Mac Mini M2 Standard model

[sracer]

No. When somebody makes a claim then they need to provide evidence for it. I'm not there to do that because they're lazy or trying to be condescending.

If it were some rando on the internet, then I would agree. Anyone who is a regular here on MR knows that @Fishrrman is the go-to expert when it comes to using external drives on Mac OS devices. Obviously we all make mistakes, but when we're in "our lane" the probability of that happening is low.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I personally would not worry about the internal SSD failing. Sure, there's always that risk but the risk is in the low single digits. These SSD's as others have noted take a beating. There are still plenty of Macs for sale with internal SSD's that are beyond 5 years.

I have a 2018 Mini that was used every day for 4 years and just checking Drive Health with DriveDx it showed a 4% loss in four years. I am a casual user since I am now retired but that is still impressive when you think about the data written in four years.

The bottom line is, unless you are pounding the SSD everyday 24/7 like you are a mini data center, you are more likely to lose Apple support for the device than encounter an SSD failure.

 

[zer0ed]

I personally would not worry about the internal SSD failing. Sure, there's always that risk but the risk is in the low single digits. These SSD's as others have noted take a beating. There are still plenty of Macs for sale with internal SSD's that are beyond 5 years.

I have a 2018 Mini that was used every day for 4 years and just checking Drive Health with DriveDx it showed a 4% loss in four years. I am a casual user since I am now retired but that is still impressive when you think about the data written in four years.

The bottom line is, unless you are pounding the SSD everyday 24/7 like you are a mini data center, you are more likely to lose Apple support for the device than encounter an SSD failure.

That brings me to another point. Had people realized the internal SSD reality of the situation on Silicon machines more might have opted for the AppleCare+ option when they purchased. Maybe that's what Apple was planning on all along with this terrible design decision. Time will tell how this all plays out!

 

[Fishrrman]

Heat Fan wrote:
"I personally would not worry about the internal SSD failing. Sure, there's always that risk but the risk is in the low single digits. These SSD's as others have noted take a beating."

I'd be interested in hearing from any user of an m-series Mac if they have had an SSD failure yet. Probably close to zero.

About the "take a beating" part...
There's the thread in the Apple Silicon sub-forum about users experiencing high numbers of disk writes. Some of these go into many terabytes in a relatively short period of time. Where is all that disk activity coming from, and what does it mean?

I'll GUESS that much (most?) of it is from VM disk swapping.
That's why I DISABLED VM disk swapping on all my Macs (m-series or Intel).
I don't need or want it, and I know how to manage the existing RAM.
I've never run into a problem after having done this. This is a personal decision and I would not expect many others to do it -- "fear" will keep them away.

Eventually, SOMEONE is going to have an SSD failure on an m-series Mac. I'm going to GUESS (again) that when this happens, the only "course of repair" is to replace the motherboard. Pretty expensive repair for someone who has "bought in high" at the beginning...

 

[Yebubbleman]

If it were some rando on the internet, then I would agree. Anyone who is a regular here on MR knows that @Fishrrman is the go-to expert when it comes to using external drives on Mac OS devices. Obviously we all make mistakes, but when we're in "our lane" the probability of that happening is low.

You don't even need to take an individual form member at face value (and often, even with experienced users, that'll often lead to misinformation). It's a well documented element of Apple Silicon. One doesn't need to cite that because the other person doesn't feel like Googling.

 

[jim0266]

I personally would not worry about the internal SSD failing. Sure, there's always that risk but the risk is in the low single digits. These SSD's as others have noted take a beating. There are still plenty of Macs for sale with internal SSD's that are beyond 5 years.

I have a 2018 Mini that was used every day for 4 years and just checking Drive Health with DriveDx it showed a 4% loss in four years. I am a casual user since I am now retired but that is still impressive when you think about the data written in four years.

The bottom line is, unless you are pounding the SSD everyday 24/7 like you are a mini data center, you are more likely to lose Apple support for the device than encounter an SSD failure.

I had never heard of DriveDX. Taking it for the 15-day free spin. Here's one data point for drive health from a 2015 iMac. I've used this Mac pretty hard over these 7.3 years, and continue to do so.

 

[thebart]

Eventually, SOMEONE is going to have an SSD failure on an m-series Mac. I'm going to GUESS (again) that when this happens, the only "course of repair" is to replace the motherboard. Pretty expensive repair for someone who has "bought in high" at the beginning...

what about the ram/cpu. Aren't they soldered on, too?

 

[Kelvinsin]

You all never see m2 ssd replacement by third party?

Sorry its in mandarin but the conclusion is the ssd can swap as long as same size, as it not encrypted.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

You all never see m2 ssd replacement by third party?

Sorry its in mandarin but the conclusion is the ssd can swap as long as same size, as it not encrypted.

While that's no surprise to me, the question becomes cost, component availability because most components are prioritized for new PC builds and of course the potential for specs mismatch with the system. Unless someone paid thousands for a laptop or PC, it might be better to just buy a new one. Would I consider that with my 2018 i5 or M2 Mini's? No way.

I paid $699 for my 2018 Mini and my base M2 Mini, out the door with sales tax cost me $465.

 

[thebart]

I had never heard of DriveDX. Taking it for the 15-day free spin. Here's one data point for drive health from a 2015 iMac. I've used this Mac pretty hard over these 7.3 years, and continue to do so.

View attachment 2180411

That's reassuring. Does it tell you how many TBs have been written?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

That's reassuring. Does it tell you how many TBs have been written?

IIRC, it does.

 

[zer0ed]

While that's no surprise to me, the question becomes cost, component availability because most components are prioritized for new PC builds and of course the potential for specs mismatch with the system. Unless someone paid thousands for a laptop or PC, it might be better to just buy a new one. Would I consider that with my 2018 i5 or M2 Mini's? No way.

I paid $699 for my 2018 Mini and my base M2 Mini, out the door with sales tax cost me $465.

I have no doubt Apple will charge beyond what the unit is worth to replace its motherboard etc...

 

[jim0266]

That's reassuring. Does it tell you how many TBs have been written?

It does!

 

[thebart]

It does!
View attachment 2180951

That is a pretty modest amount of writes, actually. 87TB after 7 years. I saw someone posted like 113TB on their M1

So it's claiming 82% life remaining at 82.7TB written. That's around 450TB TBW. Reasonable.

 

[ovbacon]

I also had not used DriveDX before and ran it on my 2015 iMac 5K 2TB Fusion Drive and the ssd part is about to kick it... wonder what happens when it does?!?!? Anyone?

 

[thebart]

I also had not used DriveDX before and ran it on my 2015 iMac 5K 2TB Fusion Drive and the ssd part is about to kick it... wonder what happens when it does?!?!? Anyone?

Here's someone with a 2014 iMac with a dead SSD.

Six Lessons Learned from Dealing with an iMac's Dead SSD - TidBITS

After working through the failure of his iMac’s SSD, Adam Engst shares the lessons he learned with regard to backing up, restoring, and eking out the most life from old hardware. Hint: waiting to upgrade hardware and software can make troubleshooting and recovery more difficult.

tidbits.com

Tldr they booted off an external bootable duplicate. Back up your stuff ASAP

How many TB written does the SSD have on it, btw?

 

[balnazzar]

RAM this days is not so important for multitasking as SSDs pages really fast.

Ok but.. Why doesn't the OS continue to swap on disk? I mean, why at some point the memory pressure graph becomes red and the system becomes unusable?

 

[Corefile]

Ok but.. Why doesn't the OS continue to swap on disk? I mean, why at some point the memory pressure graph becomes red and the system becomes unusable?

Memory paging - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[balnazzar]

Memory paging - Wikipedia

Interesting. I didn't know about thrashing. Thanks!

 

[je@]

I have the 8/256 Mac mini M2 and I was worried a bit about it. After a few months, I am not worried anymore. Works just fine for me.

 

[KneelbfZod]

Got the base mini M2/256 and had it for a week now. No content creation just office work (zooms, multiple tabs, documents open, etc) and for this use case it's perfect.

 

[majkom]

Guys, i will use this thread as I am solving similar situation - need mac for very light usage - browsing, office, music, very light photo editting - this is all easy for base mac. But need to run MS windows in Parallels for work - all this instance will be used for is to rekote connect to work computer, so i guess nothing too demanding (and yes, have to use windows for that remote connect). Is base M2 mini enough - i guess it should be (afaik, Parallels does fibally support win 11 on apple silicon macs, right?). And when not using that Parallels remote connect, i do connect to my virtual work machine but on mac os.

So basically, does parallels or connecting to VDE need more than 8gigs of ram??

 

[Fishrrman]

"So basically, does parallels or connecting to VDE need more than 8gigs of ram??"

Bascially, yes.

 

[chrfr]

Guys, i will use this thread as I am solving similar situation - need mac for very light usage - browsing, office, music, very light photo editting - this is all easy for base mac. But need to run MS windows in Parallels for work - all this instance will be used for is to rekote connect to work computer, so i guess nothing too demanding (and yes, have to use windows for that remote connect). Is base M2 mini enough - i guess it should be (afaik, Parallels does fibally support win 11 on apple silicon macs, right?). And when not using that Parallels remote connect, i do connect to my virtual work machine but on mac os.

So basically, does parallels or connecting to VDE need more than 8gigs of ram??

Connecting to a VDE is not RAM intensive at all, but that's an entirely different thing than running virtualization in Parallels or another way.

 

[majkom]

Connecting to a VDE is not RAM intensive at all, but that's an entirely different thing than running virtualization in Parallels or another way.

I see but again, in that virtual machine all i do is connect to remote computer, nothing else is being done..