It's been a couple weeks... For you base model folks w/ external storage, what's working well (boot from external vs move home folder vs other)?

[spaceballl]

I have a base model Mac Mini at home that I haven't yet configured, and I'm kinda leaning toward booting off external storage... I know that Apple Pay / Apple Intelligence won't work with that, and I'm okay with it. I also don't need crazy I/O speeds.

I'm less interested in everyone's opinions than I am reports from people who have actually gotten it set up. I.E. Does wake from sleep work, etc? Does the drive ever unmount? I think I'll set it up this week to test it out.

 

[Ray2]

Don’t do it full time but run off external enough (testing software) to render a decent opinion. M1 Air, Sonoma, last few weeks: OWC 1M2+WD SN850X, prior: cheap OWC SATA + a Crucial MX,
SuperDuper to create clone, never sleep. Seamless, no different than running under internal. Drives have never unmounted. Don’t know what you mean by crazy I/O speeds but I wouldn’t do full time with a SATA drive, fine with the 850.

 

[ericwn]

I use external for my music and movies and other big data chunks, everything else can live off the base internal storage. This approach works well for me so far.

 

[Fishrrman]

Before you get fixated on booting from an external drive, you had better do some speed tests on BOTH the internal and external drives to see how they rate.

Unless you have a fast thunderbolt external SSD, chances are the internal drive will be MUCH faster...

 

[DigiH]

I am booting from my internal 512GB, also keeping the application and user folder there, especially for the Library folder, but then offloading all the user folders with large content (Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music …) to my external data TB4 SSD, referencing them with aliases.

Working nicely like that for me so far.

 

[EugW]

Before you get fixated on booting from an external drive, you had better do some speed tests on BOTH the internal and external drives to see how they rate.

Unless you have a fast thunderbolt external SSD, chances are the internal drive will be MUCH faster...

Speed is not the issue with current crop of USB 4 NVMe SSD enclosures. Mine is actually faster than base model M4 Mac mini SSDs, and the current crop of USB 4 SSD enclosures are relatively inexpensive. A very good quality one can be purchased for $55-90 these days. I paid US$80 for my enclosure and the speeds I'm getting are par for the course for the current generation of enclosures:



The issues are convenience and technical considerations. I've so far had good luck with my USB 4 drive, but for example I've had USB 3 drives occasionally disconnect at sleep.

For most (but not all) people such as @ericwn and myself, I think booting off the internal drive with some data moved to an external drive makes more sense. For example, with my M4 Mac mini, I have a 512 GB internal boot drive, but I have my Photos Library (665 GB) and some other data files on my external USB 4 SSD.