M2 Mac Mini Storage: 256GB vs 512GB single NAND?

[benji888]

Well, I guess you solved the mystery although I can't explain it.

After some deeper digging I found that in my users library folder there is a 75 GB Group Containers folder (contains One Drive data) and there is also a 73 GB Cloud storage folder, also containing OneDrive data. TreeSize gives me 169 GB of use for my user account but when I do a Get Info in finder on my user folder it says 497 GB in use... that explains the difference.

The difference is occupied by 12 GB (edit: 120 GB!) of phone backups 135 GB of Pictures and some other stuff. For one reason or another TreeSize doesn't scan those folders even though they are not excluded...

Anyway, means I need to get myself the 1 TB version

Or you could save buying apples expensive SSDs and move your photos library and your home folder to an external drive, if speed matters here, you can get TB4 or USB 4 with the M2 Mac mini and the right external drive can be as fast as you want.

 

[foo2]

Or you could save buying apples expensive SSDs and move your photos library and your home folder to an external drive, if speed matters here, you can get TB4 or USB 4 with the M2 Mac mini and the right external drive can be as fast as you want.

How to use Photos for Mac with an external hard drive

The Photos library can really weigh down a tight hard drive. Here's how to make it external.

www.imore.com

Here's the Photos process.

Want to Move Your Mac's Home Folder to a New Location? Here's How

Moving your Mac's home folder to a drive other than the startup drive can free up valuable space. Here's how to make the move safely.

www.lifewire.com

Here's the $userhomedirectory process.

I'd do the first, not the second. A NAS is perfect for holding Photos stuff.

 

[NeonNights]

How to use Photos for Mac with an external hard drive

The Photos library can really weigh down a tight hard drive. Here's how to make it external.

www.imore.com

Here's the Photos process.

Want to Move Your Mac's Home Folder to a New Location? Here's How

Moving your Mac's home folder to a drive other than the startup drive can free up valuable space. Here's how to make the move safely.

www.lifewire.com

Here's the $userhomedirectory process.

I'd do the first, not the second. A NAS is perfect for holding Photos stuff.

Definitely agree with the NAS. I have the family's iPhones/Android devices set to automatically backup all photos and videos to the Synology NAS. It is like having a 12TB private cloud.

 

[benji888]

RAM is hundreds to thousands of times faster than even the fastest SSD; there's just no comparison; any SSD speed (6000, 3000, 1500) absolutely crawls compared to keeping the application in RAM.

Help me understand - why exactly is the 512GB drive suggested over the 16GB of RAM, for those who might use it?

so, to answer your question, macOS, a while back, became a primarily disc based OS over being memory (RAM) based, so, the OS is always accessing the main drive, if it was primarily RAM based we would be starting at 16GB not 8, and recommending 32 for more power users while video editors would need 64 or more, but, this is not how the OS works anymore.

from the video I copied and pasted that someone else already shared, (but I found on my own on YT), you can see that the M2 mini 8/256 single NAND runs at about 1400 read/write speed and the 8/512 two NAND runs at 2800/2400 read write speeds, nearly double. If you get 16GB/256 and have multiple things going all at the same time and max it out, you’ll still have slow downs. At least if I have slow downs, it won’t be nearly as bad.

the other reason for 512 over 256 is that I currently have 480 and it’s nearly full, so, I’m not sure how I’d get things down to fit 256, plus you don’t want your OS drive to be nearly full, it needs 10% space for breathing room, or you will have slow downs, because, as I stated above macOS is primarily disc (drive) based.

 

[foo2]

so, to answer your question, macOS, a while back, became a primarily disc based OS over being memory (RAM) based, so, the OS is always accessing the main drive, if it was primarily RAM based we would be starting at 16GB not 8, and recommending 32 for more power users while video editors would need 64 or more, but, this is not how the OS works anymore.

I'm not even sure how to read this or what it means. If I read this literally, MacOS has always read the OS it needs from disk. If I take it another way, the disk has always been required to run the OS. Either way, the OS runs out of RAM for the active set of tasks, so broadly speaking, this is misleading at best and wrong at worst. You need RAM to run applications at reasonable speed. And yes, if your tasks require lots of RAM, you should buy lots of RAM, in spite of your last (!?) statement.

from the video I copied and pasted that someone else already shared, (but I found on my own on YT), you can see that the M2 mini 8/256 single NAND runs at about 1400 read/write speed and the 8/512 two NAND runs at 2800/2400 read write speeds, nearly double. If you get 16GB/256 and have multiple things going all at the same time and max it out, you’ll still have slow downs. At least if I have slow downs, it won’t be nearly as bad.

This is such a misleading statement that I have to call it out. We're talking about disk pages for application swap to SSD. At that, it's 100% random IO at low queue depth, so the M1 and M2 SSDs will top out at 50-80MB/s. The new M2 SSDs in the benchmarks I've seen tend to be slightly faster than the previous generation. What's your point here? The only time the benchmark you listed matters is if you read a single big file from the SSD in one go. That doesn't happen with pagefiles; it's lots of little chunks of file.

And again, the real solution is to buy sufficient RAM to begin with so you avoid the super slow disk swap entirely. Again, M2 RAM speeds 100GB/s, M2 SSD swap speeds 50-80MB/s. See the difference there? You want stuff in RAM.

the other reason for 512 over 256 is that I currently have 480 and it’s nearly full, so, I’m not sure how I’d get things down to fit 256,

Yep, that's a good reason to buy more disk space.

plus you don’t want your OS drive to be nearly full, it needs 10% space for breathing room, or you will have slow downs, because, as I stated above macOS is primarily disc (drive) based.

As I discussed above, you're looking at the wrong thing.

 

[benji888]

I’ve had macs since 1998, I’m telling you macOS used to require more RAM, it is disc based now, most people won’t need more RAM.

There is nothing misleading about what I wrote, for the 256 model the disc is 1400, when you have an OS that constantly accesses this, regardless of how much RAM you have, why isn’t it better to have 2800 disc speed? You’re the one not making sense here.

 

[racoop]

I’ve had macs since 1998, I’m telling you macOS used to require more RAM, it is disc based now, most people won’t need more RAM.

There is nothing misleading about what I wrote, for the 256 model the disc is 1400, when you have an OS that constantly accesses this, regardless of how much RAM you have, why isn’t it better to have 2800 disc speed? You’re the one not making sense here.

Really, whats a few nanoseconds between friends?

But you are right about those old days. In college in 1995 I got a Mac 7200 that had 8 MB of RAM. You could not even open MS Word without getting an insufficient memory problem. So we all shared this old program (loaded by a couple of floppies) called RAM Doubler, which I suppose swapped memory to the hard drive. This was needed as the computer was handicapped right out the box unless you spent a few zillion $$ on 8 MB more RAM. But those old boxes were fun to upgrade!

 

[foo2]

I’ve had macs since 1998, I’m telling you macOS used to require more RAM, it is disc based now, most people won’t need more RAM.

There is nothing misleading about what I wrote, for the 256 model the disc is 1400, when you have an OS that constantly accesses this, regardless of how much RAM you have, why isn’t it better to have 2800 disc speed? You’re the one not making sense here.

I’ve had Macs since 1993, and used them since the mid 80s, and I’m sorry, but your overall takeaway is wrong.

Avoid swap if you can. But if you must use swap since you can’t add ram (which is absurd - buy the ram you need the first time!), you’ll swap to ssd. In this case the newer SSDs are faster because (once again…) random io is what’s used for swap, not sequential rw.

Please read up on those differences because your entire conclusion is wrong.

We can debate virtual memory and OS disk dependency but then we are going off on tangents. MacOS has supported virtual memory for decades. And ram is hundreds to thousands of times faster.

Don’t buy more storage to make paging faster; that’s insane. Buy the ram you need.

 

[foo2]

Really, whats a few nanoseconds between friends?

But you are right about those old days. In college in 1995 I got a Mac 7200 that had 8 MB of RAM. You could not even open MS Word without getting an insufficient memory problem. So we all shared this old program (loaded by a couple of floppies) called RAM Doubler, which I suppose swapped memory to the hard drive. This was needed as the computer was handicapped right out the box unless you spent a few zillion $$ on 8 MB more RAM. But those old boxes were fun to upgrade!

Connectix RamDoubler (around $50, for those who bought it) was an extension in the System 7 days that did the following:
1. Reclaim memory that apps reserved (recall that in System 7, you had to manually reserve RAM for applications. Reserve too much, you wasted RAM; reserve not enough and that app would get out of memory errors and you could lose data). This was a horrible system from start to finish, and was an embarrassment for Apple; the Amiga (with good multitasking released years before) walked all over concurrent MacOS for multitasking.
2. Compress RAM. Does the obvious - use the CPU, slow as it was, to claw back some usable RAM.
3. Then finally it fell back to virtual memory. Assuming you had an MMU (68030+) you'd have memory management and the ability to page, and you could use virtual memory.

This is exactly what we have now (well, there's not as much a concept of #1, but the other two apply).

The downside was the entire OS didn't have memory protection - apps could walk all over each other; one crashed and they all did (or could). Contrast that with modern MacOS, released in 2000 or so, which fixed all of this, so a userland app can't take down the entire OS.

At no point in this was it accurate to say that something fundamentally changed with respect to running "from disk" vs. "from RAM". From System 7 onwards, with a 68030 or higher, virtual memory was part and parcel of the expected experience with the OS. With MacOS X 1.0, it became an even more important part, the MMU was fully utilized to protect the rest of the system, and .. still ... RAM is used to run applications, with a fallback to disk as required.

 

[Swissfashion]

Does anyone know if the M2 Mini will have the same single NAND storage chip like the M2 Air? Meaning, if we don't want garbage, we have to upgrade to 512GB?

https://www.theverge.com/23220299/apple-macbook-air-m2-slow-ssd-read-write-speeds-testing-benchmark

Edit:
Benchmarks start on Page 4
Geeks (including me) arguing Pages 1-3

Edit2:
Base M1 & 2018 Intel SSD benchmark: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...gb-vs-512gb-single-nand.2377687/post-31906521

Base 2023 M2 SSD benchmark: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...gb-vs-512gb-single-nand.2377687/post-31906314

512GB 2023 M2 (not Pro) SSD benchmark: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s.2378187/page-14?post=31908552#post-31908552

Summary:

2018 Intel Write: 1627
2018 Intel Read: 2485

2020 Base M1 Write: 2733
2020 Base M1 Read: 2854

2023 Base M2 Write: 1431
2023 Base M2 Read: 1482

2023 512GB M2 Write: 3417
2023 512GB M2 Read: 2987

I think Garrett Crespo answers the question about SSD speeds best:

 

[foo2]

Don't waste your time with the entire 21 minutes; start at the 18 minutes mark.

Key point: Everyone is making anthills into mountains; don't waste your money on more spend; the $600 Mac Mini ($499 Edu!) is a deal.

 

[Chancha]

His arguments are not all that fly IMO:

only in the US or somewhere like Hong Kong, pretty much every where else has all new M2 Macs seeing price increase. And with the M2 mini base in the US having a price drop, for the SSD speed to reach back to the M1 performance you need the 512GB BTO / model which puts it as a price increase then.

Therefore a majority of these new Mac buyers are getting less but paying more. I can somewhat agree with the base mini's target audience the SSD speed may be a non-factor but on the 14" and 16" base as well? Clearly there are users who do not need a lot of capacity but do need that sequential performance, now they are forced to get the 1TB model to just begin to match the M1 Pro base.

The same is with M2 Pro mini, it is a brand new tier but you can see it akin to the base 14", it having just dual chip than quad chip suffers the same loss in potential as the 14" base. He said "dual chip right back to where it was" only makes sense in the context of comparison to the M1 mini / M2 mini with 512GB... but then this M2 Pro model has Pro in its name and literally costs more than double before even adding configs...

MaxTechs and the like do take advantage of these opportunities to click bait but without Apple's initiatives they wouldn't have been able to amplify anything out of.

 

[Mity]

I think Garrett Crespo answers the question about SSD speeds best:

Having gone through most of the reviews and benchmarks, I can't justify buying a base M2 Mini, especially when the base M1 Mini is a better machine in that price range (even for "that target audience"). What this year's Macs have confirmed to me via smaller heatsinks, inferior SSDs & speakers is that the execs at Apple are Wall Street cucks.

 

[Swissfashion]

Having gone through most of the reviews and benchmarks, I can't justify buying a base M2 Mini, especially when the base M1 Mini is a better machine in that price range (even for "that target audience"). What this year's Macs have confirmed to me via smaller heatsinks, inferior SSDs & speakers is that the execs at Apple are Wall Street cucks.

I think the most notable difference between the base M1 and M2 Mac mini is the ProRes video engine on the M2 (at least for me).

 

[Mity]

I think the most notable difference between the base M1 and M2 Mac mini is the ProRes video engine on the M2 (at least for me).

It's funny how people in this thread have said that those who buy the base model don't do video editing but here we are discussing ProRes. Apple pulled a d*ck move. I guess this is their strategy for getting a 40%+ gross margin. Look how they play up the cost cutting for Wall Street:

“We expect gross margin to be between 43.5% and 44.5%. We expect OpEx to be between $13.7 billion and $14.9 billion.”...“We’re doing a lot of work on the cost structure and that is paying off,” Maestri said.

 

[foo2]

It's funny how people in this thread have said that those who buy the base model don't do video editing but here we are discussing ProRes. Apple pulled a d*ck move. I guess this is their strategy for getting a 40%+ gross margin. Look how they play up the cost cutting for Wall Street:

“We expect gross margin to be between 43.5% and 44.5%. We expect OpEx to be between $13.7 billion and $14.9 billion.”...“We’re doing a lot of work on the cost structure and that is paying off,” Maestri said.

New M2:
10-15% faster per-core.
Around 40% faster GPU in many games and other uses; 50% faster RAM speed, mostly for use by the GPUs.
ProRes engine included now.
Those are all very clear, measurable benchmarks that are immediately obvious to anyone, and hundreds to thousands of applications will show those results immediately after/upon use of said application.

Vs.

Sequential speed slower, but random i/o (which most see as more important) faster; few can clearly state how this negatively impacts the target audience over and above (ie worse than / more than) the items listed above.

Summary: the new Mac mini M2 is cheaper and faster. It's a good deal.

 

[Mity]

New M2:
10-15% faster per-core.
Around 40% faster GPU in many games and other uses; 50% faster RAM speed, mostly for use by the GPUs.
ProRes engine included now.
Those are all very clear, measurable benchmarks that are immediately obvious to anyone, and hundreds to thousands of applications will show those results immediately after/upon use of said application.

Vs.

Sequential speed slower, but random i/o (which most see as more important) faster; few can clearly state how this negatively impacts the target audience over and above (ie worse than / more than) the items listed above.

Summary: the new Mac mini M2 is cheaper and faster. It's a good deal.

No one here claimed that the M2 processor wasn't an improvement. Every new generation that comes out must be better than the generation that it replaces and the SSD of the base M2 Mini is simply a step backwards.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ds-than-previous-models.2378187/post-31907826

There is no excuse whatsoever for a 2023 Apple Silicon machine to have a slower SSD than a 2018 Intel machine. None!

 

[foo2]

No one here claimed that the M2 processor wasn't an improvement. Every new generation that comes out must be better than the generation that it replaces and the SSD of the base M2 Mini is simply a step backwards.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ds-than-previous-models.2378187/post-31907826

There is no excuse whatsoever for a 2023 Apple Silicon machine to have a slower SSD than a 2018 Intel machine. None!

Why is sequential IO more interesting to you than random IO?

Why is that as important as the other advancements, or more so?

 

[Mity]

Why is sequential IO more interesting to you than random IO?

Why is that as important as the other advancements, or more so?

Do video editors NOT use large files? What was the reason for the change in the M2 from the M1 - purely to force an upgrade. That's it. And that's unacceptable. Given the state of NAND prices, this is absolutely a ridiculous move. No justification for it whatsoever.

 

[foo2]

Do video editors NOT use large files? What was the reason for the change in the M2 from the M1 - purely to force an upgrade. That's it. And that's unacceptable. Given the state of NAND prices, this is absolutely a ridiculous move. No justification for it whatsoever.

This is getting silly.

The guy moving 50GB files around, day in and day out, isn't buying a $499 Mac mini. And if your job depends on it, and you know enough to care about speed when copying large files, I'll hazard a guess and say you're probably already buying the 1TB drive to begin with (otherwise you're not going to be copying that many 50GB files before you start to hit disk space issues).

We don't know what the reason was. Maybe Apple wanted to increase random IO by 10% because they thought that was more performant and more important to the vast, vast majority? Maybe they just wanted to save 50 cents. Maybe due to supply chain issues, this is the chipsize they could guarantee for the course of the product's run.

I don't know. No one does. But let's not make this more than it is; it's become silly.

 

[marstan]

[deleted]

 

[Mity]

This is getting silly.

The guy moving 50GB files around, day in and day out, isn't buying a $499 Mac mini. And if your job depends on it, and you know enough to care about speed when copying large files, I'll hazard a guess and say you're probably already buying the 1TB drive to begin with (otherwise you're not going to be copying that many 50GB files before you start to hit disk space issues).

We don't know what the reason was. Maybe Apple wanted to increase random IO by 10% because they thought that was more performant and more important to the vast, vast majority? Maybe they just wanted to save 50 cents. Maybe due to supply chain issues, this is the chipsize they could guarantee for the course of the product's run.

I don't know. No one does. But let's not make this more than it is; it's become silly.

I can't imagine why anyone would defend such an anti-consumer decision by Apple. I agree it - it is getting silly.

 

[Mity]

Video editors who use large files are NOT buying entry level machines. Users of entry level machines are not transferring 200GB files using ultrafast thunderbolt 4 ssds and enclosures. You are making a distinction without a difference to users of these entry level machines.

I suspect your real complaint is that you want a bargain and Apple won't give it to you. You want higher performance, Apple will give it to you but you have to PAY for it.

And around and around we go with the same excuses about what entry level users are doing. It doesn't matter what they're doing, the base M2 deserves the same SSD configuration as the base M1 Mini.

I think you may be projecting a bit too much. My main machine is a fully spec'd 2016 16" 64GB RAM 1TB MBP. I will likely buy the M2 or M3 PRO Mini with 1TB but that doesn't mean that entry level buyers should be robbed of performance because Tim Cook needs a new vacation house.

 

[marstan]

And around and around we go with the same excuses about what entry level users are doing. It doesn't matter what they're doing, the base M2 deserves the same SSD configuration as the base M1 Mini.

I think you may be projecting a bit too much. My main machine is a fully spec'd 2016 16" 64GB RAM 1TB MBP. I will likely buy the M2 or M3 PRO Mini with 1TB but that doesn't mean that entry level buyers should be robbed of performance because Tim Cook needs a new vacation house.

Oh, but it does matter what users are doing with the base M2 machines. If what they are doing with a base configuration couldn't possibly benefit or be hurt by the SSD sequential speed differential, then your complaint isn't about actual performance. It is about the appearance of a step backward that leads to your emotional aggrievement on behalf of the poor M2 base users. Well, don't cry for me, an actual user of a base M2 (which apparently you are not) who does not feel robbed. And yet, I may upgrade my machine to 16GB ram but keep the 256 ssd because I don't need the space and won't benefit from a sequential speed boost. So, you see, I won't be putting any more money in Tim's pocket than necessary; on that I think we can agree!

 

[NeonNights]

I think the base SSD speed issue is overblown. It is natural in business to simplify or reduce the BOM. From a manufacturing standpoint it is easier to solder on a single higher-capacity NAND than two lower-density chips. Furthermore, flash memory suppliers are probably moving away from smaller 128GB chips. Going from dual-channel storage to single-channel on the base M2 unfortunately leads to lower bandwidth, but is the target audience really going to notice a difference if there wasn't benchmarks pointing it out? Let's not forget the base M2 is a full $100 cheaper than the base M1, and that you can get the M2 for $499 in the U.S.! The discounted pricing more than balances out any perceived performance disadvantage. The base M2 Mini is still a really good computer at a great price.