New Mac Mini's Storage Can Be Upgraded, But It's Not Easy

[IvyKing]

One more thing: Any M4Pro Mac mini tear down videos yet?

Have any M4 Pro Mini's shipped yet?

Mine is supposed to be here in 1 - 2 weeks.

 

[joecomo]

Good idea. Should save you Big Bucks, especially if you already own the external Thunderbolt 3 SSD drive as your Startup Drive. I know that I love my 4TB SanDisk PRO-G40 Thunderbolt 3 SSD drive as my primary boot Startup Drive on my new M4 Mac mini. Just wait until someone gets a M4 Pro Mac Mini (or M4 Pro MacBook Pro) and has one of the new OWC Envoy Ultra 4TB Thunderbolt 5 SSDs as their Startup Drive! Would really like to see the disk speed tests on that!

interesting concept - I was more thinking of still keeping the original drive to boot and put only dedicated stuff (e.g. photos DB) on the external one.
Unfortunately it seems that I cannot return my order as it is considered as BTO.

 

[joecomo]

Have any M4 Pro Mini's shipped yet?

Mine is supposed to be here in 1 - 2 weeks.

Yes - I got mine on Friday - maxed out in every dimension.

 

[originalmagneto]

Why would you possibly believe that? The Mac Studio used similar (but not identical) mini boards for their SSD chips since 2022, and you still don’t see 3rd party upgrades readily available.

Like the Mac Studio, this makes the SSD repairable 👍🏼but it isn’t readily upgradable 👎🏼.

Hey man, maybe check the link I posted above, I have my 8TB drive in my Mac Studio, with original Kyocera NANDs and a custom board, improved Apple design, chugging along for the last couple of months without a hitch 😉

 

[chfilm]

The EU needs to look into this and their ESG sustainability rating should automatically receive a downgrade of X points each time they release another product with glued and other restrictive elements

Yes it’s really absolute customer rip off that they won’t let us upgrade the storage ourselves when it’s clearly possible! About the Ram, fine, given the unified architecture- but with the SSD??

 

[Chuckeee]

Hey man, maybe check the link I posted above, I have my 8TB drive in my Mac Studio, with original Kyocera NANDs and a custom board, improved Apple design, chugging along for the last couple of months without a hitch 😉

And it took 2 years (Mac Studio came out in 2022), it is ONLY coming out from a small and relatively unknown (but appears to be well established) shop in France, it is still just a kickstarter campaign, and while they provided prototypes- it still isn’t shipping or commercially available.

 

[canadianreader]

Great videos but I wish the first video was a little brighter

 

[canadianreader]

Seems I'll be resending my 8TB 64GB model - get a 512GB 64GB one and run my photos DB on an external 8TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD (intended use was noiseless Time-Machine Backups) until a kind soul releases a third party SSD insert.

(just checked - insane price difference)

I'm planning to do the same it's just so convenient. And if I decided to sell it in the future I don't have to worry about personal files and passwords left on the internal drive plus when I upgrade to a new computer all I need is plug the external SSD and continue from there.

 

[RumorChaser]

They haven’t made any for the Mac Studio, and it has had replaceable SSD chip modules since 2022

With the Mini being so affordable the demand must be high. It doesn't seem that complicated. I'm hopeful.

 

[hans1972]

Explain why apple doesn't use NVMe M.2 SSD? Looks like it is apple shaking down end users for storage upgrade fees

Easy:

• Apple wants to make money
• Apple can be in complete control
• Apple don't need to follow a standard

I don't have any problem with this.

 

[Chuckeee]

With the Mini being so affordable the demand must be high. It doesn't seem that complicated. I'm hopeful.

It is fine to hope. Just don’t expect that you can buy a 256GB unit today with the plan of upgrading it to 2TB in 6 months. Just be willing to accept the possibility that you may have to use external or online storage if you purchase a machine with a small internal SSD.

 

[arc of the universe]

All we need is a handle to easily open it now

gigaflop

"and there's a gigaflop. just sitting right there." - sj

 

[phenste]

Their entire approach there is simply about money

BREAKING: most valuable company in the world takes a money-first approach to things

 

[redheeler]

Guy who did the storage upgrade made a good video. None of the typical YouTuber annoyances, just plainly spoken and does the job.

Dosdude is well-known in the older Mac community for being extremely talented and passionate about what he does. He's the exact opposite of a fake YouTuber type personality.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Love a bit of Snazzy.

Interesting video, the SSD thing is more about being easier to service that the user being able to upgrade, that said I won't play Apple's storage game and buy as small a built in drive as I can get away with and use externals.

 

[turbineseaplane]

if I decided to sell it in the future I don't have to worry about personal files and passwords left on the internal drive

There is no concern there when wiped the normal way you have to do before selling it anyhow

 

[redheeler]

All we need is a handle to easily open it now

Such a cool design. Except for the massive external power brick that everyone forgets about.

 

[JosephAW]

Still wish Apple would offer a BTO with zero storage option, figure it should be at least $100 or more cheaper. My M2 uses external storage and it looks like thunderbolt 5 will be just as fast as the internal storage.

 

[Future Dwight]

That’s not just a mere a guy. That’s a dude: dosdude… And he’s number one.

dosdude1 is the best

 

[MilaM]

Love the dosdude1 video. This guy has some serious electronics skills.

At the very end of the video, he mentions how much he paid for the NAND. It's 90 USD for the chips to do the 1TB upgrade and 160 USD for 2 TB. Would be interesting to know how much a professional repair shop would have to charge for the work to replace the storage chips.

 

[840quadra]

Decided to go up from base model, and go to the base M4 Pro Mini. Potential to upgrade the internal storage with (likely overpriced) OWC, or Sonnet down the road is a good deal. Feel I want more GPU power than the base Mini as my primary home machine.

Sad to be pushing my 12 core cMP further into sideline / fun use, but my power bill will be far happier lol.

They haven’t made any for the Mac Studio, and it has had replaceable SSD chip modules since 2022

Bigger user base of the Mini will likely turn that tide. Far, far more people purchase the Mini than the Studio.

 

[DPUser]

Sad to be pushing my 12 core cMP further into sideline

You won't be at all sad once your new Mac arrives. My cMP 5,1 12 core has been booted exactly twice since I bought my M1 Mac Studio 2.5 years ago.

PS: Both of those cMP boots were to facilitate data transfer to the Apple Silicon machine...

 

[d5aqoëp]

Decided to go up from base model, and go to the base M4 Pro Mini. Potential to upgrade the internal storage with (likely overpriced) OWC, or Sonnet down the road is a good deal. Feel I want more GPU power than the base Mini as my primary home machine.

Sad to be pushing my 12 core cMP further into sideline / fun use, but my power bill will be far happier lol.


Bigger user base of the Mini will likely turn that tide. Far, far more people purchase the Mini than the Studio.

M4 Pro could possibly be upgradable to 8TB according to some people.

 

[Sarafay]

Compare Apple prices for two basic minis to upgrade one to same amount of storage ending up with 32 and 512 GB. Surprised.

 

[svish]

Very good video. Nice to see the internals of the new mini