what sort of performance did you get once the machine successfully booted?
have you done comparisons between the drives?
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Mac Mini 256GB SSD users: How is your experience running MacOS from an external drive?
- Thread starter hajime
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have you done comparisons between the drives?
It depends on whether you erased your internal SSD. If not, just shut down and disconnect your drive and reboot. Or hold option key during boot and select the internal. Then migrate or erase the external drive's system.
If you DID erase it, you can redownload and install the OS to the internal or you can again hold option key during boot and reinstall/restore the internal from the recovery partition using internet.
I refer back to my earlier comment--you're not going to get equivalent performance to the internal SSD of a M-series Mac mini unless you use a thunderbolt drive with a built-in fan, and the only real reason to do this is when there is a failure or irregularity of your internal SSD. In any case, the machine in question will be kneecapped in performance when booting externally.
Boot times are great--that's the first 15 to 30 seconds after you turn on your machine, during which time you are doing absolutely nothing. The boot times indicate nothing to do with actual performance on real computer tasks. If your only goal is boot and do everything you need through a web page--might be fine. But editing anything complex or multitasking is going to thrash, especially considering we have been talking about the lowest-spec machines so 8GB of RAM. It's going to swap to virtual memory, and your random small-size writes and reads are going to be pathetic especially over USB.
That's why I have returned it and purchased a different drive, which should be arriving today.
One difference between the two NVMe drives is that the faster one is Gen 3x4 and the slower one is Gen 3x0.
I hope to see if that is the difference today.
What I am trying to say is that it isn't just the spec speed or similar that is off. More likely an incompatibility between the drive and macOS (e.g. TRIM not working on Samsung drives under Monterey+). By 2019 SSD drives like the WD SN500 were PCIe 3.0 x2 and had peak speeds well above 10Gbit/s (~ 1500-1700MB/sec). Any drive better than that should be ~ the speed of that Crucial X9 Pro when connected via USB 10Gbit unless something is conflicting.
Both will work.
- Start the computer up by holding the Power button down till the Drives/Option menu comes up. It will take about 30 seconds. Don't let go till you see the menu, otherwise you will need to start again
- As said "Settings=>General=>Startup Disk"
So if I have MacOS installed in both the internal and external drives, I can use this method to switch between the two?
Yes, the first method let's you decide which OS installation you want to run at boot time. The second one sets the default (so it will "always" boot that instance unless you override with the first).
It is also possible to set the default boot instance with the command-line tool "bless". However I would stick to one of the previously mentioned approaches unless you have specific need for controlling via command-line.
Yes. And to keep track which one you have booted from go to disk utility right away and rename the volume connected externally. It will still act just the same.
Also you can just shut the computer down, disconnect and turn it back on. Once you’re booted via the internal you can run migration assistant if you need to move your user account back internal, after reconnecting the external drive again.
Howard Oakley's blog has a good summary of the internal versus external situation over at Eclectic Light Company:
eclecticlight.co
My opinion differs from him a little bit around the edges but I think he summarizes the situation well.
Should you pay a premium price for a bigger internal SSD?
You could save hundreds of $/€/£ buying a Mac with a smaller internal SSD. Is that a good economy, or will you come to regret it? Here are the pros and cons.
eclecticlight.co
My opinion differs from him a little bit around the edges but I think he summarizes the situation well.
I'm so glad you posted this article here and that it even exists. It would look great in a sticky with the OP. Because I've traditionally used external drives for video projects and have used machines WAAAY past their prime, it reminded me of experience booting from external and how shockingly easy it was to do with a Mac after coming from the world of Windows. The last time I bought more than 512GB storage was the first 27" quad-core iMac with 1TB and it felt like such a splurge! Since then it's been a string of 512GB M1 and M2 Airs to a M4 Pro mini and if it wasn't for this last one I have stuck with Thunderbolt 4.Howard Oakley's blog has a good summary of the internal versus external situation over at Eclectic Light Company:
Should you pay a premium price for a bigger internal SSD?
You could save hundreds of $/€/£ buying a Mac with a smaller internal SSD. Is that a good economy, or will you come to regret it? Here are the pros and cons.
My opinion differs from him a little bit around the edges but I think he summarizes the situation well.
I'm currently rolling with a self-assembled 4TB Thunderbolt 5 drive (Trebleet + hp) and I'm just thrilled with its performance. I've put $390 into it. But I don't boot from it, and I don't move the whole home folder. I need the mini to be usable and configured for my use if the external becomes disconnected, damaged or for troubleshooting. Feels nice that I can move my 4TB m.2 back into one of my thunderbolt 4 enclosures if ever necessary. I just configure the App Store to store apps externally, and I manage storage for large media folders externally. Externally I keep a library of large VMs taking 500GB, but I also keep a half dozen LLMs for local AI experiments internal because they like to see in the user's private hidden /Library folder.
But to me, it's Thunderbolt 4/5 or bust if responsiveness matters to you. Sticking with editing documents or doing everything through a web browser, well what did you need all that space for anyway? ;-)
For doing or collecting digital artworks, it doesn't require very decent performances but it does require a huge space.
Is anyone else seeing tons of system log errors?
When I check my Console app, I'm seeing tons of errors increasing by the thousands every few seconds. I understand that some level of system logging is normal, but this seems quite excessive. It's been like this since I first set up my Mac mini, so I’m guessing it’s related to my configuration.
Here's my setup
Lately, I’ve been considering wiping everything and restoring back to factory settings, then using Symlinks to redirect folders to the external drive instead of using it as the Home directory. After a long back-and-forth with ChatGPT, that route seems better suited for my use case.
Questions...
When I check my Console app, I'm seeing tons of errors increasing by the thousands every few seconds. I understand that some level of system logging is normal, but this seems quite excessive. It's been like this since I first set up my Mac mini, so I’m guessing it’s related to my configuration.
Here's my setup
- Mac mini M4 with latest OS updates
- 256GB internal drive (still being used for booting)
- 2TB WD Black NVMe (via 40Gbps enclosure)
- External drive is set as my main Home directory
Lately, I’ve been considering wiping everything and restoring back to factory settings, then using Symlinks to redirect folders to the external drive instead of using it as the Home directory. After a long back-and-forth with ChatGPT, that route seems better suited for my use case.
Questions...
- Has anyone else noticed tons of system log errors in Console with a similar setup?
- Why don’t more users go the Symlinks route instead of changing the Home directory location? Is there a downside I’m missing?
P.S. I’m a total Mac newbie. I’ve been using this M4 for 2–3 months now and while I do appreciate the performance and some features over my Windows laptop, I’m still struggling to understand why Mac users are so loyal. I remain open-minded, but I find myself getting annoyed with little Mac issues almost daily.
For me it's because most of the time it just works the way we want it to work. I use it because it gets out of the way.
Or at least that was my original reason. MacOS was better at doing this when Apple was struggling and didn't have a whole universe of interconnected products to support. Since I've been using Macs for so long, what I want and what I got used to converged. Even when there's a better feature in a Windows environment that should be better for me, it doesn't do much for me because I'm now too used to doing it a different way.
But also as I'm a Web developer, the better support of Linux right out of the box is a big plus. Getting a Windows PC to do what you want when all your other computers are Linux servers used to be a massive headache. It's better these days, but I'd still much rather get that system that... uh, works the way I want it to work.
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Thanks for sharing your perspective. Makes total sense. I am the exact opposite I guess. Been using Windows for so long, and while I have spent hours each day learning to use my Mac, I just find so much of it doesn't make sense to me. That being said, I am adjusting and there are many things I do prefer over Windows.. and the performance is great, so I will keep at it for now
Thousands sounds high. Note that even under Mojave I would get dozens of log entries (not errors) per second. Some of them seem unnecessary -- e.g. services that are disabled waking up and complaining there is nothing for them to do -- which I find annoying even if not alarming. Unfortunately this noise seems to have gotten worse with more recent macOS.
Can you share some examples of the log errors you are seeing?
I agree if there are permissions issues related to your home folder that should be fixed. But it should be possible to fix those without moving your whole home folder.
By the whole symlink route do you mean a) moving your home folder to an external drive and then symlinking /Users/ME to /Volumes/External/ME or b) keeping your home folder internal and them symlinking select folders under /Users/ME to subfolders on the external drive?
For me a) is just conceptually simpler and I want all my files separate from the OS. Also these days ~/Library can get quite large so it may not be practical not to move it external. But then if one does, what's the upside over just moving everything?
P.S. I’m a total Mac newbie. I’ve been using this M4 for 2–3 months now and while I do appreciate the performance and some features over my Windows laptop, I’m still struggling to understand why Mac users are so loyal. I remain open-minded, but I find myself getting annoyed with little Mac issues almost daily.
For me it's three things 1) nostalgia for the days when macOS didn't feel like it was rotting, 2) Windows 11 doesn't seem better, and 3) switching costs. If I had known what Apple was going do to macOS in Sequoia, I wouldn't have switched to MacOS circa 10.1 when it first came out. Then it clean and open system that could also run Office, etc. These days the options for those who need to run commercial desktop applications seem to be macOS, Windows 11, Linux running WINE/etc and I am not crazy about any of them.