ULTIMATE External Storage Guide for MAC 👉 5x LONGER WARRANTY!

[@theTechNotice]

Here's why I'm doing the M2 Pro Raffle: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGHFq6CEa8eii8k Enter the Competition here: geni.us/raffallM2 3 Lucky Winners: - Mac Mini M2 - Mac Mini M2 PRO - Intel 13600k *terms & Conditions apply

[@PreludeStudiosMBD]

bro EX-FAT is trash. it is superslow. it slow as snail. if you want to use full speed bandwidth then format it into apfs. it would be native to mac os but it will have brilliant speed. CHEERSSSS.....

[@min2oly]

If you do mac upgrade to 512 the speed increases as well, with external hard drive, the speed will not increase...???

[@teegees]

I’m having a harder and harder time justifying buying a Mac nowadays with their drive internals soldered on. It’s just too much of a risk, even if I run stuff off of an external drive.

[@abhijitme]

For these drives, can you please do a speed comparison test between Ex-FAT, APFS and APFS Encrypted? That would help us a lot. I would prefer APFS Encrypted if the loss of speed is within 20% range, as that would still keep my data secure in the external drive.

[@peterbreis5407]

@@abhijitme Risky! Adds another layer of possible failure or difficult file recovery

[@roberthartley6629]

In the UK (and EU) you get a minimum of 5 years warranty on Apple and other premium electronics. They may say 1 year but consumer law wins. :-)

[@user-hl9jq8iz4i]

😮

[@WhiterockFTP]

Do you happen to have a reference on that? Cheers

[@Bruce.Hemsworth]

How do I use this? I went to John Lewis with a faulty AirPod and they said it’s now out of warranty

[@kotwa]

Nope. Germany/Czechia/Austria - 2 years and only for private person, business 1 year.

[@cassio2999]

5 years ??? i dont think so please link proff

[@msandersen]

If you add an external SSD for your Mac, format in APFS, it is designed for SSDs, the others aren’t. Forget about HFS+ or ExFat. Rule of thumb: If you’ve got an external traditional spinning HD, use HFS+; if you have an SSD, use APFS. It has to do with the entirely different technologies involved. HFS+ manages fragmentation, rewriting an entire file if even a small portion is changed to maintain a contiguous data block, whereas on an SSD, there is no read head, access is equally fast however much the data is fragmented, so it can just update the data that has changed and leave the rest, which is much faster. SSDs however require garbage collection, which HFS+ is not designed for as SSDs did not exist back then, so performance of an SSD formatted in HFS+ will degrade the more it is used. The opposite is true for HDs, always use HFS+ for optimal performance and automatic defragmentation. If you read and write a lot of small files, eg lots of image files, ExFat also isn’t as good on large volumes nor support journaling or any other advanced file system feature.

[@diazjubairy1729]

After format the ssd as apfs, can we still use the ssd in windows ?

[@ElectroPanPipes]

@@diazjubairy1729no, it’s only Mac readable.

[@anisdada1646]

@@ElectroPanPipes Can Android Tv's see it?

[@ElectroPanPipes]

@@anisdada1646 I’d say no, as APFS is Apple File System.

[@MercuriMedici]

@@diazjubairy1729 nope, you'd have to reformat to NTFS, you'd get faster speed on windows with that format than ExFat

[@davewhite7182]

Just a tip, do NOT stick the thermal pad onto the ssd, stick it on the lid. Why? Because if your ssd fails and you need to do a warranty return, when you try to peel off the pad it takes all the serial number printing with it and the drive is left with no ID. I made this mistake with a Sabrent enclosure that came with a similar pad.

[@jimgardner5129]

Thanks my man. I would have done that and kicked my a$$ later.

[@peterwan816]

You need pressure between the ssd and the enclosure for the thermal pad to function properly. If you put it on the lid and it did not stick to the ssd that means it’s useless.

[@bassyey]

I thought that's just common sense lol.

[@roverdad]

D’oh just did this yesterday…stuck to the ssd. However, there are extra thermal pads available for cheap.

[@hitmusicworldwide]

Can't you just use a blow dryer to gently heat up the adhesive and pull up slowly without it damaging anything

[@charlesclifton1006]

Just came across your channel this morning and I have to say.... as far as external disc storage goes... this is the most informative education I've yet to receive. Brilliant!! well done!!!

[@theTechNotice]

appreciate it! :)

[@photon92]

As someone who's profession is in the tech space and who uses these things on the daily, this was a really well done and informative video. 👍

[@gergemall]

Awesome. Makes me feel reassured even though I trust this gentleman’❤

[@wcg66]

The internal 256GB SSD is quite a bit slower than the 512GB and 1TB version in the M2 Mini. I highly recommend at least the 512GB version and then add external storage.

[@mowtow90]

The reason for it is that the 512 is actualyl 2x256 nad chips with the NAND controller Striping the data (practically a RAID 0). On the M1 gen the 256 was faster because it was 128s. However that has a drawback - shorter lifesapn. Smaller NAND chip has smaller max write cout (or weir) then the bigger ones. This why early M1s had extensive weir issues on the smaller versions due to swap. That is why when you buy NVME check how many NAND chips it has and what is the max write cout (it will give you an idea how long it will last depending on your use case). That is ufcource if the OEM doesnt sc**w with the firmware and the weir calcualtion on the NAND controller - caugh (Samsung, Kixoxia/Toshiba , Seagate ext). Its actaully funny how many enterprise HDDs Seagate , Toshiba and WD f***cked with bad FW until they fixed it.

[@ObeseChess]

On paper, true, but it looks like its 2.25gbps vs 1.5gbps - I’m of the opinion that most people are not going to notice that enough for it to make a $200 difference.

[@Peter-df1br]

I agree with going to an external SSD. Mine is the ACASIS TBU405 with the WD Black SN850X PCIe Gen 4 NVMe 4TB SSD. My speed is 2572 MB/s Write & 2776 MB/s Read. I use it for all my media using Plex on my MacMini. The ACASIS TBU405 can accept up to an 8TB NVMe. I'm very happy with it. As a matter of fact, I have already order another ACASIS TBU405 case.

[@LellePrinter82]

This is a sweet solution for mac users. I've seen the KZbinr Dosdude1 who managed to replace the ssd nand in a Mac Mini from the 256gb model with 2tb. He replaced the two 128gb chips with two 1tb chips. His soldering skills are on a complete another level.

[@iphone2009iphone]

I assumed that even if you pulled this off that it would be rejected by the machine, but this would be awesome

[@udance4ever]

​​@@iphone2009iphonecheck out DosDude1's channel - he's a magician! he doubled the RAM on a Legion Go & he demonstrated some insanely low level programming that needed to be done so it would recognize dual layered chips. I think he had an easier time w the mini! 😅

[@Jaylou88]

I spent $270 on a Acasis 40GB M.2 enclosure and a 2TB SN850X. Read/Write speeds are 2600-2700 Mbps. It’s a Beast. Super happy with it.

[@denvera1g1]

Fun fact, the SSDs on the Mac are not part of the SOC, their decision to make it not replacable is entirely focused on screwing over the customer and effectively making iCloud backup manditory(this is the main reason, as the devices fail more often than the storage, incentivises iCloud adoption by feat of the stograge not working if the PSU fails)

[@yepoenorustomhortel2169]

This guys is not that too tech savvy. Ive watched one of his videos before and he was providing wrong info.

[@denvera1g1]

@@yepoenorustomhortel2169 Everyone is allowed to make mistakes, Apple said it was part of the SOC before. Apple tends to conflate SOC and SBC as meaning the same thing, when really SOC means it is all in one block of silicon, and SBC means all silicon blocks are on a single package/board, so it is an honest and easily forgiven error Here's something alot of people dont know Did you know that the RAM is also not part of the SOC? Sure there is cache on die, but this is SRAM and generally less than 100MB, the stuiff most people think of RAM Apple claims is on the SOC, is actually on the package, not the CPU chip Source: I took apart my M1 Mac Mini Also Some of Apple's marketing material clearly show the CPU chip sitting next to two to four LPDDR packages of some sort(IIRC LPDDR4x or LPDDR5)

[@MuLtI1970_MIDI_channel]

"and effectively making iCloud backup manditory(this is the main reason)" True, but more and more people are becoming aware of this and set up a home NAS systems to use as backup. I rather invest a few hundred bucks on a NAS as pay for Icloud or whaterver cloud and throw everything out "in the open" to companies that i don't know. I am a new Aplle user since about a year, totally love the M1 mini for it's performance but idd the memory and storage prices are insane and not user servicable. Apple needs to become aware that most people have no spare money aside to replace a complete system rather then replace the broken part(s). But as long we (the consumers) are willing to spend money, it just will continue.

[@denvera1g1]

@@MuLtI1970_MIDI_channel I dont care what backup method you have, it is unacceptable for a wear item, to not be replicable. Its like if Tesla made you buy a new car every time a tire needed to be replaced. Problem with even proper backup solutions and not storing anything locally is that the machine will kill itself, there had been over 6TBW on my 256GB model in.... 4 months? before they fixed the "bug" i literally just left it sitting there plugged in and turned on to see how soon it would kill itself, there were times it would write over 100GB/day, without even touching it. At that point i had put close to 3000H of actual use on my main computer and it only had 4TBW, this included backing up and editing photos on this before moving them to my file server(i edit locally because storage is cheap and easily replaceable) It wasnt until after they fixed the bug that i decided it was safe to use it as my backup plex server for recording OTA TV to a network location, which was the main reason i bough the thing in the first place The only redeeming quality is that the MacOS can generally boot from an external drive if the internal drive fails, with Windows you need to use something called Windows2Go, or just switch to linux to be able to boot to an external drive

[@Pipsispite]

Uh the controller is embedded in the SOC so even if the 'storage modules' were removable like on the Mac Studio you wouldn't be able to use them on any other machine to get data off of them.. Any x86 motherboard or external exclosure would require a controller to be present on the storage device like nvme ssds..

[@kazaflew8055]

I’ve just bought the exactly same Orico enclosure and 1TB WD SN850X for my M1 macbook air, and the speed can actually reach 2800mbps in both read and write.

[@larryvaughn5843]

That is about what I get with the Acasis and a 2TB SN 850x, which is about 1000 mbps faster than the internal 250Gb drive my $499 m2 Mac mini came with. Either way it's fast enough for Resolve, way more speed than is necessary for the application. The same memory runs at about 5000 mbps on my pc motherboard.

[@robertblesse5108]

Many thanks for this helpful video. I purchased everything you recommended: Samsung 280 1TB SSD and the Orico M.2 SSD enclosure. Easy assembly and it runs fast on my Mac Studio 2022 M1. I will use the drive for fast video editing using Premiere Pro. I'm very appreciative of your help and recommendations. Thanks, again!

[@chrisheck-stark2385]

With my 2014 Mac Mini, I upgraded and installed a Samsung 1 TB SSD. It works great and extended the longevity of use by years. Too bad the new structure doesn’t allow us to that. - Thank you for this information. - I will absolutely be following your instructions for a speedy external drive, when ever I am in a position to get a new Mac Mini. I am no longer worried about getting the smaller drive size and running put of space. - Thanks again for this great video.

[@piezoman79]

I did the same thing with my 2011 mbp back in 2015 or so, it was like a whole new computer, easily doubled the speed and responsiveness of the system. I’m finally biting the bullet and switching to a Mac mini setup since the laptop portability convenience is basically absent for me with today’s smartphones. I was looking at some of the cheap Mac mini docks that have a drive bay built in, as a solution to not being able to install the ssd internally now, and it will also add the functionality of accessible ports.

[@cjgarrison]

Anything not at least M1 or M2 is relatively slow AF… so if that works for you, but that advice can’t be taken seriously

[@JoshuaG]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="51">0:51</a> its such a bummer that they decided to integrate the SSD into the motherboard 😓 This makes the older MAC and Macbooks more valuable than ever , even though it wont live up to the performance and efficiency of Apple Silicon 👍❤️

[@sanye4k]

it's all about the money buy mini hope last 3-5 year if not buy new onw my friend still has a macbook mid 2010 put in a ssd drive upgrade ram work better then first buy it that has is should be

[@bdhaliwal24]

On the new Macs only the memory is actually on the chip package however the SSD modules are soldered onto the motherboard, so no the storage is not part of the SOC (System on Chip). There's a clear advantage to having memory as part of the SOC package but not really storage .. well actually the only advantage really is that Apple makes more money.

[@Ddraig62SPD]

Great overview! Kinda validates what I did when I got my base spec Mac Mini M1 at launch. Picked up the Acasis Enclosure FA-TB34 and paired it with a WD Black SN750 1TB M.2 NVME PCIE Gen 3. Managed 2483/2341 MB/s R/W after 5 mins @ 32C with a Thermalright Extreme Odyssey 1.0mm thermal pad to replace the stock 0.5mm pad. Works fine for my hobbyist level 4K video editing ;)

[@gullybull5568]

Joker😮

[@ACohen]

For Mac running Catalina or higher, you should format as APFS.

[@jwmcateer3284]

Yep I was surprised to hear his recommendation. I thought APFS was designed for ssds. Might the format of the drive have an effect on performance?

[@DarraghRedmond]

Just so you know, I think it’s worth bearing in mind. read and write speed are 10 times faster on the internal 85,900 as measures on my M2 as opposed to 490 from the external SSD . So plenty of storage on the ship can be very very handy, and then backing up to an external SSD.

[@RobertSababady]

That is such an important point that hardly anyone realises. I like the idea of having external storage, but from a perfomnce point of view, it is not comparible.

[@DarraghRedmond]

@@RobertSababady external storage is still an essential part to most peoples set up . but having that fast internal for those selected projects, keeps things running like a dream.. over the moon with my mini m2 ...

[@MrDan1509]

I always edit off my laptops SSD then transfer to a portable storage after editing and uploading to website is done!

[@peteandpuy]

Watching this video and seeing the 980 Pro falling in price here in Asia. I just ordered a Mac Mini M2 16GB, 512 today. I'm thinking maybe I'll cancel the order and go with the 256GB. No, you're right. I'll stick with the luxury of the 512 even though the price is ridiculous.

[@DarraghRedmond]

@@peteandpuy defo Give yourself some work room , if you use iCloud storage then it will work seamlessly .

[@SelvaggioKamilO]

That would be great idea to show in video how to setup external drive to boot the system on it. That may help many :)

[@stephenvalente3296]

If only Apple would see sense here and at least halve the cost of storage and memory upgrades, I suspect they'd gain a higher percentage of people upgrading their kit to at least 1Tb internally.

[@michaelandrews4783]

Apple preys on people with little pc knowledge and high disposable income I suspect they have worked out that market is limited and rather than expand and sell in volume they have decided to stick to this limited production high profit margin model.

[@stephenvalente3296]

@@michaelandrews4783 Exactly. Cook openly extolls his skill of cutting production costs, shafting suppliers on their margins to improve his, etc., so why can Apple still not make more significant inroads into the PC market share? Simple, besides the laziness of consumers to move away from Windows, cost is the biggest barrier to the Apple ecosystem. If Cook decided to reduce their margins on hardware and more so upgrades, they'd undoubtedly shift more units. With that the software base may well expand, and more AAA games developers may consider Macs as something attractive to develop for. These big corporations aren't always run by the brightest of people when they can't see beyond the edge of their big desks, offices, and fat share options!

[@Cujobob]

@@stephenvalente3296the base Mac Mini is a really impressive machine for the money, it even looks nice compared to those Mini PCs in a similar range and it has fewer issues. Part of the way they achieve that is by mass production of the base unit which allows them to be cheaper. The base machine is supposed to be for an average computer user. These are not the people commenting online so we don’t hear from them as often, but an average person really doesn’t need more than 8Gb of RAM or a bigger hard drive (yet). Everyone out there isn’t working with complex 4K or 8K video edits. I would like to see them do a mid tier Mac Mini with more RAM and more hard drive space for a couple hundred more dollars, though. That would be more reasonable and would allow them to not have so much a la carte upgrading.

[@stephenvalente3296]

@@Cujobob I think if they produced something like a 16Gb/1Tb system for say £999, instead of the £1249 list price with upgrades here in the UK, it would be a good selling alternative to the base Mac Mini M2 Pro.

[@ZumaZoom07]

They’re tryna get everyone to use cloud services instead

[@timgurr1876]

Thanks for the video. Well done. I use external drive Samsung T5, 2TB for my photos on my iMac. Just bought a Samsung T7, 4TB for only $300 USD (on sale from Samsung). Read and write may not be as fast but I don’t really need the speed for my purposes.

[@JAFOpty]

it's important to include sustained operation testing. Quick burst operations (as in Black Magic) are not always representative of all use cases.

[@stevenwaldstein2249]

Thank you for the video. I spent the extra money for a 1TB SSD in both my M1 Mac Mini and MacBook Air and get ~2900 MB/s read/write speeds. I can almost match that (~2800 MB/s) with the Samsung 980 Pro (2TB) when I I use APFS file system designed for NVME technology. That is the file system type on the Macs internal SSD. So I don’t throw away 40% of the performance. I can also match that with the cheaper Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD.

[@juliantentori]

what enclosure did you used?

[@stevenwaldstein2249]

@@juliantentori ORICO M.2 Enclosure for NVMe SSD, USB4.0 40Gbps Type-C to M Key B+M Key 2280 Aluminum External SSD Case Compatible with Thunderbolt 3/4 USB3.2/3.1/3.0/ Type-C-M2V01

[@MarshallsMusic]

Excellent presentation on this upgrade. I too was looking into this after having ordered the base M2 but with 16GB RAM (important imo) , but decided to swap it out for an upgrade to the pro with 1TB (6000mbs) costing an additional £550 . I thought it was worth it which also included some extra ports . Its criminal that the base model is throttled like this although still not slow and performs almost the same as the pro on single core speeds. Apple know exactly how to dangle the carrots in front of the performance driven consumer :)... Its a reliable product though and don't mind paying that bit extra for the insurance

[@SuperStareGry]

How is 1tb of storgae in 2023 worth additional 550gbp? I gues apple users are one of a kind happy to be milked. Nand flash prices are lowest yet apple charges so much.

[@Madhawk1995]

@@SuperStareGry yeah they are scum. unfortunately, they have the most power efficient computers on the market currently and their hardware acceleration is pretty good. That's how they get you. Then scalp you on the ram and nvme storage.

[@budgetkeyboardist]

Great video - $210 for semi-fast 1TB external is a good deal. Apple really screwed up by putting the slower 250GB SSD in the M2 Mac Mini, because when you run out of 8 GB RAM, you really need super speedy SSD. That's why the M1 Mac Mini can outperform the M2 Mac Mini when you run out of RAM.

[@adamnealis]

M3 Mac mini is out soon. Let's see if they address this howler.

[@mitchellquartero]

Too be honest I’m just a regular user I’m planning on upgrading from the mid 2019 MacBook Air to the current m2 Mac mini but it is very good video thanks

[@carldaniel3155]

My internal SSD 1tb m2 mini is well above 6000 read/write. I saw another video with someone m2 mini and 256gb ssd - was only 3500 read/write!! Expensive upgrade, but wow it's fast... really super fast. You can't change the internal hard drive later - so I really recomend it. IMO.

[@Laurent_aus_Köln]

I am using exactly this Orico enclosure with a Crucial M2 NVME SSD 4 TB and I reach about 2200-2500 MB/s at TB3 on my Mac..

[@joeglennaz]

I don’t know why in the world I enjoy these videos, but I do. I am trying to get all my back up set up. I have a MacBook Pro M1 2021 version and I’ve got a old all in one HP,PC and I get an iPhone and iPad I’m using iCloud but I’d like to get some back ups that are all done locally here in my house so that I can have a physical copy for myself and part of that is learning about the drives and external enclosures that you featured here. Thank you.

[@CharlezCheng]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="71">01:11</a> The internal SSD of the M2 Chip is not integrated within the SoC itself; instead, it is directly soldered onto the motherboard.

[@frederichardy8844]

I think that the SSD controller is in the SoC, and the nand memory of the SSD is soldered on the motherboard. A m2 nvme SSD include both the controller and the memory.

[@Quince828]

I’m in the process of deciding to replace my iMac with a Mac mini and this is a very helpful tutorial as I choose which one to get. Definitely looking at external storage too.

[@adamnealis]

I am in the same boat. Going to try to wait for the M3 mini announcement next month...

[@Quince828]

@@adamnealis I ended up not waiting and bought an M3 imac and I’m very happy with it. I also got a WD 8 tb external drive (actually cheaper than a smaller one) so I’m pretty much future proof for a while.

[@adamnealis]

@@Quince828 I can't convince myself to downgrade to a 24" screen. So my 2013 iMac may be my last iMac.

[@Quince828]

@@adamnealis that is an issue of course but when I looked into the vagaries of finding the right monitor for a mac mini and the other peripherals I would need my decision was helped. Also the new Mac screen is still larger than my old intel one is.

[@modalities]

I know this is an 11-month-old video, but it came up on my list and I thought to add to the conversation. Performance-wise, I can only applaud Apple. As for the "ecosystem" costs, well ... let me share that yesterday I sold my M2 Mac Mini Pro after five years in the "ecosystem" - and returned to Windows (version 11). I jumped back in with the GeekOM IT13, upgraded to 64GB RAM and an M.2. 2242 1TB SATA

[@thestype]

Have been keeping my 2014 iMac 5k alive by taping an external SSD to its back and using it as primary boot medium. Permanently faster than the Fusion-Drive (128GB SSD + 1 TB HDD) that it came with, even though it maxes at 450 MB/s due to USB 3.0. Just ordered an M2 Mac mini where I will do the same. Ridiculous to go up the Apple fee path.

[@jojos8888]

Really good video. Caused me to think of a different approach as I'm looking to buy a macbook/mac mini. Some questions (if u don't mind)... 1. Pictures in Photos and all applications will still be kept in the internal SSD right? There is no way to keep those in the external SSD? 2. Will TimeMachine backup on external machines?

[@squatch545]

An even better option for Mac users is to get an OWC Mini Stack STX. It's an external drive enclosure the size of a Mac mini. It can house two drives, has four T4 ports, acts as a hub, and can charge devices as well. Instead of fiddling with small dongle enclosures, just get the Mini Stack.

[@Pootleflump]

Data speeds are rubbish

[@rauland]

@@Pootleflump while not super fast, 700mbps NVME is still more than plenty fast for most people. I’ve done basic photo editing using Lightroom on it as well as transcoding my 4k UHD HDR movies and it’s not that much slower than doing so on the internal drive. And the internal HDD speeds are what they are…they’re not going to get any better. But the form factor as well as the 4 USB4 ports @ 40Gbps per port is really where it outshines most of its competitors. (I may be wrong, but the Satechi equivalent that everyone raves about doesn’t have as many (if at all) USB4 ports)

[@hellolau]

No it’s not better…👎

[@rauland]

@@hellolau how is it worse?

[@BRBearUSA]

I honestly have not checked in this case specifically, but for the last two years or so, OWC has been some of the worst cost/benefit ratios I’ve seen… Outrageously expensive while not providing best of breed performance anymore. Back a few years yes, they were still expensive, but at least their products had some diferencial in terms of performance and quality. Nowadays, nah. I’ll pass. Tks but no Tks.

[@jackturtle131]

Holy Moses what an overload of information You can bloody talk underwater

[@shanksisnoteventhatstrongbruh]

USB4 M.2 case + TEAMGROUP TCreate 4.0 2tb SSD is the killer deal, you get a 5GB read/4.4GB write ssd with 3600tbw!!! and 2GB of DRAM cache too, perfect for content creation!

[@greenpulp.]

Can you link to the case?

[@shanksisnoteventhatstrongbruh]

@@greenpulp. USB4 M.2 cases are extremely overpriced right now but the cheapest with good reviews on amazon is made by Orico, cannot link are KZbin usually flags amazon links as SPAM in comments but it appears as "Type C-M208-Silver" on the Amazon store, really expensive for what it is though.

[@joeglennaz]

Hello from Phoenix Arizona I’m coming back and watching your video. Again thank you so much for posting this. This is a much needed video at least for me. I’ve been trying to figure out the combination of SSD Drive and the appropriate enclosure to get the highest transfer speed possible at the lowest cost there is so many choices out there. It gets very confusing. I actually downloaded your video to my iPad and my iPhone and of course I saved it and gave it a like. Thanks again.

[@mixit313]

Thanks for this. Quick question...I do music production...Could I store the actual applications on the external drive, such as logic or ableton? TIA.

[@lordiari7110]

I would think that it's always best to save programme files internally. You can save your sound libraries externally, ideally internally, and where possible, have any number of tracks rendered into one sample track to save the processing overload and avoid latency. Decent ram is your best friend , normally 16g is more than enough for most needs. Project saves can be external. Mac is optimised for music/video, thus I'm coming back to Mac. I could easily spend £2000 for a pc, for what I can get for £800 on m4 mini.

[@nickharper6436]

Great informative Vlog. I’ve just purchased a 2020 M1 MacBook Air with 256SSD so need an external drive and would like it to be as fast as the internal SSD and 1TB capacity. What would you recommend I buy? Many thanks in anticipation

[@Hard_7_Iron]

Yep…I actually made my External bootable. And I do my backups on the Internal drive. It took a while to figure it out (with Apples help)….but man, what a peace of mind.

[@jeffreychan7403]

The newer ACASIS and ORICO enclosures are house a Intel JHL7440 controller with PCIe3.0x4 interface with spec max of 24Gbps - explains why we don’t see the 40Gbps spec of TB3 even with native PCIe3 interface in both directions (no overhead)

[@seshpenguin]

For the USB 10/20Gbps enclosures, make sure to lookup if your particular model needs firmware updates. It's common for them to have some bugs in the older firmware that can lead to possible data corruption, but are fixed in newer firmware (though most require a Windows PC to run the update program)

[@WayneWatson1]

I use the acasis thunderbolt with the fan in it. I love it. I tried running the Mac off the external for a bit, but kept hitting periods of lag. I use the 2tb Team group Cardea ceramic

[@Cujobob]

Lag could be due to the drive not having enough DRAM, a bad cable, or the chipset used on the enclosure. Also, the most recent update to Mac OS slowed speeds substantially off of externals for some reason. My enclosure can do up to about 3150 read and write, but is now down a fair bit.

[@WayneWatson1]

@@Cujobob it's a 2tb Teamgroup Cardea z440 ceramic. Plenty of speed and dram. I get over 2k read and write with my TB enclosure

[@valhala73]

Great video!!!! So if I mount one of those enclosures to use externally do I still need to buy 512GB or is enough with 256GB? Wich set up do you think it would be enough for few years? Best regards

[@ELEKTROGOWK]

at the end of the day it always depends on the file type you want to transfer. Transferring movies can reach speeds like 1GB/s and folder with tons of small files you get a transfer speed of 200 MB/s.

[@BassKlef1]

Very informative. I have an M1 Mac Mini... what do you recommend as an external 1TB drive like this one? Thanks!

[@SpiritowlTV]

Good luck to all those who have entered the giveaway. Thanks for the video, I have been looking into a mac mini for a while now. I've had one gaming computer since pre-university and now I think it's time for an upgrade, the type of software I use at work revolves around Mac's and I don't game anymore lol.

[@hs_random7384]

There is a major flaw in this video, it does matter if you buy a faster SSD and also the controller used in your enclosure matters a lot too. There are a various speed test available. {FYI, 980 used in this video doesn’t hit that limit which is available with this enclosure, it is advisable to use 980 PRO. As mentioned in this video, you can’t use the complete 40 bandwidth, so with 980 Pro you can see speeds 2700-3300 (depending upon your device specs; wether it be your processor m1 vs M1 Max has different speeds for SSD, your RAM etc. As for the controller on your enclosure, Acasis and some famous brands use an Intel Controller which is one of the best, and that is the one you should go for as it too effects your speeds. Buy a 980 Pro, it’s just $20 more at max. Don’t go above that, 990 is not worth it, go for 980 Pro as it is the best one.

[@FrancescoPaggiaro]

Finally someone that adapt nvme to work externally ❤

[@RSV9]

Did you try to install the OS on an external ssd and do speed tests? It would be interesting to see if an external ssd can be used entirely instead of the internal one. You would have to load a lot of programs to use the memory swap as much as possible without slowing down your mac mini.

[@WayneWatson1]

I did just that, trying to reduce the amount of usage of the internal drive. We use ProPresenter a LOT. It works great (the acasis TB case with fan and teamgroup Cardea ceramic) with 2k+ read/write. There were just a occasional periods of lag here and there.

[@markhollis5850]

I do not see Apple as charging extra for their SSD. Instead, I see Apple’s stock unit as “the car with only one seat.” Now everyone pretty much buys a car with two or four seats, sometimes more but, don’t buy those seats and the car is cheaper. I would not buy a Mac with less than a 1TB drive. And the cost of that is the base model for me. There is enough overprovisioning in the 1TB drive that it will last a normal amount of time. I fear that you may be recommending to people that they use the external drive as their boot drive (because it has enough room for everything). That’s dangerous. In the M1 and M2 (not pro) Mac Mini, that takes away one Thunderbolt port. Permanently. And, remember how you showed us all how many portable SSD drives you have for your data? I started wondering which one was your boot drive. Because that is what is going to happen to any Mac user who is just slightly disorganized. We are simply looking at these systems in the wrong way. The base model with a real boot drive is really just $400 more.

[@WayneWatson1]

@@markhollis5850 you can call thorns anything you want but they still thorns. $400 to go from 256gb to 1tb is a total ripoff. You can buy 2tb of very high end nvme drives for half that. A 1TB system should be at most a $150 upgrade charge. It doesn't matter how you try and spin it, it doesn't cut it with the ripoff prices

[@markhollis5850]

@@WayneWatson1 General Motors sold the Chevy Vega with an "optional back seat." I would argue that it was not a finished automobile. Apple is trying to meet a price point by doing the same thing. I think Apple is foolish because they are risking complaints about a tiny internal drive. Additionally, in all of the M2 versions of their computers, there is only 1 NAND chip for the small SSD, which makes it perform slower (meaning you can buy an external drive that will operate faster than internal storage, which is just foolish). My point is that a 256GB drive is not a "real system" and the base model and base price of the Mac is actually $400 more when you consider usability. Oh, but you could get an underperforming one (the Vega with the missing back seat) more cheaply.

[@WayneWatson1]

@@markhollis5850 you can try and make all the analogies you want. It won't change the fact apple is ripping people off. Period

[@vasileiospgr]

when you choose capacity on a ssd drive like the Apple's internal SSD you are not only selecting higher capacity but also higher TBW (Terabytes Written: the total amount of terabytes data that a SSD can write in its lifetime) as with all SSDs

[@iamdetached]

What does that mean

[@vasileiospgr]

@@iamdetached with every ssd when you select higher capacity you also get higher TBW. Apple products have the SSD soldered (Not removable), if something happens to the ssd or if its lifetime ends, whole product is unusable.

[@danielmuir4470]

Great program i am new to Mac and one of my biggest complaints was that the ssd was to small . But I always wanted to try and expand the hard drive. and you just answered my question thanks. I have subscribed to your channel and hope to learn more .

[@KevinMillard68]

you can also get the apple care + warranty as well. you failed to mention that and they also have all new warranty systems now for even longer coverage to and its very affordable..

[@jeramybearamy8539]

My setup: 16" MacBook M1 Pro (2021) Acasis 40Gbps enclosure Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB SSD Write - 1300 MBps Read - 2800 MBps Any idea why the write speed is so much lower than the read speed?

[@JustLearning]

I just purchased an external SSD and connect it to my Mac Mini. As a matter of fact I cloned my Mac IOS onto a 4TB SSD and now have much more space than the 256GB that came with my Mac.

[@flashbak01]

You forgot to mention one important point, even if you go the route of these external drives and the internal Apple SSD goes belly up you will be unable to boot off of the external drive, thus making it useless.

[@em8969]

SAMSUNG 980 pro, Acasis case. It’s almost faster than the internal M2 CHIP!!!

[@DalsPhotography]

This is excellent, I can't thank you enough! I still have an old 2019 Imac, as I didn't want to change from the Imac to all the different cabled stuff... But I guess that I will have to change soon as I am an adobe user. I have a question: Can you run any programs from that external drive? Thank you soooo much, best from Uruguay.

[@OGJeff685]

Intel 670p Series M.2 2280 2TB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNU020TZX1 - 99 bucks Yottamaster 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure for 2280 NVMe SSD(M-Key)-NVMe Enclosure for Thunderbolt 4 - was 80 bucks yesterday Ordered them both. Will Report back tomorrow. Hooking to a Base M2 Mini

[@theTechNotice]

👍

[@Pootleflump]

How'd you get on?

[@CasualViewer-t4f]

Not 100% on this but does the unified ram also take advantage of the internal storage for improved performance overall? I love the external solutions for storage but I still feel 1tb internal storage is worth the price in the long run.

[@stonefast5964]

I found the 256 model stutters due to this compared to the 512. I ended up returning and going full 1 TB with 16gb ram.

[@zenchiefengineer]

This is a godsend. My spinning 10TB G-drive is getting old. Editing in FCPX is frustrating, especially when I'm rendering. I just got the enclosure and a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB. Installed it. Initialized it. Already noticed a marked improvement from the G-drive just transferring files and reading my A & B roll files. Dude! Thanks for this info!

[@jeramybearamy8539]

Are you noticing a difference between write and read speeds? I just bought an Acasis enclosure and a Samsung 970 Evo Plus for my 16" MacBook M1 Pro. The read speeds are about 2800 MBps but the write speed is much lower at 1300 MBps. I'm trying to figure out whether to keep the 970 Evo Plus or buy a WD Black SN 770.

[@zenchiefengineer]

@@jeramybearamy8539 I haven't clocked anything. I just notice if any editing software hangs up or lags. BTW, I switched to Davinci Resolve and have absolutely no problems at all

[@jeramybearamy8539]

@@zenchiefengineer I switched to a 2 TB 980 Pro, which is Gen 4 PCIe. The write speeds now reach 2800 MBps. I think the difference has something to do with the mismatch of a Gen 3 SSD with a Gen 4 enclosure. The 980 was only $14 more than I paid for the 970 Evo Plus, so not too bad.

[@steveblanchard7293]

You can still use Time Machine to back up to an SSD or HHD. So not all would be lost - mine a WD My Passport been running since 2018.

[@abrock6215]

The problem I have with external storage is when I need to install a lot of applications. Many of them don't seem to work off of an external drive, unless I clone the internal one and then boot the computer from the external one.

[@Rosomyat]

It seems interesting. Can you explain more about it please. I want to install my applications externally.

[@iluvmusicqwe]

Interesting that's never talked about. Just look at these black magic speed tests bro and all this speed and space, not the actual practicalities.

[@billyyoung234]

Thank You so much, You made sense about a difficult to understand bandwidth. Do you know if it's possible to have the external SSD, as a Bootable Drive instead of the Internal SSD, Would this be a tutorial that you would consider, I understand there are some hurdles to achieve this.

[@forthewubwubs]

I upgraded the nvme drive in my dell xps15 and I used the old drive as an external and I just put it in a 10gbs enclosure and it does the job just fine.... 15$ for the enclosure 98$ for a 2tb nvme drive 0$ for 512gb nvme drive

[@TristinaKardashian]

My eyes literally just flew out my head when you moved a 6gb that fast!!! 😮🤯

[@cocoandteddi6855]

Great video! 🎉 i want to use it to Mac book pro M3. Would you please give me some advice?

[@dezaremos5944]

When building external ssd for Mac, does it benefit going for an ssd with dram like the 980 Pro vs the 980 ?? By how much ?? It would be nice if you do a video on this ..

[@3Macas]

I’ve just bought 2 Samsung SSD M2 + Orico case for my iPad Pro! Tks!

[@CoViot]

Thunderbolt 4 supports 40 Gbit/s, maybe I am wrong but it’s advertised for 40 Gbit/s

[@woodlandburl6648]

Very good video! first time viewer. Glad I found this channel.

[@garmit61]

Great tips thanks. Where is the OS on these modern mxs with built in obsolescence...is it on the integrated SSD ? If it is , are you getting a benefit from adding the expansion drive if the internal SSD fails. I see this architecture as a cynical marketing move. The old Macs lasted forever. The new chip tech now gives software developers a way to make perfectly intact hardware redundant by failing to support old hardware. I have 2 Mac minis and a MacBook Pro that are unsupported and now even cloud providers Google and Microsoft aren't supporting the old OS. I'm looking at Linux OS replacements after 15 years of using Mac devices for personal and business use, Apple is abandoning old kit and, as they do with their mobile phones, they are deliberately disabling them with the software updates. There is no bang for the buck any longer.

[@vladonweb1]

Thanks for great info.What 2.5" ssd SATA would you recommend? Thanks .

[@ziggy8757]

why not compare using the external drive as a primary drive with the OS and apps on it vs the internal drive. what are the limitations of doing this? seems like a good video topic to me....

[@mjeffn2]

I tried doing this on my M1 base model mini running Ventura, and an Acacis M.2 enclosure with a Samsung 2 TB 980 Pro. It appears that Apple designed the hardware and or Ventura to not allow an external enclosure to host the Home and user files. I ran into all kinds of trouble that was beyond my understanding and just went to using the external drive for data while maintaining a lean desktop, music MP3s, and documents folder. My documents folder and desktop have mostly smart folders pointing at the data on the external drive. It makes for a few extra steps, but for the cost savings it's totally worth it to me.

[@KI7PBG]

@@mjeffn2 huh i have ventura on an external drive and have not experienced any of that everything is housed on the external drive.

[@mjeffn2]

@@KI7PBG on an Apple silicone Mac?

[@KI7PBG]

@@mjeffn2 2020 intel iMac 27 in last of the big ones with intel.

[@mjeffn2]

@@KI7PBG Yeah, I think that’s the thing. From what I was able learn, Apple did some stuff that makes it so the user directories and apps that rely on AppleID must remain on the internal drive for it things to operate correctly. I’m clearly no expert but when I bought my base M1 Mac Mini with the intention of using cheaper external storage and proceeded to set it up for everything living on the external drive I ran into a long string of issues. LOL I thought I had outsmarted Apple’s marketing strategy. I still store the vast bulk of files (1.5 TB) on the external while the user data is on the local drive. It is still possible to store Photos Library on external. Apple = love hate relationship. :)

[@jonathangolgota]

dont forget not all mac app can be store in eksternal also some plugin like VST must in internal drive Thunderbolt enclosure/docking is expensive Usb C enclosure drop to 10Gbps = approx 900 Mbps transfer If Using universal EXFAT format, mac lower up 30-50% speed transfer or you should using APFS so i decide to sell my mac and buy PC Build, you can get NVME gen 4 faster and much cheaper

[@theTechNotice]

yep...

[@SF.photographer]

WOW - You have the M2 Mac mini and I have the M1 Mac mini and my internal hard drive blows your away. My M1 is 16GB Memory and 256 GB hard drive, and my M1 when performing the Blackmagic disk speed test internal is 2360.3 write and 2871.3 read. Seeing this - I won't be upgrading to the M2.

[@alpenfoxvideo7255]

when is samsung coming out with 4TB versions of these? anyway another good thing about having the media on a different SSD: if the mac breaks you can take the files to another computer

[@melchora7]

On my base model M1 Mac Mini, I get about 2700 read/write speeds. I purchased an Orico Thunderbolt enclosure and inserted a Samsung 970 Evo Plus into it. My read/write speeds are consistently over 2700 and I am able to boot from it as well. Looking at this video, I would have thought your NVME speeds would have been comparable to what I am getting using the Thunderbolt port, perhaps Apple has throttled back the Thunderbolt port, so the external speeds would not exceed the internal speeds ? Good video.

[@diazjubairy1729]

I have mac mini m1 with 8gb of ram and 512 gb of storage, could you please mention what kind of orico enclosure did you buy ? Im interesested with your setup for external hard drive

[@chilled99]

I have a nice Sabrent USB 3 external drive bay that can take 4x 2.5" drives in a toaster-like fashion. Given Amazon sell Crucial 2TB 2.5" SSDs fro £99, you can quite easily get the storage you want and keep it modular.` I feel it actually not a good thin to have all of your data storage on any internal drive - its a single point of failure.

[@DJ-ho3rl]

Can you use the same external HD like the one on this video on 2 different macs? I bought the items from this video and everything is working fine but I want to move some files from another laptop onto the samsung 980. If this is possible, how can it be done without erasing the device?

[@aleksandersambor2826]

Thanks for this video. Very informative. I wish I saw it before starting my experiment with external storage. It would save me some money 😂

[@evgeniibubolev9881]

It is also worth noting, that you can boot your Mac mini with Apple Silicon chip from this TB3(4) external SSD.

[@lordiari7110]

Somewhat interesting/useful. In fact the comments are the most interesting. A pity that this guy is too busy making more money rather replying to most comments or he doesn't have the answers or the Samsung sponsorship is preventing him.

[@brightvisionary]

Excellent presentation. What options are available to make it an encrypted drive?

[@ggproductions7078]

I have 3x TB3 drives ( I have a macstudio) each one has a 2tb drive inside. So the 6tb cost me £750. Now of course that is still madly expensive but less than half the macinternal cost. I have 2drives in a RAID 0 and get around 5000 plus read and write. My other now is connected to my 24" ultrafine and I get the 2500 and that drive which is great for what I call my assets drive though I might start to run proggs of there. Oh and I bought a WD 4tb duo refurbished from WD for £65 as a back up for my RAID 0 so hopefully if I did have a drive failure I wouldn't loose too much work.

[@theTechNotice]

Nice!

[@ggproductions7078]

£750 including the 3 enclosures, just in case that wasn't clear, and I think they can take up to 4tb each.

[@kingneutron1]

Nice review - and sponsored or not, it makes a lot of sense to use external storage. eSSD + NAS for backups is going to be way better. I wouldn't recommend exfat though, too many horror stories of lost data. Use network storage like Samba or NFS to share data between machines.

[@DJGooch-w1i]

i have just put together a base m2 mac mini with 2X2tb storage (bootable)satechi hub, 32" curved screen ,magic mouse ,satechi x1 keyboard , usb+card reader hubs ,thunder bolt hubfior £1365

[@null-nl5su]

Such Thunderbolt enclosures provide PCIe 3.0 x4, which is up to 32 Gbit/s = 4 GB/s, so it isn't worth it to use Gen 4 SSDs.

[@josephcadwell6773]

Yes! Thank you very much Samsung!

[@mondotv4216]

I get much faster speeds from a 980pro in a proper thunderbolt 3 enclosure - about 2,200 write/2,400 read. Unfortunately you can't buy the enclosure anymore. It was a Wavlink Thunderbolt 3 SSD (M.2) enclosure.

[@elinorlorentzen]

Great Video! Would l o v e a recommendation of a 2TB SSD since the Samsung 980 only goes to 1TB max.

[@elinorlorentzen]

970 EVO Plus?

[@JohanDee]

You can run a Mac from external disc so you save the internal disc, not ruining it after x years...😊 Also good for swapping memory.

[@RobertKeenanComp-U-Right]

Unfortunately Not with M1-M2 Macs.

[@KevinMillard68]

if you want the most bang for your buck you need to get a gen 4.0 drive thats rated for 7000 mb/s to go with your case you buy that needs to be yes thunderbolt 4/ usb4 that also has a fast controler i use Indemem cases withy kingston kc3000 gen 4 7000 MB/s drive and i get over 2700 + MB/s read and write on my M1 mac mini that has thunderbolt 3 ports

[@justcallmesando]

I am a little bit confused, sorry I am not very used to these kind of DIY adjustments. I am more of a okapple-lets-pay-for-the-whole-damn-thing guy but this looks really interesting. I wander what´s the difference or advantage of using this method instead of an external HD unit? I mean the 4TB ones cost almost the same. Is there a way to use this Samsung HD just as the apple start up disk? I don´t want to have problems with apps using all of my native hard disk and making performance slower. Thank you.

[@marcq1588]

Wouldn't it be better to put MacOS on a TB4 enclosure and boot from it? Get a 8TB Sabrent for example or Samsung (if they have that capacity), and benefit from the absolute speed of the drive itself and the max transfer speed from the TB4 enclosure? It would be faster than the built-in cheapo 512GB minimum capacity from the purchased Mac... Is that possible?

[@higltypig]

I have the 980 in a ugreen enclosure and it's great. I did try other enclosures but the mac is fussy. My PC would see them but not the mac. The ugreen had no probs though.

[@TheEmrickman]

Maybe the Samsung 980 pro for a 2tb option?

[@skycrownM]

This helps a lot as I am planning to buy a mini mac. Thanks a lot to you! ❤️

[@harrison00xXx]

Avoid the Mac Mini and go straight to the M1 Air or M1 Pro MacBooks. Sure you can "save" some money by getting a Mac Mini but you lose so much convenience and usability!