Boost Your M4 Mac Mini: How to Set Up an External SSD as Your Main Drive!

[@ReachFilms]

Just want to note, this method is not about using an external hard drive to boot from. I don’t personally do that nor do I recommend it either

[@gwcoolduude]

but geoff , just thinking forward , what do you suggest i do if one day the drive dies ?? how will it effect us ?? thanks again . newbee john

[@ReachFilms]

@ it would be the same thing if your internal hard drive died. Make sure it’s backed up and at least if the external drive died, you aren’t booting from it so you could change back to using the internal hard drive. One easy way is to have a secondary admin account that has nothing on it but is still using the internal drive so you can easily make a quick change to your main account. The other would be since you aren’t booting from the external drive, to try and login to your main account and see if it will let you switch without having to do it from the secondary account.

[@photosbyjf]

one youtuber also mentioned to set up a secondary admin on the internal drive in case of catastrophic failure of the external drive. This gives you an opportunity to still access those internal only files to recover from

[@ReachFilms]

That is a great note! Thank you!!

[@bnehus11]

Do remember which KZbinr?

[@klif_n]

@@bnehus11@macsoundsolutions is one that mentioned it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaWsk3qna7SXbNEsi=j9gG0PZwyyD5EHzM

[@LumiSnowie]

​@@bnehus11Mac Sound Solutions Inc.

[@carlosread5887]

Geoff, correct me if I am wrong, What you propose is that we set the external drive as the main drive, and THEN install all apps?

[@RadYOacTVe]

What happens if the external drive isn't connected, will the Mini still boot?

[@markwiemels]

Good tip!

[@ReachFilms]

I'm glad you agree! it's a great way to get the most out of your Mac mini.

[@AtortAerials]

I just ordered a Mini M4 Pro with a 2TB internal and a thunderbolt 4TB SSD from OWC I think I'm good! 😎

[@ReachFilms]

For sure you have a nice setup ordered right there!

[@mauriziomauricone]

…and 8GB ram 😂😂😂

[@AtortAerials]

@@ReachFilms do you think I'll be alright with 24GB of memory though or should I have gone with 48GB? Frick it was getting to like $2600 with that so I held off.

[@AtortAerials]

@@mauriziomauricone lol what?! No 24GB I hope it will be enough!

[@59design]

Should get a 1TB and 48GB ram

[@gwcoolduude]

THANKYO DUUUUUUUDE!!!!!!!!🍎🥭🍏

[@dilip.rajkumar]

Looking for a SSD enclosure with support for 2 M.2 SSDs so that i can setup one as my Mac external drive and another as my windows OS drive (for VM Ware). Any recommendations?

[@carloscruzmusiq835]

Another KZbinr who was trying to do this as well, ran into the problem that Apple intelligent doesn't work anymore and other applications too. He got an notification about it. So he said you have to copy the home folder onto the external drive and keep the OS on the main drive to prevent it from happening. Wondered if you’ve ran into this issue aswell.

[@ReachFilms]

I wasn’t able to move the OS to the external drive and honestly that’s a good thing. At this point I’ll have over 200gb free at all times, so I’m happy to let it run on the internal drive

[@carloscruzmusiq835]

@@ReachFilms Than i haven’t said anything haha 🤭🙈.

[@ReachFilms]

@@carloscruzmusiq835 it’s all good!! I think if someone somehow tries to force the computer to install the OS. They should be warned, seems Apple doesn’t make it easy to do that and now I understand why :)

[@TechWest200]

It's interesting, I have the new M4 Mac mini and I absolutely love it but wow, is it buggy AF! I get the beach balls constantly and I had to switch back to my PC just to get some editing on Davinci done.Going to perform a factory reset and then try this change so I can ensure I get the most life out of my internal SSD.

[@ReachFilms]

Interesting, I wonder what’s going on? I’ve edited about 8 videos so far on the mini with no issues. I’m going to come out with a video next week detailing my workflow as I think it will help a lot of users

[@Youtuber-ku4nk]

If you setup a ssd over usb-c (usb 3) you will not get faster that is for sure. It must be over tunderbolt.

[@xray2785]

I’ve been doing this with my Mac computers using external thunderbolt drives for several years now. The problem now is however that Apple Intelligence will not work when a Mac is started from an external volume, nor will Apple Pay, I’m told. So, I now have to look at which files and folders can be successfully moved to an external drive whilst booting off the internal drive, and can I reliably get away with a 256 GB internal drive for that purpose. One piece of good news is that the latest version of macOS now allows apps to be installed directly onto external drives, but this applies only to those apps downloaded from the App Store. All in all, it’s a lot more messy I think and I will lose my ability to carry only the thunderbolt drive around with me and connect it to various host Macs.

[@ReachFilms]

@@xray2785 in this video, I don’t discuss booting from an external drive. Booting from the external drive comes with the issues you bring up

[@xray2785]

@ I see, I misunderstood when you described it as making the external drive as your main drive, I took that to me boot drive

[@ReachFilms]

@ the reason I call it the main drive is it holds all data except for the operating system data which stays on the internal SSD. If you watch the video I explain

[@xray2785]

@ understood, I will watch it again. Do you think it’s still a good idea to go for a 512GB internal SSD when the intention is to use an external SSD in the way you suggest? Many thanks.

[@ReachFilms]

@ if you go for more than 256gb drive you might as well stay using the internal drive. The read and write on the 512 is apparently much faster than the base model 256gb which is why I’m recommending this method to m4 base model users

[@thetheoryguy5544]

Keep the OS on main drive and put other stuff like projects on the external. What if I want to take the computer on the go, now I need to lug an external SSD just to boot it.

[@ReachFilms]

Please check pinned comment

[@ogBravo1]

Question let’s say I get a new Mac mini M4, and I load it up and I sign out to my iCloud ..won’t my iCloud files start to propagate on the new drive automatically or is there something I should do before my iCloud file start to propagate on the new device?

[@ReachFilms]

When you do this and restart your computer, it makes you re-sign in to iCloud and then at that point things would start to repopulate

[@osXcanada]

@@ReachFilms I don’t believe iCloud syncs to your computer. You can choose whatever folder you want to download to your computer, in case you need to work on something and have no internet connection. IN Sequoia there is a right click option to download now or keep downloaded…. This last option would sync back and forth…from cloud to computer…

[@osXcanada]

What about using cloud space as storage??

[@ReachFilms]

@@osXcanada for my purpose that’s a no go as I edit a lot of video and need immediate and quick access to files

[@osXcanada]

@ yes, that is true! A lot of software for video and audio let you pick where you save your project….and i would say as a mac computer tech for 30 years, do not use your main drive as the production drive. Use an external.

[@Youtuber-ku4nk]

Only do this if you have thunderbolt external drive if you want to stay fast.

[@ReachFilms]

Completely agree

[@onlyvids]

Hey, I have a question. Can I use my external drives, which are full of footage, and connect them to a Mac Mini M4 without any issues? Also, can I transfer files back and forth with the external drives?

[@ReachFilms]

@@onlyvids yeah it all just depends on what the drives were formatted as. But for the most part you can read more types of hard drive formatting on Macs than PC’s

[@ZeerakImran]

It could be totally fine or it could be a huge problem depending on what the drive is currently formatted as. You can use the drive going forward either way, by formatting it to the appropriate format. But this will wipe all the footage of your drive. Thats the problematic part. It means that you will have to back up all the contents of the drive first, then format the drive. Then put the data back on the drive. Depending on how large this data is and the hardware/internet connection available to you, this could take a few minutes to a few weeks.

[@onlyvids]

@ if i remember right those are ntfs format. Mac works better with some specific format?

[@onlyvids]

@@ZeerakImran pff that’s a difficult part. I will see when i get it. Thanks for your help and support, and for your quick response

[@wadewilliams1892]

Thanks

[@ReachFilms]

No problem

[@cubano100pct]

I would just create symbolic links to folders on my external SSD

[@pratyushchandra867]

I read somewhere that booting from external ssd disables AI(apple intelligence)

[@Xanduur]

Nothing lost.

[@ReachFilms]

This method isn’t booting from an external SSD and I personally wouldn’t do that

[@Xanduur]

Plug it in and install the OS to the external drive? Has anything changed in 12 years regarding this process? I hope Apple hasn’t screwed this simple process up. Why do this? So you can boot from ant Mac that you can connect to. Again, unless Applevfubarred this as well.

[@ReachFilms]

No im not discussing using the drive to boot from. I don’t really like doing that nor would recommend that either

[@crazytraders7]

Don't do this method you will regret..I do the same mistake

[@ReachFilms]

I’m sure there are other ways to do this and I’d love to hear your experience and why you regret it. Let’s talk in the comments!

[@thomasfokas]

This is a horrible idea if you want to use Apple Intelligence

[@ReachFilms]

That is only if you boot from an external drive. This video has nothing to do with booting from an external drive

[@dennishuang3182]

Not to be too picky but you refer to the external SSD as a hard drive several times.

[@ReachFilms]

Yup! I get they were technically different but 99% of the viewers understand what I mean and to edit that small thing out just makes the overall video look weird. But I do appreciate you being polite about it.

[@Xanduur]

So what?it’s apparent what he means.

[@charminbaer2323]

You mean run your external SSD as your main drive. You all need to learn the proper names or be more specific. The Mac Mini already has an SSD. Grinds my gears when i hear people say USB and USB-C. They're both USB, one is USB-A and the other is USB-C. Also, Macs haven't had Hard Drives in quite a while. SMFH

[@ReachFilms]

You mean, the Title of the video?