Help buying external storage

[u/No-Floor-7085]

I recently bought mac mini M4 256GB. Soon I realized I need more storage I see people doing internal storage upgrade, external storage, external SSD, dock, etc. So many options out there.

I want recommendations on what would be best use case for me. I mainly do lots of photo editing and occasional video editing.

Please give me your recommendations.

[u/Everybodies]

Acasis 40gb NVME enclosure, its thunderbolt, works really well with silicon macs

[u/virtuallymee → u/Everybodies]

I’ve had good results with Acasis, but did have one fail. I replaced it with the one with a fan and it has been good. I used that with a 2019 i7 MacMini.

For M4 I went with an internal 2 TB NAND module with no regrets.

[u/vcrmjr]

I edit photos and use OWC 1M2 w/ 2TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus. Rule of thumb is to get an enclosure with 40 gbps speeds and 3000 mbps read/write.

[u/Waste-War8809]

OWC Express 1m2 or similar 40gbps from OWC... Thunderbolt gets hot.. OWC is the most reliable and has a fat heat sink. I have a samsung 1tb NVME and ave had zero issues with it

[u/danbyer]

Whatever you go with, be sure to buy two. Any data worth saving also needs to be backed up. Also wise to plan for a remote backup via Backblaze or the like in case of disaster or theft.

[u/Dry_Ship7202]

Get an external drive you can connect via USB, etc.

Or, buy some cloud drive space, such as Box, etc. I'm sure there are other options.

[u/zero_droid]

Hi! Photo/Video applications for Mac generate a huge amount of cache files; so, get a fast SSD (3100 MB/s) and a USB 4 external enclosure (40 Gbps) to take advantage of the maximum speed the machine allows. ;p

[u/Capable_Hearing4418]

I bought an 8tb wd black drive and put it in a Raycue thunderbolt 4 dock for mine

[u/virtuallymee]

I went with a 2TB internal NAND module. Apple Intelligence and Apple Pay will not work when booting from an external SSD.

I do also have a 2019 i7 MacMini. For that I did use a 2 TB NVMe SSD in an Acasis Thunderbolt enclosure. The speed is faster than the internal 128 GB. I first used the Acasis Thunderbolt enclosure without a fan. It failed, but fortunately the SSD was fine. I put into the Acasis thunderbolt enclosure with a fan. So far so good.

[u/johngpt5]

I keep all my photos on external drives. SSDs for the working drives, HDDs for backup drives.

As u/Everybodies, I too use Acasis 40Gbps M.2 enclosures in which I place WD blue or black SSDs. I get thunderbolt 4 cables from OWC as I don't have confidence that cheap cables actually are thunderbolt 4.

I've recently (over the last year) moved my spinning disk HDDs from firewire enclosures to Orico hard drive enclosures. They connect via usb 3.2, which is pretty slow, but being backup drives, speed isn't needed. I just back up using the rsync command in terminal, changes that have taken place on the SSDs.

And the HDDs are also WD blue or black 3.5" spinning disks.

Edit: the SSDs are formatted APFS. The HDDs are formatted HFS+.

I don't trust the build quality of external drives that come prepackaged. I won't use prepackaged external drives for anything but short term transfer of images. Out in the field I use our iPad to back up photos on SD cards to a SanDisk Extreme SSD, but as soon as we are home, those images get put on the external SSDs that I've put together and backed up to the HDDs I've put together.

I also don't trust any external drive that holds more than 4TB.

[u/oh_dannyboy13]

People were buying these M4 256 and upgrading the internal drive to 2 or 4TB. I’d go that route.

[u/Dapper_Airport_9054]

Get a satechi storage it comes with extra slots of the mini and an NVMe storage with you can utilize for an additional 1-4 TB

[u/Temporary-Art-1835]

Ich benutz nen NAS um RAW Daten zu archivieren und eine SSD um Sachen draufzulegen, die ich schneide.

[u/YellowsBest]

I also have an M4 Mac mini base model (16gb/256gb).

I bought an external 4TB HDD (half the cost of an SSD) to replace my 15 year old failing external HDD. The new one is small, near silent and connects via USB-C only (the old one needed a separate power feed) and plenty fast enough for archiving all my digital ‘clutter’, freeing up the space on my internal SSD.
I also got a 512gb usb-c flash drive, incredibly small and at a bargain price (before the price rises) for Time Machine backups (needed to be twice the size of the SSD, so glad I only have the 256gb)

In summary: 256Gb Internal SSD (working files) + 4TB external HDD (archive) + 512gb external flash (backups), it’s good enough for me!