I’ve used Macs since the 1980’s and recently upgraded my 2017 iMac to an M4 Mac mini. It’s not quite going how I thought it would. I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle trying to make his way in society after a 20 year nap. If you would indulge me, I have some questions.
The main one is how you manage your data. The maximum internal SSD currently available on the Mini is 512 GB; I’ve been using an external 4TB SSD as a boot disk on my iMac to get around a similar limitation. After running some disk benchmarks on the mini, it looks like I’d be missing out on a great deal of speed if I go that route now; the internal drive is exponentially faster, even with an external Thunderbolt drive. I’m guessing others here are managing this scenario as well — how are you going about it?
My initial experience with the mini leads me to believe that Apple is really pushing iCloud now. I tried to backup my iPhone to the new machine and figured it would offer me the opportunity to choose where I would like to place the backup, but no! Only by entering some commands via Terminal was I able to backup my 512 GB phone to a more suitable place than my 512 GB startup disk. Am I going to run into similar issues when I try to set up my music and video libraries on external disks?
I was accustomed as a creative professional to looking at the Mac as a tool that offered me various ways of achieving my goals. That empowerment was one of the things that set Macs apart from other platforms. This new environment feels quite different.
Alternatively, does anyone have a perspective on using iCloud for everything? I can see where there might be some advantages — not having to buy storage, very little risk of data loss due to equipment failure, increased accessibility from my other devices, etc.
The maximum internal SSD currently available on the M4 Mini is 2 TB, and on the M4 Pro Mini it is 8 TB. But note that you may not be able to find the larger drives through retailers.
I think this breaks down into several considerations:
What needs to be on the boot drive, vs. comfortably on an external drive?
Pros and cons of booting from an external drive
Having your data always on the drive, vs. only some and the rest in the cloud.
Google says that the internal 512 GB SSD on an M4 mini achieves about 2,800–3,000 MB/s read. And, an external TB4 or USB4 attached 4 TB SSD should have about the same performance – the limitation is the NVMe, not Thunderbolt. So, I’m wondering about your test results. What actual external SSD and enclosure are you testing with?
(I’m hoping TBitsers with more knowledge in this area will chip in)
Not quite. The stock configurations (which is all you can buy in retail stores) is 512 GB. But there are build-to-order options up to 2TB for the M4 and up to 8TB for the M4 Pro.
I bought my M4 mini with 2TB of internal storage.
But if you can’t afford that much storage (Apple’s prices are much higher than third-party SSD options), you can work with 512 GB just fine.
In that situation, I would use the 512 GB internal storage to hold macOS and my app installations. But I’d use an external Thunderbolt SSD for my documents and libraries. Yes, it won’t be as fast as if everything was internal, but I think it will be good enough for most purposes.
I hoped to use a Mac M4 Mini with a 256GB internal drive, and a 1TB Thunderbolt external (which I already had) to house my books, music and photos.
It hasn’t worked very well. Even though I told the Mac OS apps where to find the libraries (on the 1TB external) they continue to try to write to the internal. I am constantly having to free up space on the built-in drive.
Also, Music when played on the Mini itself (and stored on the external) usually produces a “Track not found” error and then I have to go tell Apple Music where to look.
Bottom line - get at least a 1TB internal when buying a Mini.I’m seriously considering trading this one in and buying the larger config after about a year of use.
I grew up with Macs as local devices and from early on did local backup to safeguard the data.
When iCloud (and MobileMe was it called?) came out I recall investigating it and finding the concept useful but in practice data kept getting fouled up, and since I had a method to revert to, I did.
Now, I only use iCloud for Mail and Messages and am rarely over 50MB of 5 free GB usage. (I also dallied in free tiers of Evernote and Dropbox for a handful of online storage usage but don’t much need it now).
Certainly others here will comment on iCloud’s contemporary reliability, some may be heavy users, but for me the complexity and risk of corruption, loss, the frequent changes Apple makes, were just not worth it. Now as a retiree the local computing model is the Right Tool For The Job.
Thanks to all for your replies! It looks like I have a couple options, and I’m lucky that I’ll be able to test drive them before I make a final decision, thanks to Costco’s generous return policy. So, I’ll give it a go with my small SSD and external disks for now and see if it works well enough or if I run into the same issues that TonyTownsend mentioned. If that doesn’t work, I’ll return this Mini and get one with a larger internal drive, directly from Apple.
I still find it annoying that Apple doesn’t make it simple to backup an iPhone to an external drive but c’est la vie. At least I found a workaround.
I agree it is annoying but not too hard to fix. The backups are located in your user library under MobileSync ( ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backups ). Since I am not running Tahoe yet I can’t verify that this still works, but it is relatively straightforward to link this directory to an external drive location of your choosing.
This shouldn’t be happening. It is very common for users with small internal drives to put large libraries on externals with no problem. I have a 256GB M4 Mini with an 800GB Photos Library on a thunderbolt external SSD, and it is fast and problem free.
I have an M2 Mac mini. My music library is on an external SSD attached by USB-C (not Thunderbolt). I do not have any problems with the Music app not finding tracks. I notice no lag when playing music, updating metadata, or ripping tracks from CDs. I do, however, keep my .musiclibrary file on my boot drive. It is less than 10MB.
Just curious, @mikebhm as I might try a variation of this myself, how do you then backup the contents of the external SSD? with CCC or ChronoSync to one or two other SSDs?
Being extremely deaf I don’t have a music library, but I know similar can be done with music. Googling “how locate music on an external drive Mac” produces lots of hits.
Alternatively, does anyone have a perspective on using iCloud for everything?
I use an iMac as my primary Mac with a MBP for use when I travel. The iMac has a 1tb SSD which easily holds all my personal files and Photos library. I have it synced to iCloud but keep a full copy on the iMac so I can backup locally and to BackBlaze. The MBP has a 256gb SSD which is too small for everything so I have the storage optimized. I keep media files (videos, music, books) on a Mac mini server. If I want media files when traveling I will copy over what I want.
I’ve been happy with how it works. I can access files from my iPad or iPhone with no problem. Only issue is occasional sluggishness in syncing.
I did the same with my M4 Studio, but it’s disgusting how much Apple squeezes your nuts for the storage upgrade. The only thing that made it slightly more palatable was that B&H had that particular model/option discounted when I bought it.
But yes, if you want more than the “default” option you have to choose a custom configuration for the amount of storage (or anything else) you need.