Mac Mini 256GB SSD users: How is your experience running MacOS from an external drive?

[CalMin]

do you have a link for the specific YT video you watched! Thanks in advance

There were a few, but I think this was the one I used while actually going through the steps.

Note - this was the very first thing I did when I got Mini. I didn't even boot it up until the external drive had arrived. He has a couple of videos on how to migrate an existing account and the process for that is a bit different.

 

[CalMin]

Mac Sound Solutions Inc has several.

Beat me to the punch. Yes! These were the ones!

 

[spaceballl]

So I gave my dad his Mac Mini for Christmas over a week ago. I modified it in advance to boot off the TB4 1TB drive, and after 1 week, he hasn't had any issues. I'm now a few hundred miles away so I can't babysit him on the device. It just works. Will update if anything changes, but for now, I think this is a pretty viable path forward. I spent some time playing with it before I left. Honestly, in just average usage, I couldn't tell the difference between that machine and my M4 Max MacBook Pro w/ internal SSD + 48GB of RAM. The base model Mac Mini running off external storage is a workhorse!

 

[turbineseaplane]

So I gave my dad his Mac Mini for Christmas over a week ago. I modified it in advance to boot off the TB4 1TB drive, and after 1 week, he hasn't had any issues. I'm now a few hundred miles away so I can't babysit him on the device. It just works. Will update if anything changes, but for now, I think this is a pretty viable path forward. I spent some time playing with it before I left. Honestly, in just average usage, I couldn't tell the difference between that machine and my M4 Max MacBook Pro w/ internal SSD + 48GB of RAM. The base model Mac Mini running off external storage is a workhorse!

Agreed .. I have over two weeks fully booting off my external TB NVMe … not a single hiccup or issue

Feels and acts like a native internal drive

 

[DaveF]

I just got an M4 mini because, well, why not! I went with the 512GB option so there's a decent amount of space, but being the person I am I tend to hoard data and so added a 4TB external SSD.

Rather than boot off the external though - I'm keeping the OS and apps running off the internal drive and have followed one of the many YT tutorials on how to move just the Home folder to an external drive (OWC 1M2 with a Samsung 990 EVO Plus drive). It's working great so far and I haven't noticed any performance issues. Plus Apple Intelligence works just fine.

The only downside is that I can't encrypt the external SSD - the encryption for external SSDs is in keychain which doesn't load until the account loads. I could do it by booting into an account on the internal drive then switching to my main account, but that gets silly. This isn't a big deal because the machine is always going to be in my house vs. a laptop that I move around with.

I'm dumping tons of stuff into that account so we will see how it holds/performs over time...

Mac Sound Solutions Inc has several:

There were a few, but I think this was the one I used while actually going through the steps.

Note - this was the very first thing I did when I got Mini. I didn't even boot it up until the external drive had arrived. He has a couple of videos on how to migrate an existing account and the process for that is a bit different.

Moving the User Folder to an external drive breaks Spotlight with iCloud Drive. As best I can tell I was the first to identify this issue online, but I’ve since had it confirmed by the YT’er doing those videos.

If you don’t use iCloud Drive at all, my experience was otherwise User Folder on an external drive works fine.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Moving the User Folder to an external drive breaks Spotlight with iCloud Drive. As best I can tell I was the first to identify this issue online, but I’ve since had it confirmed by the YT’er doing those videos.

If you don’t use iCloud Drive at all, my experience was otherwise User Folder on an external drive works fine.

Is your external drive formatted as APFS? I found that I had problems with iCloud unless the drive was formatted thus.
With APFS, all seems to work fine, at least with iCloud.

 

[genexx]

I would not use a Zike Drive with the new ASMEDIA chipset because... Apple is Thunderbolt and btw. i have got the Cases (Acasis TBU405 AIR) for 50 Bucks incl. Tax and Shipping (AIR Version is cheaper because there is no USB 3 compatibility).

Together with my WD SN770 2TB (bought last Summer for 90 bucks) i was able to Boot and the NVME Stays Cool (32-39 degrees up to 49 when heavily used) sleeps well and is cold then.

What i noticed is, if it is not used as Boot Drive and directly conected i have 4W Power Drain (no 0,3W Mode) and it gets 10 degrees hotter on average.

When having the Drive connected to my OWC Hub the Energy Saving is working again also as External non Boot Drive.

Tested at my MBA M2 16/1TB 10C.

Btw. i did not get noticed about Apple AI not working while working on my external with my User (700GB + Migrated) but have Siri OFF anyway.

I have tested all this to be used with a MacMini M4 in Base config.

My 2 cents:
I don't like that the external drive (an Acasis 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD with Samsung 970 Evo Plus) gets hot and stays hot all the time, even when the Mac sleeps.

The Samsung NVME´s with Phoenix controller Chip are known for not being fully Apple Compatible.
The Power Drain aka no PowerSave modes are the Reason for your Temps.

Sometimes it is also related to the Chipset of the Case or the Combination or the Type of Connection and Cable.

There are additional Problems occurring when using Samsung NVME´s with the Phoenix controller Chip as Boot Drive formatted with APFS.

 

[DaveF]

Is your external drive formatted as APFS? I found that I had problems with iCloud unless the drive was formatted thus.
With APFS, all seems to work fine, at least with iCloud.

Yes, used APFS. Tried all variants on how to set up the external user folder account. Also, this happened to me on macOS 15. When I first tired it on my older iMac running macOS 13, I didn’t notice these problems (but I don’t know for sure if that’s because they weren’t there or I didn’t test fully in my trial effort).

Spotlight and Finder Tags don’t work with User Folder on external folder combined with iCloud Drive Documents and Desktop syncing.

I know it’s not just me. But this is so little used / attempted that I’ve not gotten a read on if it’s a universal problem or a quirky one that affects some but not all who try.

 

[DaveF]

Is your external drive formatted as APFS? I found that I had problems with iCloud unless the drive was formatted thus.
With APFS, all seems to work fine, at least with iCloud.

As I told the YT’er, if anyone finds the solution to getting external user folder to work 100%, I’m still interesting. But I’m out of time for tinkering and playing with it.

A normal macOS setup, but moving Photos, Music, >1GB AppStore, and manually installing third party apps to the external drive, is a robust, 100% supported, and successful solution for me and my 16/256 Mac mini.

 

[CalMin]

Moving the User Folder to an external drive breaks Spotlight with iCloud Drive. As best I can tell I was the first to identify this issue online, but I’ve since had it confirmed by the YT’er doing those videos.

If you don’t use iCloud Drive at all, my experience was otherwise User Folder on an external drive works fine.

Interesting. I’ll do some testing but I don’t feel like I’ve experienced any issue like this and I use iCloud Drive a lot.

My fear is that Apple will find some way of breaking this given that a lot of Mac Mini users are going this route. It’s not as convenient with a laptop because of the external drive dangling off the machine, but it works well with the mini.

 

[DaveF]

Interesting. I’ll do some testing but I don’t feel like I’ve experienced any issue like this and I use iCloud Drive a lot.

My fear is that Apple will find some way of breaking this given that a lot of Mac Mini users are going this route. It’s not as convenient with a laptop because of the external drive dangling off the machine, but it works well with the mini.

If it works for you, I’m interested in your setup.

The obvious failures for me:
Spotlight won’t find any of my files
Finder Tags are no longer synced with existing tags across iCloud, iOS, iPadOS devices.

 

[nello]

A normal macOS setup, but moving Photos, Music, >1GB AppStore, and manually installing third party apps to the external drive, is a robust, 100% supported, and successful solution for me and my 16/256 Mac mini.

As I understand, Apple is “encouraging” all cloud services to use its File Provider extension (FPE), which places synced files at ~/Library/CloudStorage and with your approach these files will be on the internal drive. (For details , see https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-mac-cloud-storage-changes/ )

Have you found a way to place synced cloud files on an APFS encrypted, external Thunderbolt 4 drive? (Yes, I want these files downloaded so that my cloud-based files are included in Time Machine backups.)

Thank you.

 

[turbineseaplane]

A normal macOS setup, but moving Photos, Music, >1GB AppStore, and manually installing third party apps to the external drive, is a robust, 100% supported, and successful solution for me and my 16/256 Mac mini.

Exactly why I boot off my external

I don’t like having to spend any mental energy on what I’m installing or storing internally vs externally

 

[nello]

Exactly why I boot off my external

Just to be clear, both your internal and external drives are bootable? In other words, you have separate macOS installations on each drive?

 

[DaveF]

As I understand, Apple is “encouraging” all cloud services to use its File Provider extension (FPE), which places synced files at ~/Library/CloudStorage and with your approach these files will be on the internal drive. (For details , see https://tidbits.com/2023/03/10/apples-file-provider-forces-mac-cloud-storage-changes/ )

Have you found a way to place synced cloud files on an APFS encrypted, external Thunderbolt 4 drive? (Yes, I want these files downloaded so that my cloud-based files are included in Time Machine backups.)

Thank you.

No.

Moving User Folder to an external drive breaks Spotlight and Finder Tag, in my experience.

Exactly why I boot off my external

I don’t like having to spend any mental energy on what I’m installing or storing internally vs externally

Then I can’t use Apple Intelligence, last I knew.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Just to be clear, both your internal and external drives are bootable? In other words, you have separate macOS installations on each drive?

Correct

 

[monkey6]

I have a 2017 2TB imac with a dead internal drive. To keep using the computer I'm booting off an external SSD, with a copy of the internal I had made via Superduper. I've booted off copies of the OS this way for years without problems- except when a major update to a new OS version happens. Then it will crash if I try to update the external to the new OS.

I realize the difference between booting off my external drive in the above setup, and having the M4 set to boot off the internal, with the home folder on the external. But the failure mentioned above is one reason I haven't tried the external home drive setup. It seems like a big unknown, which can only be tested this fall when apple releases its updated OS. I noticed although Apple says in their documentation that you can setup a home drive on an external, they say nothing about it supporting major OS updates.

So there's that looming over this setup.

Another big concern - which can be answered now - is restoring this setup from a backup to a new machine. Has anyone - just for 'fun' - tested a Time Machine or CC backup to see if it will actually restore everything properly to a different empty M4 mini with an external home drive? Seems like it would work OK, but until tried, who knows?

And one last concern. I use Apple Logic a lot. Has anyone gone the external home drive route and had success or failures with Logic?

Because of all this, when I got my mac mini M4 520 GB, I loaded all the apps on the internal, and put my Logic Sound Library, music, and photos - as well as a copy of my desktop - on a 2TB Samsung 990PRO running in an OWC case Everything works with this setup. I have over 400GB of space left on the internal. And after making a copy of the external, if the whole system dies, I can still acccess all those folders easily on another computer!

So I don't see the advantage of moving the home folder to the external. But I'm open to hearing opinions otherwise.

 

[nello]

A normal macOS setup, but moving Photos, Music, >1GB AppStore, and manually installing third party apps to the external drive, is a robust, 100% supported, and successful solution for me and my 16/256 Mac mini.

Let me try again …

“A normal macOS setup … “ sounds to me like your Home directory is on the internal drive and all the files within some Home subdirectories, e.g., ~/Photos, are on the external drive. How are they linked? For example, did you make ~/Photos a symbolic link (symlink) to the root of where the Photos files are on your external drive?

Also, did you leave your cloud, e.g., Dropbox, files on the internal drive or did also move them to the external drive? Again, how did you link these files on the external drive to ~/Library/CloudStorage?

Thank you.

 

[DaveF]

Let me try again …

“A normal macOS setup … “ sounds to me like your Home directory is on the internal drive and all the files within some Home subdirectories, e.g., ~/Photos, are on the external drive. How are they linked? For example, did you make ~/Photos a symbolic link (symlink) to the root of where the Photos files are on your external drive?

Also, did you leave your cloud, e.g., Dropbox, files on the internal drive or did also move them to the external drive? Again, how did you link these files on the external drive to ~/Library/CloudStorage?

Thank you.

Normal macOS install on the internal drive. User folder on the internal drive, with normal macOS account setup.

But I’ve moved the Photos library, Music Library, and large apps to the external drive per Apple supported methods. I also install non-AppStore apps to the external drive where supported (in that case, I create symlinks or aliases for the main system Applications folder).

I don’t do any symlinks to move user files onto the external library because that doesn’t work with iCloud Drive Documents and Desktop sync (and I tried, confirming it doesn’t work).


This results in a 256GB SSD with about 100GB used, and a 2TB external drive with about 500 GB used. Of course that depends on the size of your personal files vs their photos and videos and music libraries.

If you don’t subscribe to AppleOne and don’t use iCloud Drive to sync all your files, this isn’t relevant. But all my personal files are stored and synced online, so I have to live within those constraints.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

To save storage space on your Mac, you can move your Photos library to a different storage device.

support.apple.com

Change where your music files are stored on Mac

On your Mac, change where your Music files are stored on your computer. You can also manage your files and create folders for better organization.

support.apple.com

Download and install large apps to a separate disk

In the App Store, you can choose to download apps larger than 1 GB to an external disk.

support.apple.com

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

No.

Moving User Folder to an external drive breaks Spotlight and Finder Tag, in my experience.

Then I can’t use Apple Intelligence, last I knew.

I have installed the OS onto an external 256GB SSD, and then made a copy of my User files onto another, external SSD.

1. Both drives were formated as APFS.
2. The User files were then assigned to the appropriate folders on the external SSD.
3. I then created some new files which only existed in my iCloud Documents.
4. I verified that the new files existed both in the local copy (Library/iCloud Drive) and iCloud (icloud.com).
5. After some little time, Spotlight caught up and was able to locate the files, and scan their contents.
6. Finally I ran a full backup of both the new System SSD and the External Users SSD. The new files that were only located in iCloud were backed up there.

Things to remember --

1. Both drives, System and User, have to be formatted as APFS.
2. Both drives, System and User, have to be explicitly added to the TimeMachine backup.

The only feature that doesn't work with an external Users folder is Apple Intelligence, and that is known and explicitly mentioned when you try to access it in System Settings.

PS. If you have a pair of matching SSD drives, you can use Disk Utility to make them into a Apple RAID drive. Then, plug each one into a separate USB port on your Mac. This will give you twice the throughput of a single drive, up to about 700~800 MBytes/sec. Read/Write. You can't install a system on there (once upon a time, Apple would let you do that, but no longer...), but it does make a good, goes like the clappers, Data drive.

 

[DaveF]

…
The only feature that doesn't work with an external Users folder is Apple Intelligence, and that is known and explicitly mentioned when you try to access it in System Settings.
….

This is why I use a normal macOS install with local user folder configuration, and move the giant media libraries to an external drive. Everything fits in a base config mini with no compromises from macOS capabilities.

 

[genexx]

Because i am in Germany where Apple Intelligence is not available...
I did not have the message when booting from my external NVME.

Move the Home Folder is easy with a new User but how to Migrate to external ?
Also the iCloud Problems i have read from are maybe because the AppleID was activated before the HomeFolder move.
Downside is also that the Apple Apps stay in the old Home Folder and the other can be moved to Application inside the new Home Folder.

Than you also have to create a Backup User when and if the External is not mounted while booting.

I like it more to Boot from External and migrate as usual and use TM Backup also as usual.
Never used Siri and have some KI Tools from different Sources i use extensively.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

This is why I use a normal macOS install with local user folder configuration, and move the giant media libraries to an external drive. Everything fits in a base config mini with no compromises from macOS capabilities.

Totally agree, except in my case, the large files on an external drive are my Virtual Machine files.
However, the OP asked about running Mac OS on an external drive.
I have tried a number of configurations, including a large, fast SSD, small SSD with Users on large SSD, and even a Fusion drive, and reported on them.

 

[DaveF]

Mac Sound Solutions Inc has several:

Has anyone else done this and either found it works 100% or experienced any problems (especially with Spotlight)?

I'm seeing all the YouTubers, and especially this fellow, pushing this hard. But I see no acknowledgment or discussion of the major limitations I and others have experienced and commented on. I remain interested if the problems are rare (I'm unlucky) or the YT'ers are conveniently ignoring problems to make happy tech videos.

 

[genexx]

Has anyone else done this and either found it works 100% or experienced any problems (especially with Spotlight)?

I'm seeing all the YouTubers, and especially this fellow, pushing this hard. But I see no acknowledgment or discussion of the major limitations I and others have experienced and commented on. I remain interested if the problems are rare (I'm unlucky) or the YT'ers are conveniently ignoring problems to make happy tech videos.

When having Spotlight issues that can be a different reason.

After i migrated the TM Backup from my Intel Mac to my M2 MBA i had some Problems with Spotlight:

• No Search inside folders but the whole Disk were working
• Outlook Search was not working.

I have posted the Fix here: