Internal vs external SSD storage on the M2 Pro Mac Mini

[icemantx]

I am moving from my aging late 2014 27” iMac (which I previously upgraded to a 2TB SSD) to the Mac Mini M2 Pro + Studio Display. My order has the 2TB option as I have about 800GB of storage used on my current machine.

However, about 500GB is taken up by home movies which I have now moved into the Apple TV app to stream to the Apple TV.

Has anyone here gone from internal to external and regretted the decision? I could save $400 and go down to 1TB and move the movies to an external SSD, but would hope to not regret it at a later time.

Thoughts?

 

[Saberon2014]

For $400 savings you'd be crazy to not honestly. That's a GOOD chunk of money for a little inconvenience (if any)

 

[Che Castro]

why do you need ssd for home movies or movies, if is for streaming and not editing, get a regular drive
I'm using a regular external 10tb drive for my movies
streaming on apple tv via plex

 

[weaztek]

if is for streaming and not editing, get a regular drive
I'm using a regular external 10tb drive for my movies
streaming on apple tv via plex

This is correct. A 7200rpm (or even the slower 5400rpm) drive will be plenty fast for 4k video playback.

I actually have a 512 external SSD for working Photoshop files and an external HDD for storage. Works great.

 

[Orionfox]

I am moving from my aging late 2014 27” iMac (which I previously upgraded to a 2TB SSD) to the Mac Mini M2 Pro + Studio Display. My order has the 2TB option as I have about 800GB of storage used on my current machine.

However, about 500GB is taken up by home movies which I have now moved into the Apple TV app to stream to the Apple TV.

Has anyone here gone from internal to external and regretted the decision? I could save $400 and go down to 1TB and move the movies to an external SSD, but would hope to not regret it at a later time.

Thoughts?

I have a 2018 mini in th default 8 gb (well I upgraded the ram) 128 GB ssd. I play WoW and it and the OS fill up the internal drive. I had a spare 120 GB ssd so I bought a cheap usb-c drive case and put the SSD in there. Moved WoW over to the external and I can barely see a difference in loading.

Only reason I would argue for a bigger internal is if you are still using an intel Mac like Mae and you want to use bootcamp. Even VMs can be installed on the external and are ok performance (as ok as VMs can be)

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

External HDD for a desktop is an excellent option for media storage: much lower cost for much more storage. No issues with playback/streaming. Be sure to click an option in the app to let the media live on that external drive instead of getting copied to the internal one: Preferences, Files, [UNCHECKED] Copy Files to Media when adding to Library. That will get it indexed as usual while leaving the big files on that external.

 

[icemantx]

External HDD for a desktop is an excellent option for media storage: much lower cost for much more storage. No issues with playback/streaming. Be sure to click an option in the app to let the media live on that external drive instead of getting copied to the internal one: Preferences, Files, [UNCHECKED] Copy Files to Media when adding to Library. That will get it indexed as usual while leaving the big files on that external.

I’ve been wanting to move away from HDD to all SSD which is why I have a dilemma.

I can keep my order as is (it is a gift) or downgrade the storage and then add in either 32GB or the upgraded processor. Not sure either of the upgrades will really make a difference for me as my use is primarily relatively light photo and video editing plus email, productivity, browsing, etc…

 

[icemantx]

why do you need ssd for home movies or movies, if is for streaming and not editing, get a regular drive
I'm using a regular external 10tb drive for my movies
streaming on apple tv via plex

I don’t “need” the extra SSD storage today. I have gone 8 years with my current iMac. I doubt I will go that long again, but did not want to cut myself short in the event I needed/wanted more internal storage down the line.

I totally get that external is more economical.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I’ve been wanting to move away from HDD to all SSD which is why I have a dilemma.

I can keep my order as is (it is a gift) or downgrade the storage and then add in either 32GB or the upgraded processor. Not sure either of the upgrades will really make a difference for me as my use is primarily relatively light photo and video editing plus email, productivity, browsing, etc…

If you want external SSD, that works as well. Money just buys less capacity for SSD vs. HDD. But your capacity need right now is not that much anyway.

An option: some hubs can take a SSD inside. I have OWC Ministack STX. It adds a few ports and has slots for HDD and SSD inside. I put my media on a huge HDD in there but could put it on a m.2 stick in there (too). It is not super fast but fast enough for my purposes (no problem for streaming media to multiple AppleTVs).

And that hub is not the only one like that, so look around if you want more than only a basic enclosure.

 

[Che Castro]

I don’t “need” the extra SSD storage today. I have gone 8 years with my current iMac. I doubt I will go that long again, but did not want to cut myself short in the event I needed/wanted more internal storage down the line.

I totally get that external is more economical.

If you have a lot of movies
You should put them on a cheap portable drive
Don’t waste your internal space

 

[icemantx]

If you have a lot of movies
You should put them on a cheap portable drive
Don’t waste your internal space

I should clarify that they are the video files themselves that have not been processed or made into movies yet for the most part (yes, sitting there not doing anything so I understand the logic of putting them external).

Good or bad, the way I have managed those files through the years is to keep them in the iMovie Library as I do with Photos. Trouble is the library has grown to about 1TB in size. I do use the files to create new movies, but that is not an every day occurrence.

I could reduce my internal storage, move my iMovie library plus the rendered videos in the TV app to external and change my order to 1TB to save the $400 or put that towards 32GB RAM.

If I did that, what external drive would you recommend I get (I really do not want HDD)? Would you get an enclosure then stick whatever NVME in it that works well with a Mac? Or buy a ready to go one such as the Samsung T7 or alternate?

 

[Che Castro]

I should clarify that they are the video files themselves that have not been processed or made into movies yet for the most part (yes, sitting there not doing anything so I understand the logic of putting them external).

Good or bad, the way I have managed those files through the years is to keep them in the iMovie Library as I do with Photos. Trouble is the library has grown to about 1TB in size. I do use the files to create new movies, but that is not an every day occurrence.

I could reduce my internal storage, move my iMovie library plus the rendered videos in the TV app to external and change my order to 1TB to save the $400 or put that towards 32GB RAM.

If I did that, what external drive would you recommend I get (I really do not want HDD)? Would you get an enclosure then stick whatever NVME in it that works well with a Mac? Or buy a ready to go one such as the Samsung T7 or alternate?

crucial had a deal a few days ago 1tb internal ssd for $66 on amazon
get that and an enclosure like this "

10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD"​

cable matters has one that's aluminum so it looks good with mac mini

Less than $100 you have 1TB ssd external storage
Me personally I would go for a 2TB ssd

​

 

[icemantx]

crucial had a deal a few days ago 1tb internal ssd for $66 on amazon
get that and an enclosure like this "

10Gbps Gen 2 USB C Hard Drive Enclosure for 2.5" SSD/HDD"​

cable matters has one that's aluminum so it looks good with mac mini

Less than $100 you have 1TB ssd external storage
Me personally I would go for a 2TB ssd

​

External 2TB or did you mean internal?

 

[beer barrel]

If you want external SSD, that works as well. Money just buys less capacity for SSD vs. HDD. But your capacity need right now is not that much anyway.

An option: some hubs can take a SSD inside. I have OWC Ministack STX. It adds a few ports and has slots for HDD and SSD inside. I put my media on a huge HDD in there but could put it on a m.2 stick in there (too). It is not super fast but fast enough for my purposes (no problem for streaming media to multiple AppleTVs).

And that hub is not the only one like that, so look around if you want more than only a basic enclosure.

I've got an old 2012 Mini that uses an external STAE129 (SATA-7) Seagate thunderbolt pass-thru adapter used as a boot drive and on to my displayport display - been that way for at least five years - provides fast boot times for my 2012. Blackmagic gives it a 333MB write, 374MB read on a Crucial 512GB. If I want, I can add a second, third STAE129 adapter and activate RAID and get even greater throughput as the hard drive interface is the bottleneck.

Hence my question; can the OWC Ministack actually act as a boot drive via thunderbolt, and can it be used daisy chained, so I can RAID across them all? How about dual displayports?

BB

 

[Che Castro]

External 2TB or did you mean internal?

buying an internal drive SSD + enclosure is cheaper than buying an external SSD

 

[smirking]

I actually have a 512 external SSD for working Photoshop files and an external HDD for storage. Works great.

I ran my Capture One Pro workflow off of an older USB 3.0 external SSD for a few weeks a couple of years ago with some pretty big catalog files. I thought it'd be a disaster of an experience. I honestly couldn't tell any difference doing all my normal things.

 

[smirking]

buying an internal drive SSD + enclosure is cheaper than buying an external SSD

What's the availability for reliable TB enclosures like these days? I remember someone here resorted to buying the lowest end Samsung X5 and an NVMe stick in the desired size and was able to upgrade the X5 without too much pain.

 

[gnohz]

One of the better SSD enclosures I found when I wanted an external to work alongside my 512GB MM 2018 and Lightroom/Capture One software was from a brand called Fledging. I stuck a WD Black 1TB in it. The Fledging has good cooling so I usually get around 40 degrees. If I remember correctly, the speeds I got was between 2000-3000.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I've got an old 2012 Mini that uses an external STAE129 (SATA-7) Seagate thunderbolt pass-thru adapter used as a boot drive and on to my displayport display - been that way for at least five years - provides fast boot times for my 2012. Blackmagic gives it a 333MB write, 374MB read on a Crucial 512GB. If I want, I can add a second, third STAE129 adapter and activate RAID and get even greater throughput as the hard drive interface is the bottleneck.

Hence my question; can the OWC Ministack actually act as a boot drive via thunderbolt, and can it be used daisy chained, so I can RAID across them all? How about dual displayports?

BB

Mine is purely used for external storage, so I don’t know. But that’s good questions for OWC and they are usually good about answering.

If I wanted m.2 speed and raid, I’d probably look to their Thunderblade offering though.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I am moving from my aging late 2014 27” iMac (which I previously upgraded to a 2TB SSD) to the Mac Mini M2 Pro + Studio Display. My order has the 2TB option as I have about 800GB of storage used on my current machine.

However, about 500GB is taken up by home movies which I have now moved into the Apple TV app to stream to the Apple TV.

Has anyone here gone from internal to external and regretted the decision? I could save $400 and go down to 1TB and move the movies to an external SSD, but would hope to not regret it at a later time.

Thoughts?

A few of things here.

(A) There ARE benefits to a larger internal drive. On Apple Silicon Macs, the larger the internal SSD, the faster the internal SSD.

(B) You also can't upgrade these drives after the fact.

I’ve been wanting to move away from HDD to all SSD which is why I have a dilemma.

Moving away from HDDs in desktops and laptops in 2023 is a fantastic idea! I swore after my 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro (in which I had to get a 1TB hard drive in since 1TB SSDs weren't a thing then just yet) that I'd never own another computer with a spinning drive and I never looked back. Same goes for desktops.

However, that isn't to say that there isn't a use case for hard drives. Get a NAS or find an old PC and throw Linux on it. Turn it into a File Server and host stuff to your Apple TV that way through Plex!

I can keep my order as is (it is a gift) or downgrade the storage and then add in either 32GB or the upgraded processor. Not sure either of the upgrades will really make a difference for me as my use is primarily relatively light photo and video editing plus email, productivity, browsing, etc…

Given your use cases, I don't think storage is where you might want to save money. I'd save money by getting the standard M2 Mac mini over the M2 Pro model. There's nothing in your use cases that an M2 Pro will give you any serious performance gains with. Keep your 2TB SSD configuration. Up the RAM to 24GB if you think 16GB isn't cozy enough for you (it may not be, for all I know).

 

[Fishrrman]

There's no real need to keep videos like home movies "just eating up space" on the internal drive. Get the smaller drive and save the money.

"Archive" them off to an external drive (either platter-based hard drive or SSD).
Connect when necessary for viewing.
But normally, leave the archive "off and disconnected".

You should also keep at least one backup of the archive drive, as well.
Two might be even better.
Same for the rest of the data.

I recently bought a couple of Samsung t7 "shield" SSDs (were on sale at amazon).
Although I previously had been a "buy a bare drive and enclosure and put it together" type of guy, the Samsung "shields" are great little drives, decently-priced as well.

 

[icemantx]

There's no real need to keep videos like home movies "just eating up space" on the internal drive. Get the smaller drive and save the money.

"Archive" them off to an external drive (either platter-based hard drive or SSD).
Connect when necessary for viewing.
But normally, leave the archive "off and disconnected".

You should also keep at least one backup of the archive drive, as well.
Two might be even better.
Same for the rest of the data.

I recently bought a couple of Samsung t7 "shield" SSDs (were on sale at amazon).
Although I previously had been a "buy a bare drive and enclosure and put it together" type of guy, the Samsung "shields" are great little drives, decently-priced as well.

Thanks for the replies from everyone.

If I go the route of a smaller internal storage option and make the internal 1TB as opposed to 2TB and move my video work/library to external, I will need to keep the drive attached as the family watches the videos quite often through the Apple TV.

I have about 4000+ clips and since I made them available me through the Apple TV and the videos are no longer trapped in iMovie on my iMac, they get watched way more than they ever have now.

They aren’t archived as in never looked at anymore.

I am not opposed to moving the iMovie library (1TB) and the HVEC converted versions (400GB) to external SSD as I see the financial value in it. I want to be sure the performance of working with 4k (and eventually 8k) videos externally would still be good performance through iMovie or in the event I go to Final Cut one day or Lightroom/Photoshop for my hobby.

When something is a gift for me to pick out, I still like to think of it as spending my own money, hence the decision to be made. I still have time to change my order and go down in size to 1TB oR even go up in memory.

Looks like I’m answer to my original question is that I am not seeing anyone really say “I wish I had a bigger internal SSD and did not rely on external SSD drives”.

Thanks again for the feedback.

 

[ignatius345]

Has anyone here gone from internal to external and regretted the decision? I could save $400 and go down to 1TB and move the movies to an external SSD, but would hope to not regret it at a later time.

I'm doing exactly this with my M1 iMac and don't regret it at all.

I have about 1 GB of video media I stream from my Mac to Apple TV via Home Sharing. I also prefer to keep my entire Photos database downloaded, which is another 500 GB. My iMac only has a 1TB SSD built in, so I put all that media onto an external 2 TB SSD, and it's working nicely. I'm just using a basic SATA SSD and enclosure, which is totally fine for my purposes. If I was editing video or something off the drive, I'd get a fancy NVMe drive with a thunderbolt enclosure -- but that would be overkill for this.

The one thing you really have to do is make sure you are including your external media drive in your backups. In my case, I also keep a 4TB HDD attached for Time Machine, which covers both internal and external drives.

 

[coolerkid]

I am moving from my aging late 2014 27” iMac (which I previously upgraded to a 2TB SSD) to the Mac Mini M2 Pro + Studio Display. My order has the 2TB option as I have about 800GB of storage used on my current machine.

However, about 500GB is taken up by home movies which I have now moved into the Apple TV app to stream to the Apple TV.

Has anyone here gone from internal to external and regretted the decision? I could save $400 and go down to 1TB and move the movies to an external SSD, but would hope to not regret it at a later time.

Thoughts?

I got 500GB internal, which is all I need for my main drive and then bought a thunderbolt 4 enclosure and a 4TB NVMe drive. Cheaper than getting the 1TB and I get 4TB instead. The speed of the external is blazing fast, not as fast as internal but the difference isn’t noticeable. I don’t regret it at all. You’ll always want more storage, so no matter how much you get internal you’re going to be buying external drives. Just get the bare minimum and don’t pay Apple’s super inflated memory prices. I also like keeping most of my files on external drives because it’s much easier if I need to re-install the OS or I’m moving to a new computer.

 

[yezza]

I got 500GB internal, which is all I need for my main drive and then bought a thunderbolt 4 enclosure and a 4TB NVMe drive. Cheaper than getting the 1TB and I get 4TB instead. The speed of the external is blazing fast, not as fast as internal but the difference isn’t noticeable. I don’t regret it at all. You’ll always want more storage, so no matter how much you get internal you’re going to be buying external drives. Just get the bare minimum and don’t pay Apple’s super inflated memory prices. I also like keeping most of my files on external drives because it’s much easier if I need to re-install the OS or I’m moving to a new computer.

Hey which enclosure and 4TB drive did you end up choosing, and do you know the read/write speeds?

I’m waiting on a Konyead USB4 enclosure and 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME drive, hoping to get >2500 MBps. Chose this to go with 1TB of internal storage, rather than spending far more on a larger internal capacity.