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Upgrading Mac Studio storage

pshufd said:
PCIe 6.0 doubles gen 5 bandwidth
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The thing I remember seeing in PCIe 5 is the lack of SSDs, There was a noticable time span between the releasing of motherboards with PCIe 5 and PCIe 5 NVMe drives appearing

neomorpheus said:
It is a hack since its forced.
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Its not forced, you have other options
neomorpheus said:
And you conveniently left the part that it does has many downsides, like suddenly getting drives dropped by the OS.
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I left them out because I'm only focusing on the upsides. I have yet to have my external drive dropped by the OS.

We can disagree on this, and there's no use in just beating each other over the head with our reasons - good luck on your journey with your computer, and I'll endeavor to do the same
 
Hey @gilles_polysoft, any chance for an update? Seems people here are really eager to get something in their hands :)

neomorpheus said:
It is a hack since its forced.
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Since when is using external storage ever a hack? Like it was mentioned, nobody forces you to use external storage, you can get the storage from Apple and as you might know, otherwise we wouldn't be talking here, there are third party solutions for internal storage, albeit still very limited at the moment. If anything, THIS would be the hack as it requires you to completely reset the device in DFU mode. There's no way any sane employer would allow doing this to devices so in my opinion that is a complete non-issue.
 
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So, my TB5 Acasis enclosure arrived. I had the Samsung 990Pro 4TB in an Acasis TB4 enclosure while waiting and I installed Tahoe on that drive and was booting from it and not the internal drive. I did a speed test and the results are below. Would you still upgrade the internal SSD if the external is giving these speeds? I was looking at the 8TB internal but @gilles_polysoft is not putting any listings up. First picture is of TB4 Acasis and then I moved the SSD to the TB5. Let me know your thoughts please.

Screenshot 2025-08-12 at 1.39.10 PM.png


Screenshot 2025-08-12 at 1.53.29 PM.png
 
KlingmannMusic said:
Hey @gilles_polysoft, any chance for an update? Seems people here are really eager to get something in their hands :)


Since when is using external storage ever a hack? Like it was mentioned, nobody forces you to use external storage, you can get the storage from Apple and as you might know, otherwise we wouldn't be talking here, there are third party solutions for internal storage, albeit still very limited at the moment. If anything, THIS would be the hack as it requires you to completely reset the device in DFU mode. There's no way any sane employer would allow doing this to devices so in my opinion that is a complete non-issue.
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Another white knight with the companionship in defense of poor apple.

Being forced to use an external drive because we clearly agreed that apple is price gouging their loyal customers is indeed a hack.

Jumping through hoops for this just because:


In the end, many of you are here because you want an option that apple its not providing (cheap drives at purchase or after).

But hey, feel free to continue into senseless semantics debates and moving the goalposts to fit your narratives.
 
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neomorpheus said:
Another white knight with the companionship in defense of poor apple.

Being forced to use an external drive because we clearly agreed that apple is price gouging their loyal customers is indeed a hack.

Jumping through hoops for this just because:


In the end, many of you are here because you want an option that apple its not providing (cheap drives at purchase or after).

But hey, feel free to continue into senseless semantics debates and moving the goalposts to fit your narratives.
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Oh, you seem to misunderstand what I said to fit your narrative. I’m in absolutely no way defending Apple and what they’re doing with storage and memory. I think we all agree that their pricing is absolute ********* and the margins they must have on that are abnormal.

Nevertheless, I believe the thing we are disagreeing on is what actually constitutes a hack. Using an external drive (you know, which have existed since cameras are a thing and read tape drives) I wouldn’t count as a hack. After all, CDs, USB Sticks etc are also all external storage media and are commonly used to boot entire systems. Calling it a hack just because you didn’t want to upgrade it at purchase time, no matter how predatory it might be is NOT a hack but you’re referring to an alternative non-invasive solution. It even works on most phones to extend the storage.

Grinding off a PCB layer by layer to reverse engineer it so you can build it from the ground up and then sell it so a customer can open up their machine and do a replacement and enter DFU mode fits that description way more.

But let me make this very clear again for you because it seems to be really hard to understand. No one here is defending the practices or the price gouging Apple is doing. No one is forcing you to do anything, you merely have options to pick from. If you don’t like either of these options, that’s your thing.

Surenmunoo said:
So, my TB5 Acasis enclosure arrived. I had the Samsung 990Pro 4TB in an Acasis TB4 enclosure while waiting and I installed Tahoe on that drive and was booting from it and not the internal drive. I did a speed test and the results are below. Would you still upgrade the internal SSD if the external is giving these speeds? I was looking at the 8TB internal but @gilles_polysoft is not putting any listings up. First picture is of TB4 Acasis and then I moved the SSD to the TB5. Let me know your thoughts please.

View attachment 2536657

View attachment 2536658
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I haven’t booted from it and just put my external media and LLM on it and it has been a blast so far. That might be because the internal 512GB isn’t using the maximum speed it could though.
 
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@KlingmannMusic Its no use to continue this.

A hack in my book is jumping thru hoops to get something to work that its not part of the original design.

The main idea of an Apple device is that it works out of the box, no changes, not system or OS modifications are needed, not home folder needs to be moved, etc.

As pointed above, there are risk involved in making and forcing an external drive as your primary.

Does a brand new Mac ask at setup time if we want to use the detected external drive as our primary? No, it doesnt.

You might not be defending apple price gouging practices but others that are saying "this is perfectly fine" are indeed making excuses, same for the "you have options".

If such "solutions" were perfectly fine, trust me, Apple would be selling Macs without any internal storage.

And actually, some of us do not have options since for career reasons, we must have a Mac, for example.

I commend Polysoft for taking the initiative to serve this section of the market for the already stated reasons.
 
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What is the current pre-order status? The website says pre-orders for batch 5 should open today:

2025-07-25 delivery update :

1st batch : all deliveries made between February 18 and March 9, 2025
2nd batch : all deliveries made between April 24 and May 12, 2025
3rd batch : all M1 shipped, M2, M3 and M4 boards delayed due to a problem detected during quality control
4th batch : deliveries will take place between August 20 and August 30 (preorder will open August 1)
5th batch : deliveries will take place in september 2025 (preorder will open August 15)
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but the product pages say "Out Of Stock" and "Notify Me When Available."

I assume gilles_polysoft is still working through the the Batch 3 backlog... just don't want to miss the next window!
 
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I dont envy Polysoft situation.

Create too many, end up with unsold inventory.

Cant ask customers to pay full price upfront, because we would be wary of a hit and run situation.

Its hard.
 
neomorpheus said:
I dont envy Polysoft situation.

Create too many, end up with unsold inventory.

Cant ask customers to pay full price upfront, because we would be wary of a hit and run situation.

Its hard.
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Unsold inventory is definitely a risk with a niche, high-cost product like this.

I'm not too worried about Polysoft running off with my order. I'm comfortable with the protections provided by credit cards, PayPal, etc.

There are lots of e-commerce tools to assist with this. Shopify has a whole app category for pre-orders. They implement preorder, split payment, deposits, etc. Maybe an ideal situation would be:
  • Orders are always open for all products
  • Take a deposit when orders are placed. Bigger deposits and fewer refund/cancellation options reduce seller risk.
  • Site reports how many orders/deposits have been received for each product, along with how many orders are needed for a production run.
    • Ideally it could also show how the number of deposits has changed over time with a forecast of when the order threshold may be met.
    • Threshold should be set comfortable above the bare minimum run to account for abandoned deposits
  • When sufficient deposits are received, bill everyone for the full cost and start the production run.
This is essentially what Kickstarter does. The difference is that it's explicitly a store, not a fundraising campaign. You have to buy in to get on the list.

Pricing strategy also matters here. Polysoft is MASSIVELY undercutting Apple on price. Looking at my options for sourcing storage for my 2023 Mac Studio M2 Max, they could offer a flat 45% discount and actually make more money:

StorageGenuine Apple
(no return credit)		PolysoftDiscountFlat 45%
512 GB$395.12
1 TB$527.12
2 TB$880.00$379.0057%$484.00
4 TB$1,408.00$759.0046%$774.40
8 TB$2,464.00$899.0064%$1355.20

I'd certainly rather pay $899 than $1355 for my 8TB of storage, but I'd rather have the option to pay $1355 than be locked out of ordering at all.
 
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Hello everyone,

Has anyone here purchased an M3 from the 3rd batch on shop.polysoft.fr? I was informed that there were some delays but that the shipment via UPS was just a few days away — that was on August 2nd. However, since then, I haven’t received any replies to my inquiries, not even through the WhatsApp number listed, which also never responds.

Update.

datagov63 said:
Newsflash. People in Europe take vacations in August.
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Oh, I hope this is it...

Regards
 
Did preorders ever open on August 15? I was browsing the site pretty frequently and never saw and products available for preorder for any of the Mac Studio's.
 
I have been eyeing the site daily too and set up a site alert. But if he is already behind on delivery and not even sticking to dates on the website, I figure it is a decent amount of time / risk.

I may just go with one from Aliexpress. JCID or Bresun. It isn't like some guy in France is going to be inherently better at mounting NAND chips than someone in China.
 
akatsuki said:
I have been eyeing the site daily too and set up a site alert. But if he is already behind on delivery and not even sticking to dates on the website, I figure it is a decent amount of time / risk.

I may just go with one from Aliexpress. JCID or Bresun. It isn't like some guy in France is going to be inherently better at mounting NAND chips than someone in China.
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You have a link to a seller on AliExpress?
 
I have a situation and @gilles_polysoft isnt responding to emails in the last few weeks.

I ordered the ssd upgrade for an M3 Studio, only to realize after ordering that I have the M4 Studio (yes, duh, long story). I've asked several times via email, if the Polysoft ssd part number is the same for the M3 and M4. If it is not, I need to change/cancel this order, but I'm getting zero response from Polysoft. I want to resolve this BEFORE they ship it to me, which according to the web site is any day now, so its easier than having to ship it back, especially given the total lack of any response to email. Honestly, I'm real close to a charge-back on my credit card.

Edit: To be clear, this was ordered at the start of June. I've since recieved emails saying it would ship on Day X, then delayed etc. you all know that part of the story. My worry is it shows up, and I have no idea if I can even use it. My understanding is once I take out the old Apple SSD I cant reuse it again? So if I try this SSD and it fails I'm totally screwed? Give the lack of response I cant be sure I can even return it, its going to be a very expensive paper weight.
 
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Does the Mac Studio suffer from the same hardware power to ports problem as the Mac Mini Pro?
This is well known problem in many threads here, where the power is insufficient to have > 2 SSD/NVME drives online at the same time.
 
buggz said:
Does the Mac Studio suffer from the same hardware power to ports problem as the Mac Mini Pro?
This is well known problem in many threads here, where the power is insufficient to have > 2 SSD/NVME drives online at the same time.
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I have the M4 Studio and use an Acasis TB5 enclosure with 4TB 990Pro that I boot from, I also have 2 x Acasis TB4 enclosures with 2TB 990Pro drives that I use for additional files and storage for movies etc and have no issues. All run at Full speed.
 
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goalie1 said:
I have a situation and @gilles_polysoft isnt responding to emails in the last few weeks.

I ordered the ssd upgrade for an M3 Studio, only to realize after ordering that I have the M4 Studio (yes, duh, long story). I've asked several times via email, if the Polysoft ssd part number is the same for the M3 and M4. If it is not, I need to change/cancel this order, but I'm getting zero response from Polysoft. I want to resolve this BEFORE they ship it to me, which according to the web site is any day now, so its easier than having to ship it back, especially given the total lack of any response to email. Honestly, I'm real close to a charge-back on my credit card.

Edit: To be clear, this was ordered at the start of June. I've since recieved emails saying it would ship on Day X, then delayed etc. you all know that part of the story. My worry is it shows up, and I have no idea if I can even use it. My understanding is once I take out the old Apple SSD I cant reuse it again? So if I try this SSD and it fails I'm totally screwed? Give the lack of response I cant be sure I can even return it, its going to be a very expensive paper weight.
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The M3 and M4 on the Polysoft website have different part numbers so maybe the board layout is different or the Nands are different.
Screenshot 2025-08-20 at 15.11.17.png
 
I checked AliExpress and this is their price for the 8TB M4 Studio. With PolySoft, they added some extra protection into their boards to protect against surges, not sure if these boards will have them.
Screenshot 2025-08-20 at 17.55.40.png
 
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