Mac mini storage...

[yocko]

hello friends,

hope someone can help me.

I would like to buy a new Mac mini (like the rest of the world apparently) to replace my MBA M2, which I will now mainly use on the road.

the latter has 24 gb ram, and 1 Tb SSD.

If I want the same specs (and I do) the wait here in Thailand is more than three months, in which case it would be better to wait for the announcement for the new line up.

But if I would buy the 24gb with 512 ssd, I could get one relatively quickly. I see there are pretty slick docking stations with storage out there. Are any of you using those and is that a workable solution?

Or should I just shut up and wait?

thanks so much for the help

 

[Fishrrman]

If you're doing ok with the MBa at the moment, maybe you should just hold on until the new Minis appear.

Although, if you decide on an m5 Mini (when they're released), I'd suggest 32gb of RAM and a 1tb SSD. That way, it will have "room for future growth"...

 

[benwiggy]

I "moved up" from a Mini with 1 TB to a Mini with 512 GB, and I put my Photos, Music, Movies, Logic samples, other large read-only files, etc onto a USB drive.

It worked fine, and there was no technical problem, but I just found it a bit less satisfactory. I've gone back to a 1 TB Mini, and I'm much happier!

 

[Ben J.]

But if I would buy the 24gb with 512 ssd, I could get one relatively quickly. I see there are pretty slick docking stations with storage out there. Are any of you using those and is that a workable solution?

I'm using a M4 Pro Mini for ~18 months now, with 24GB and 512. I use Protools DAW for quite heavy multitrack audio mixing, and Lightroom Classic with a catalogue containing thousands of photos. These two represent the parts of my work on mac that is most reliant on disk read/write speed.

I have tried them both on slower disks, and the slower performance is very noticable. Scrolling thru lots of images in Lightroom f.ex is obviously slower. I've also experimented with booting from an external, slower drive a few times, and the overall performance is worse. Almost like you have a slower CPU.

So, keep your system, apps, user files, most everything on your internal drive. It's probably around 5000MB r/w per second. If you have lots of large files that you know will benefit from sitting on fast drives, like large media files, video work etc, you have two choices; Either get a big enough internal drive, or get a fast external NVMe SSD enclosure (40gbps - ~2800MB/s), which will be much more inexpensive. Don't bother with stuff like music files, movies etc., they will stream fine from a slower drive, like 5-10gbps (3-700MB/s).

Beware that most of these fancy docks for mini are not particularly fast, they're usually 10gbps. For speed, you need Thunderbolt4, which is 40gbps.

Speeds:
Old spinning HDDs
~100MB/s
Newer spinning HDDs
~220MB/s
2.5 inch SATA SSDs:
~400MB/s

NVMe M.2 SSDs:
Often spec'ed at 6000MB/s and higher, but will be restrained by the speed of your connection. Like USB3 ~300MB/s, USB3.2 ~600MB/s
Thunderbolt4 ~2800MB/s
Thunderbolt5 ~5600MB/s (very expensive)

Remember:
MB = 1 million bytes. One byte, or one 'word' of 1s and zeros, like 16 in a 16 bit file.
Mb = 1 million bits. One bit meaning a 1 or a 0.
B = Byte.
b = bit.

I use all the flavours of disk types and speeds. From a spinning HDD that I use for backup, to my two 40gbps NVMe in external enclosures. I manage to keep my internal 512 about half full. I have moved some folders to an external drive, and replaced them with aliases (or symlinks), non-essential files that are sometimes installed by apps. Also, all my music and movies files sit on a 10gbps drive. DaisyDisk is a great tool for quickly getting an overview of what's taking up space on drives.

 

[eRondeau]

I’ve got a M4 Mac mini 16GB / 512GB and I love it! I have two external SSD’s connected at all times — a 2TB OWC Thunderbolt for photos, music, and movies and a 2TB Satechi USB-3.1 expansion base exclusively for Time Machine backup. Gotta say, it’s all rock solid and both drives are very fast. When I inevitably buy the M5 or M6 Mac mini it’ll probably have 1TB built-in storage but I have absolutely no regrets getting the 512GB this time around.

 

[bogdanw]

Mac mini M4 256GB with Thunderbolt NVMe SSD Enclosure https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/thunderbolt-3-m-2-nvme-ssd-enclosures.2027925/post-33837377
You can easily upgrade/replace an external NVMe SSD.

 

[ChrisA]

Using external storage with a Mini is not the problem it would be on a notebook computer. In fact, I'd buy a LOT more than only 1TB. I would never want a new computer to be more than 1/2 full on day one. 1/4 full would be ideal.

I have a 1TB external SSD and a four-bay hard drive enclosure that can hold a pretty much unlimited amount of data; 16TB is not close to it's limt. I keep the stuff I use the most on the 1TB SSD, as it is the same speed as the internal storage. The hard drives are slower but hold bulk data I don't need every day.

You will also want a permanently connected disk for Time Machine. For you, a 4TB hard drive would be ideal.

If you are going to keep the MacBook, then you might want to use yet another disk for MacBook Time Machine backups and connect it permanently to the Mini and then share it over the WiFi to the MacBook so it can back up whenever it's within WiFi range.

Yes you desk gets cluttered. This is why I bought the four-bay enclosure. One box and one cable and four drive go inside.

 

[blufrog]

I opted for 48 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. I know I can live inside of 256 GB even with user data, so storing everything on a fast external NVMe SSD [TB5 enclosure] gives me near-native SSD speeds on cheaper storage than if I added it internally.

Given the memory situation I now wish I'd opted for 64 GB, but 48 GB is still more than enough even if I run everything including XCode and Windows 11 in a VM.