pondering a new startup drive for 2018 Mac MINI

[wfriedwald]

running a 2018 Mac Mini
latest Mac OS Monterey 12.1
(tons of external drives, 3 monitors...)

so I have been having some goofy slowdowns lately (including major freeze-&-crashes involving the combination of zoom & various media players inc. VLC - but that's a subject for another query).

I am wondering if it would help to get a new, bigger hard drive. They seemed very expensive in 2018, but now I see them all over for $100 or so. not bad! (I am talking $100-ish for a 1TB SSD drive.)

Does anybody agree or disagree that this would contribute to a speedier system?

The next step would be finding someone to do the upgrade - I don't trust myself to go into a Mac Mini or a laptop (though I did it all the time with my old 2008 Mac Pro).

thanks for any feedback!

w

PS: I currently have a 250GB startup drive, with roughly 25% (46GB) of it free.

 

[Fishrrman]

The SSD in the 2018 Mac Mini is NOT replaceable.
You can't upgrade it -- at least not "internally".

And almost any external SSD you add is going to be slower.

I sense that the problems you're having are NOT due to the SSD itself.
Rather, it's got something to do with the software you have running on it.

 

[wfriedwald]

ooh... why did I not know that ... there's no way to replace the internal startup drive?

well, good news is I managed to get 75GB free, so that's a full 25% -

also since a lot of these problems were connected to the internet (livestorm & zoom) I figured a new router would help as well, so I ordered one of those.

thank you so much! any more suggestions?

w