Mac Mini setup (paranoid about SSD size)

[klezmer41]

So I did a thing, I got my FIRST Mac ever. I've used them before at various jobs, but this is the first one I've owned. This is what I ordered:

Mac Mini i5
512GB SSD
32GB RAM
10 Gigabit Ethernet

Now I'm having some anxiety come up over whether I got a big enough SSD. For work I do design, and have Dropbox filled up to about 1TB... I'm using selective sync so only certain folders show up on the Mac SSD. I plan on doing a lot more media, including music production and video. I had figured that even a 1TB internal drive would probably not be enough eventually, and I'd have to heavily rely on external storage... so that's why I went with the 512GB SSD.

I also have a NAS with 8TB HDDs for storage of media and backups.

So should I send this back and get a Mini with a 1TB drive, or would I be better off getting an external SSD and moving all documents and files (including Dropbox) over to that?

 

[iluvmacs99]

I am assuming that you are buying the Mac Mini 2018, not the 2014 model refurb? If you are, then I say keep the 512Gb SSD as your main boot and application drive and getting an external SSD drive and move all the documents and files over to that.

If you are doing design, music and video production, you would want separate drives anyhow, because having everything on just 1 drive could slow everything down. You want at least 3 separate drives -- a media drive, a scratch drive and a storage drive for backups.

 

[klezmer41]

If you are doing design, music and video production, you would want separate drives anyhow, because having everything on just 1 drive could slow everything down. You want at least 3 separate drives -- a media drive, a scratch drive and a storage drive for backups.

Could you please explain what each of the 3 drives are for? And these would all be separate externals to the boot/application drive right?

Yeah I got one of the 2018 Minis.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Could you please explain what each of the 3 drives are for? And these would all be separate externals to the boot/application drive right?

Yeah I got one of the 2018 Minis.

Read this article by Larry Jordan - https://larryjordan.com/articles/configure-a-mac-mini-2018-for-video-editing/ - his recommended configuration is i7/32GB/512GB SSD/1GbE, so you are in good shape. External storage is what you want to start looking at for editing video and audio anyways, because you are going to want to store those things on larger drives. Editing directly on the internal SSD is not optimal. Save that $400 for an eGPU or an external SSD.

EDIT: Storage speed necessary depending on CODEC and format - https://larryjordan.com/articles/technique-understanding-video-data-rates/

 

[Fishrrman]

How much "additional storage space" do you/will you need?

Use external USB3 SSDs for your additional storage needs.
Or.. if you need even more speed, get a thunderbolt external SSD (considerably more expensive).

 

[MacWorld78]

In my point of view: if you are doing as a professional music/video production - i think you should save all your work using external SSDs via thunderbolt 3 because if something goes wrong with mac mini - you won't be able to recover the data from internal of the Mac Mini.

 

[Gwendolini]

While TB3 is good for external SSDs, SATA SSDs hardly saturate the USB 3.1 spec, thus I have no TB enclosures for my SATA SSDs and just use USB-C enclosures for them, as that is fast enough.

 

[ocabj]

I just upgraded my Mini (late-2012) to a Mini (2018) 6-core i7/32GB/512SSD with Razer Core X and Vega 56. Right now I have a 1TB NVMe in a USB 3.1 enclosure as my home drive (mapped my user dir to that volume), but next month I'll get the OWC Express 4M2 4-slot NVME Thunderbolt 3 enclosure and will be running three more NVMe SSDs for various things (e.g. scratch, backup, etc).

https://www.ocabj.net/mac-mini-2018-big-power-small-package-continues/

 

[richpjr]

In my point of view: if you are doing as a professional music/video production - i think you should save all your work using external SSDs via thunderbolt 3 because if something goes wrong with mac mini - you won't be able to recover the data from internal of the Mac Mini.

If someone is doing professional music/video or anything else for that matter, they had better be backing up their data no matter where it is stored! With how expensive internal storage is, and with an upper limit of 2TB, it's probably better to use external storage for your data. Depending on what you are doing and the speed required, USB 3.1 might be fast enough and far cheaper than TB3, though obviously not nearly as fast.

 

[MacWorld78]

If someone is doing professional music/video or anything else for that matter, they had better be backing up their data no matter where it is stored! With how expensive internal storage is, and with an upper limit of 2TB, it's probably better to use external storage for your data. Depending on what you are doing and the speed required, USB 3.1 might be fast enough and far cheaper than TB3, though obviously not nearly as fast.

Yes, that's important too