How Do I Cope With Mac mini M4 Dismal 256GB Storage?

[Cosmo M3]

Using the OWC 4TB Aura Ultra IV, will there be any issues running it as the boot drive?

As far as I can tell, I want a USB4 40GBps and an ssd with dram. Does the Aura Ultra IV have dram?

What other ssd recommendations would people have for a 4TB NVMe drive for OS use in an external enclosure?

Thanks fam!

I have no experience of booting off an external drive myself so I wouldn't be able to give input on that.

The Aura Ultra IV is a high-tier/spec SSD. They're expensive but one of the best on the market. You should be good.

Another popular option would be the Samsung 990 Pro with the 7,000mbps speeds.

 

[marstan]

I am intending to boot off the 4TB drive and have it so that everything is just on the external and not boot into the native storage.

Note that if you boot Sequoia 15.1 off the external AI is not available.

 

[paronga]

I have no experience of booting off an external drive myself so I wouldn't be able to give input on that.

The Aura Ultra IV is a high-tier/spec SSD. They're expensive but one of the best on the market. You should be good.

Another popular option would be the Samsung 990 Pro with the 7,000mbps speeds.

That’s reassuring news. I can get the OWC unit with 4TB Aura drive, local stock in Australia, with a local long time mac reseller brand here , for $640 AUD. which I can stomach compared to what Apple will give me for the same price.

Note that if you boot Sequoia 15.1 off the external AI is not available.

This sounds like a plus to me honestly. I’ve got a laptop for life things this Mac mini is for the studio so no need for AI.

 

[ericinboston]

...Will 10gbe be fast enough for editing movies (just home videos)? or should I just plan on external?

Any other tips to keep this small storage working for me? I was too cheap to upgrae the storage.

Essentially take anything measured in Gigabits and divide by 10 to get Gigabytes.

So, 10Gigabit (per second) speed (in your case over ethernet) would be 1Gigabyte speed (per second). Now, do you truly have 10Gigabit ethernet cables in 100% of your ethernet setup?...and a 10Gigabit Switch? If not, you instantly slow down to the slowest link in the chain. Then factor in that you are not going to get 100% speed on any medium. Finally, whatever NAS drive you have connected to your 10Gigabit ethernet will need to operate at 10Gigabit speed (such as being NVMe). Then you have to figure in if you are working on large video file sizes as well as the resolution of the movies (4k vs 1080 vs 720 etc) which will all have input on how much speed you need for real-time video editing vs. choppy video editing while the software drags trying to read/write to the drive.

Now, factor in all above pieces to the puzzle as well as price tag(s) and actual setup and ask yourself if it's just easier, more reliable, and simpler to have an external hard drive such as the Sandisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD for $150 that operates at 1Gigabyte (10Gigabit) speed via USB-C. There's a 4TB option, too, for $279. Both on Amazon.

Remember that your network (and therefore NAS drive performance) will be affected by any other traffic on the network.

Do the math and maybe it's just easier (and better) for you to return the Mini and buy a new one with much higher storage. I believe the storage internal to the Mini will be at least 2x faster than the very, very fast Sandisk I mentioned above since the 2022 Mini M2 operated at 27Gigabits per second (2.7Gigabytes per second which is more than 2x faster than the fastest external Sandisk USB). There was some wishy washy moves by Apple on the Mini M2's various configurations and people were getting much different drive performance...if I recall correctly the Mini M2 base's 256GB drive speed was crippled compared to the 1TB and 2TB.

There are some good suggestions on this thread about building your own external drive but I don't think you are looking for top-of-the-line drive performance (as well as building it yourself) otherwise you would have just plunked down the same amount of money when you bought from Apple and just got the larger drive.

My general answer: Return it and get the larger drive which will likely only be about $200 more than a USB-C setup, far faster than the USB-C, no external devices hanging around, and also leaves your USB-C ports open for future drives that will surely come down in price if/when you need them.

 

[ericinboston]

Just buy a Samsung 990 Pro 4TB with an external case if you can. Stick it behind your screen with a velcro and voilà.

Can you recommend an enclosure for this? What machine are you using this external setup on and are you getting the full read/write speeds?

 

[EugW]

Can you recommend an enclosure for this? What machine are you using this external setup on and are you getting the full read/write speeds?

There is a big thread on this.

Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

Thunderbolt 3 / 4 / USB 4 NVMe Enclosures The best enclosures for high speed transfers (2.5GB/s+) usually have one of these 2 chipsets: Thunderbolt 3: Intel's JHL7440, e.g. Acasis TBU-401 / 405 Orico TB3-S2 USB 4: Asmedia ADM2464PD Jeyi TB-2464 Maiwo 2464 ( NewEgg / AliExpress) Satechi Pro...

forums.macrumors.com

Also, I ordered this and will report back on it next week:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-new-mac-mini-is-almost-certainly-coming.1681773/page-806?post=33558122#post-33558122

 

[throAU]

The obvious solution to the mini's poor storage is an external hard drive. But what about using the NAS with 10gbe connection?

10GbE NAS is still 1 gigabyte/sec max transfer speed. If you have a 10GbE NAS, fair enough - but if you don't, just pick up a thunderbolt or USB4 connected external SSD.


edit:
concur with the above, that buying a mini with at least 512 GB is more sensible, but if you already have it and aren't going to return it....

 

[throAU]

I too am unsure about a M4 mini with 256GB and external 1TB drive or just buy the Mini with 1TB

I’m an average non-gaming user. Would I notice any difference between 1TB internal or 1TB external in normal daily use?

The App Store by default will try to store everything on the internal drive. You can change this (see attached), but I've never done that before and not sure how well it works.

 

[ravinder08]

Essentially take anything measured in Gigabits and divide by 10 to get Gigabytes.

So, 10Gigabit (per second) speed (in your case over ethernet) would be 1Gigabyte speed (per second). Now, do you truly have 10Gigabit ethernet cables in 100% of your ethernet setup?...and a 10Gigabit Switch? If not, you instantly slow down to the slowest link in the chain. Then factor in that you are not going to get 100% speed on any medium. Finally, whatever NAS drive you have connected to your 10Gigabit ethernet will need to operate at 10Gigabit speed (such as being NVMe). Then you have to figure in if you are working on large video file sizes as well as the resolution of the movies (4k vs 1080 vs 720 etc) which will all have input on how much speed you need for real-time video editing vs. choppy video editing while the software drags trying to read/write to the drive.

Now, factor in all above pieces to the puzzle as well as price tag(s) and actual setup and ask yourself if it's just easier, more reliable, and simpler to have an external hard drive such as the Sandisk 2TB Extreme Portable SSD for $150 that operates at 1Gigabyte (10Gigabit) speed via USB-C. There's a 4TB option, too, for $279. Both on Amazon.

Remember that your network (and therefore NAS drive performance) will be affected by any other traffic on the network.

Do the math and maybe it's just easier (and better) for you to return the Mini and buy a new one with much higher storage. I believe the storage internal to the Mini will be at least 2x faster than the very, very fast Sandisk I mentioned above since the 2022 Mini M2 operated at 27Gigabits per second (2.7Gigabytes per second which is more than 2x faster than the fastest external Sandisk USB). There was some wishy washy moves by Apple on the Mini M2's various configurations and people were getting much different drive performance...if I recall correctly the Mini M2 base's 256GB drive speed was crippled compared to the 1TB and 2TB.

There are some good suggestions on this thread about building your own external drive but I don't think you are looking for top-of-the-line drive performance (as well as building it yourself) otherwise you would have just plunked down the same amount of money when you bought from Apple and just got the larger drive.

My general answer: Return it and get the larger drive which will likely only be about $200 more than a USB-C setup, far faster than the USB-C, no external devices hanging around, and also leaves your USB-C ports open for future drives that will surely come down in price if/when you need them.

Thank you for this information this has helped me to decide on getting the Mini with 1tb storage option. Planning on keeping my machine for as long as possible. Currently using a late 2012 iMac

 

[HDFan]

If you were to set up a RAID0 or RAID5 array, you'd get about the speed of a SATA SSD.

Depends on the SSD and the interface to it. In my test cases my external thunderbolt 4 SSD is ~2x the speed of a fast 8 bay hardware HD RAID 5 - 2854/2406 (close to TB4 theoretical max) vs 1087/876 MBs w/r.

External is going to be a bit slower,

Often yes. We will see what actual values thunderbolt 5 with a theoretical 15 GB/s brings. Right now internal storage is going to be the fastest - 5733/5468 MB/s w/r in my case.

 

[marstan]

This sounds like a plus to me honestly. I’ve got a laptop for life things this Mac mini is for the studio so no need for AI.

I thought the same thing when I first saw the warning from Apple after the install. On the other hand it defeated the purpose of booting from an external drive which was to test out 15.1 before installing on the main drive.

I am also curious why there is this limitation. It seems to suggest that booting from an external drive is missing access to something important - what else might be affected besides AI when booting from an external drive?

 

[Surf760]

It’s really a bummer they don’t offer a stock 1TB build on either the standard M4 or M4 Pro builds. There are so many constant sales on Mac computers now that you could easily find a great deal on one within a relatively short period of time. Instead, if you want 1TB of internal SSD you have to do the BTO option at full price and wait for delivery.

 

[Rychiar]

buy a WD Black highspeed NVME drive. they're always on sale and go up to 8tb

 

[magbarn]

It’s really a bummer they don’t offer a stock 1TB build on either the standard M4 or M4 Pro builds. There are so many constant sales on Mac computers now that you could easily find a great deal on one within a relatively short period of time. Instead, if you want 1TB of internal SSD you have to do the BTO option at full price and wait for delivery.

Not only that, but resale on BTO is horrible. Used upgraded mac mini's hardly sell for much higher than stock configs. You're getting hit twice.

 

[EugW]

Not only that, but resale on BTO is horrible. Used upgraded mac mini's hardly sell for much higher than stock configs. You're getting hit twice.

16 GB models retained their value well... that is until the big 16 GB shift this year.

 

[magbarn]

This is my first time getting a base model mini with limited storage, and I quickly realized it's much easier if you just install macos onto the external SSD. It's a PITA trying to install apps on the external. I got the Acasis TB4 with 4TB SN850X for just a little more than what Apple charges to upgrade from 256 to 512gb (I bought them last year when SSD prices were in freefall!) There's a github hack somewhere that allows Ai off external SSD, but I don't really care enough to do it.

 

[magbarn]

16 GB models retained their value well... that is until the big 16 GB shift this year.

That is true, I just got depressed selling my $2000 mac mini M1 16/1TB for just $200 more than a base 8/256 M1 model

 

[EugW]

That is true, I just got depressed selling my $2000 mac mini M1 16/1TB for just $200 more than a base 8/256 M1 model

Hmmm... How much did you sell it for? That is the one I'll be selling, but then again I bought it used a couple of years ago for CA$1099, which IIRC was around US$825. I'm considering listing it at CA$750ish, which is about US$540.

 

[magbarn]

Hmmm... How much did you sell it for? That is the one I'll be selling, but then again I bought it used a couple of years ago for CA$1099, which IIRC was around US$825. I'm considering listing it at CA$750ish, which is about US$540.

I got $500 selling it locally, buyer wanted me to go down to $450!

 

[840quadra]

You shouldn't need a 10 GB connection for movie playback.

Didn't see this before my earlier response but 1000% agree. A simple system with 100Mb/s network and a SATA 1 5400 RPM drive provide plenty of bandwidth to support 4K streaming on a home LAN. I have done exactly this with less bandwidth for years using an i5 Mini, connected to an Eero Wifi-5 device to increase wireless speed and range.

Curious the codec / network topologies the OP is using.

On a home network one shouldn't need M.2 speeds, or 10Gbps network for a handful of 4K clients. A paltry 5400 RPM SATA1 drive can support multiple 4K video streams with decent codecs, good clients and a decent (not even great) network configuration.

I can even support multiple clients on much, much older hardware.

This is a Powermac G5 Dual 2.0 sharing videos to 5 devices at the same time using AFP & SMB on my local wired & wireless network.

• iPhone 7 streaming an HD video .TS H.264 format (VLC Client high latency setting) wireless
• iPhone 13 Pro streaming a HD video .TS H.264 format (VLC Client max latency setting) wireless
• Mac mini M4 Pro streaming 4K video .TS format (VLC stock setting) Wired
• MacBook Pro M3 streaming a 4K video .TS format (VLC client 10 second buffer setting) wireless
• Apple TV 4K streaming a 4K .TS video (high latency setting in VLC) wireless
  • Airplay to stereo pair of OG HomePods

Even with all of that activity, plus some other file sharing the G5 was only outputting 13.6 MB/s (which = ~109 Megabit per second network speed), and 7 MB/s disk read activity on my SATA1 5400 RPM drive. The G5 has Gigabit ethernet which obviously supports more than 100mb/s network speed.

The system can't play 4k, but it serves it up 100% fine as it is just streaming files via an SMB & AFP network share.

 

[EugW]

I got $500 selling it locally, buyer wanted me to go down to $450!

OK good to know. Thx. US$500 is roughly around CA$700.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

If one considers 256 GB mass storage to be "dismal," instead of complaining [the OP headline] buy the new mini with more storage; or (my preference) cheaply add external SSD storage ad nauseam.

Fair.

The solution to "Dismal" 256 storage, is don't buy 256 storage if you think it's dismal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I'm not sure what's going on with the price of NVMe. I bought two Crucial 4TB sticks a solid YEAR ago for $180 ea. on Amazon. Right now they're $235+.

At that time, 4TB was the "Sweet spot" in terms of $/GB but now, it may be down to 2TB

 

[Chancha]

I'm not sure what's going on with the price of NVMe. I bought two Crucial 4TB sticks a solid YEAR ago for $180 ea. on Amazon. Right now they're $235+.

At that time, 4TB was the "Sweet spot" in terms of $/GB but now, it may be down to 2TB

After the surplus post-COVID hurting WD / Samsung’s bottom line, they and a few other NAND manufacturers got together to decrease production in hopes of price fixing, and it worked. That’s the gist of what I heard.

 

[EugW]

I'm not sure what's going on with the price of NVMe. I bought two Crucial 4TB sticks a solid YEAR ago for $180 ea. on Amazon. Right now they're $235+.

At that time, 4TB was the "Sweet spot" in terms of $/GB but now, it may be down to 2TB

But did you buy during Black Friday last year? Not all the Black Friday deals have started yet this year.

Also, what models did you buy last year, and are you comparing the same ones?

The worst though I was considering getting the DRAM-less Samsung 990 EVO Plus which is a mid-tier offering, but since it just came out and they're low on stock, it's actually considerably more expensive than the Samsung 990 Pro, which is their top tier model. I may be "forced" to get the top-of-the-line 990 Pro with DRAM just for price reasons. (The DRAM in the 990 Pro should help it maintain consistent high performance much better than the DRAM-less 990 EVO Plus in an external SSD enclosure, but the 990 EVO Plus runs significantly cooler, which is why I was considering the latter.)

After the surplus post-COVID hurting WD / Samsung’s bottom line, they and a few other NAND manufacturers got together to decrease production in hopes of price fixing, and it worked. That’s the gist of what I heard.

Hmmm... Interesting. So we're talking about a NAND cartel then. Sheesh!