 3 GHz Intel i5 / 32 Gb Ram / 256 Gb HDD
to the Mac Mini M2 / 16 Gb Ram / 256 Gb SSD.

I use Samsung T7 1 Tb as an external bootable SSD drive with the Mini 2018, connected with USB c cable. Can I do the same with Mac Mini M2 ? will it work ?

I only use the Mini for light work - web browsing, e-mail mostly. Photo editing and clip editing by iMovie sometimes. I want to buy the M2 because I want to use the Touch ID to fill in all the password for me daily.

Right now, I use 394.29 Gb from 1 TB samsung T7.
Should I still use The T7 as an bootable drive ?
Or should I buy Mac Mini M2 / 16 Gb / 512 Gb SSD instead of 256 Gb SSD?

Thank you.

 

[phjo]

according to

you can, although for heavy memory usage, swap can be a problem, even more with a T7. If there is a possibility to trick macos to use internal drive for swap, it becomes quite usable I think

 

[poj]

Thank you very much.

according to

you can, although for heavy memory usage, swap can be a problem, even more with a T7. If there is a possibility to trick macos to use internal drive for swap, it becomes quite usable I think

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

I would advise you against buying the 256gb SSD.
Just... too small.

Get at least the 512gb drive (which is faster, too -- in fact, it's TWICE as fast as the 256gb).

16gb of RAM is good.
DO NOT buy ANY m-series Mac that has only 8gb of RAM. It's no longer "enough"...

 

[poj]

OP:

I would advise you against buying the 256gb SSD.
Just... too small.

Get at least the 512gb drive (which is faster, too -- in fact, it's TWICE as fast as the 256gb).

16gb of RAM is good.
DO NOT buy ANY m-series Mac that has only 8gb of RAM. It's no longer "enough"...

Thank you.
But in this case, I intend to use External SSD as the Boot disk.
So the internal SSD is useless to me.

 

[Fishrrman]

"But in this case, I intend to use External SSD as the Boot disk."

The internal SSD is MUCH faster than any external boot drive (with the exception of thunderbolt or USB4).

The read speed of a USB3 SSD is about 430MBps.
The read speed of a USB3.1 gen2 SSD is about 830MBps
The read speed of a tbolt3 drive (such as Samsung X5) is around 2,000MBps (this one is faster).

The read speed of an m2 Mini with a 256gb drive is about 1,500MBps.
The read speed of an m2 Mini with a 512gb drive is about 3,000MBps.

Why would you want to deliberately limit your speeds (with an external drive)?
The m2 Mini with the 512gb (or 1tb) drive will beat them all, by a wide margin.

 

[poj]

Agree. But I want to keep the cost down.

I'm using Mini 2018 / 256 Gb SSD with Samsung T7 1 Tb external SSD which is bootable. And I'm ok with the speed I got. Yes it's way slower than internal SSD. But if I have to choose internal SSD , I may have to choose 1 Tb instead. And that will make the cost too high for me.

I only use Mac Mini for light work. I upgrade to the M2 because I want to use the Touch ID to fill all the password for me. If not for the Touch ID, I think I don't have to upgrade at all.

But thank you very much for your help, I agree with everything you said.

 

[magbarn]

One of the reasons why Apple Silicon is so fast even with just 8gb of ram is swap speed. I guess 16gb of ram will likely not need to swap frequently, but swapping to the T7 will definitely give you spinning pinwheels. Also, why can't you just use the built in drive for OS and Apps and just use your T7 for data? That's how I use my Mini's...

 

[Chancha]

The more ideal way to keep cost down while not sacrificing too much performance / convenience is to stay with 256GB, and only install OS + apps on it, leaving minimal essential user data in the Home folder like emails, then leave all working data outside in various forms of external. That way you can pick and choose which external medium for a given set of data, say you have TBs of them you needs HDDs, you need more than decent performance then you need NVMe SSD via Thunderbolt. Most people just want somewhere in between then they get cheap USB 3.1 type-C SSDs.

Also booting off external even with respectable sequential speed in TB3/4 enclosures, you are still likely getting worse random speed and definitely much worse latency than using the mini's internal. Booting OS off from external should be reserved for edge cases, like testing a new OS, rescuing a system from another Mac, or dual booting etc.

 

[hippyeverafter]

One of the reasons why Apple Silicon is so fast even with just 8gb of ram is swap speed. I guess 16gb of ram will likely not need to swap frequently, but swapping to the T7 will definitely give you spinning pinwheels. Also, why can't you just use the built in drive for OS and Apps and just use your T7 for data? That's how I use my Mini's...

Totally agree. I use an MacMini M1 256Gb/8Gb as a Roon Server with an external 2Tb ssd for storage. Buying your own external drive keeps the cost down considerably.

 

[poj]

One of the reasons why Apple Silicon is so fast even with just 8gb of ram is swap speed. I guess 16gb of ram will likely not need to swap frequently, but swapping to the T7 will definitely give you spinning pinwheels. Also, why can't you just use the built in drive for OS and Apps and just use your T7 for data? That's how I use my Mini's...

It took about 400 Gb just for the OS and Apps. I store all my data on NAS.

 

[poj]

The more ideal way to keep cost down while not sacrificing too much performance / convenience is to stay with 256GB, and only install OS + apps on it, leaving minimal essential user data in the Home folder like emails, then leave all working data outside in various forms of external. That way you can pick and choose which external medium for a given set of data, say you have TBs of them you needs HDDs, you need more than decent performance then you need NVMe SSD via Thunderbolt. Most people just want somewhere in between then they get cheap USB 3.1 type-C SSDs.

Also booting off external even with respectable sequential speed in TB3/4 enclosures, you are still likely getting worse random speed and definitely much worse latency than using the mini's internal. Booting OS off from external should be reserved for edge cases, like testing a new OS, rescuing a system from another Mac, or dual booting etc.

Thank you. Right now the "Users" folder took 354 Gb. The internal 256 Gb is enough if I can find a way to move the "Users" folder to external storage. Users/Library took 197 Gb, Users/Pictures took 143 Gb.

I will try to google and find a way to do as you suggest. Thank you very much.

 

[Fishrrman]

How many apps does it take to consume 400gb of space?

Spend the extra money on internal storage. Yes, it's more than external storage, but not that much more.

Your approach is an example of what's called "penny-wise, but pound-foolish"...

 

[Orizence]

What I did was copy my User folder to the root of my Samsung T7 SSD that I called "Home", and went into advanced options in "users and groups" (im away from my mac dont know what its called) and changed the home folder location to my SSD. Now I use about 50Gb in my internal drive only!

I wouldnt boot the whole OS off the external that would slow things down needlessly. The only issue I can think of is that you can not boot your mac without the drive connected because it will mess up your log in, but personally I keep a dedicated port for my "home drive" so it never gets unplugged.

 

[poj]

How many apps does it take to consume 400gb of space?

Spend the extra money on internal storage. Yes, it's more than external storage, but not that much more.

Your approach is an example of what's called "penny-wise, but pound-foolish"...

No , I don't think so. I know how I use my computer. Right now, I use the external as a start up drive without any problem at all. Yes, there may be a way to improve and I may do it if it doesn't cost me too much. Everybody is different, don't you think it may be "overkill" for me the way you want me to ? I try to spend my money wisely, that's all.

 

[poj]

What I did was copy my User folder to the root of my Samsung T7 SSD that I called "Home", and went into advanced options in "users and groups" (im away from my mac dont know what its called) and changed the home folder location to my SSD. Now I use about 50Gb in my internal drive only!

I wouldnt boot the whole OS off the external that would slow things down needlessly. The only issue I can think of is that you can not boot your mac without the drive connected because it will mess up your log in, but personally I keep a dedicated port for my "home drive" so it never gets unplugged.

Thank you very much, very useful suggestion.

 

[poj]

What I did was copy my User folder to the root of my Samsung T7 SSD that I called "Home", and went into advanced options in "users and groups" (im away from my mac dont know what its called) and changed the home folder location to my SSD. Now I use about 50Gb in my internal drive only!

I wouldnt boot the whole OS off the external that would slow things down needlessly. The only issue I can think of is that you can not boot your mac without the drive connected because it will mess up your log in, but personally I keep a dedicated port for my "home drive" so it never gets unplugged.

I just found out that with the M1 & M2 Mac, you can't move the Home folder to the external drive anymore.

I did try to move it to the external drive. But when I choose the new path for that user in system preference, I can't restart and Mac stop responding. I have to force quit the system preference.

The other option is to move large file like Photos to external drive and then set the app to look for them there.

 

[Chancha]

Moving the entire Home was not ever advised anyway, with Apple Silicon it just made it more difficult.

You can still use symlinks to move large folders inside Home that consume too much space. The usual suspects: Photos.library, Music library, email database (if you have years of attachments), iOS backups in MobileSync.

 

[Orizence]

I just found out that with the M1 & M2 Mac, you can't move the Home folder to the external drive anymore.

I did try to move it to the external drive. But when I choose the new path for that user in system preference, I can't restart and Mac stop responding. I have to force quit the system preference.

The other option is to move large file like Photos to external drive and then set the app to look for them there.

That is incorrect... you absolutely can still use an external drive to house your home folder.

All I did was went into my home folder and dragged my user folder to the external drive and changed the setting. A pop up immediately came up to restart my mac.

My m2 Mac Mini just came in yesterday and I did the same procedure.

Did you copy a large user folder?

 

[Orizence]

Moving the entire Home was not ever advised anyway, with Apple Silicon it just made it more difficult.

You can still use symlinks to move large folders inside Home that consume too much space. The usual suspects: Photos.library, Music library, email database (if you have years of attachments), iOS backups in MobileSync.

I did it yesterday to my new Mac Mini M2 and all turned out well. I'm not sure what makes it more difficult, could you explain?

I did nothing different than I did with my Late-2012 Mac Mini.

 

[Chancha]

I did it yesterday to my new Mac Mini M2 and all turned out well. I'm not sure what makes it more difficult, could you explain?

I did nothing different than I did with my Late-2012 Mac Mini.

You will likely run into problems even if it works fine for now.

The horror stories I have heard: System updates will likely break something. Then firmware related or just a restart, or installing some software that needs admin permissions etc, upon restarting if the external drive is not mounted yet, you will be stuck since there is no admin account on the boot volume. Then there is the case of keychain having some parts of its keys stored on the user library that needs to be matched etc.

But I think if you create an entirely new user from scratch, with only normal user privileges, then move this folder before even logging in, then change its path in System Preferences; this way it is probably safe. But for a single user Mac, especially if it is work critical, I'd advise against doing this. Just move large files out of Home, and use symlinks if you must. The user Library namely Caches, Application Support, Preferences are frequently accessed and you get much slower responsiveness when these are off internal volume.

 

[Orizence]

You will likely run into problems even if it works fine for now.

The horror stories I have heard: System updates will likely break something. Then firmware related or just a restart, or installing some software that needs admin permissions etc, upon restarting if the external drive is not mounted yet, you will be stuck since there is no admin account on the boot volume. Then there is the case of keychain having some parts of its keys stored on the user library that needs to be matched etc.

But I think if you create an entirely new user from scratch, with only normal user privileges, then move this folder before even logging in, then change its path in System Preferences; this way it is probably safe. But for a single user Mac, especially if it is work critical, I'd advise against doing this. Just move large files out of Home, and use symlinks if you must. The user Library namely Caches, Application Support, Preferences are frequently accessed and you get much slower responsiveness when these are off internal volume.

I have always done it this way, people always say I'll have problems, and they might be right.... but years later I'm waiting for these problems...

I might change my ways and do symlinks though if I do run into any problems, but fingers crossed I don't need to. Keep in mind, I dont do "work" on my mac, I wont lose money if I have to create a new local account or reinstall my OS.

 

[poj]

That is incorrect... you absolutely can still use an external drive to house your home folder.

All I did was went into my home folder and dragged my user folder to the external drive and changed the setting. A pop up immediately came up to restart my mac.

My m2 Mac Mini just came in yesterday and I did the same procedure.

Did you copy a large user folder?

Really ? thank you. I will try again then.
size is about 350 Gb . After done copy file, I choose destination , click open then ok.
It become unresponsive and turn to grey .

I read from another thread, he also can't do it too.

 

[poj]

Moving the entire Home was not ever advised anyway, with Apple Silicon it just made it more difficult.

You can still use symlinks to move large folders inside Home that consume too much space. The usual suspects: Photos.library, Music library, email database (if you have years of attachments), iOS backups in MobileSync.

Thank you, I will check my data and try it.

 

[Orizence]

Really ? thank you. I will try again then.
size is about 350 Gb . After done copy file, I choose destination , click open then ok.
It become unresponsive and turn to grey .

I read from another thread, he also can't do it too.

Try with a new account and copy your stuff over after? It might be worth keeping a local "admin" on your mac anyways. I live dangerously, but as others have said, there is a chance of something stopping you from logging in if something goes wrong.