Just purchased a new M2 Mac Mini and need Storage advice...

[bassett72]

I just bought a M2 Mac Mini, upgraded the RAM to 16GB, but didn’t want to spend the $200 on going to 512GB for storage. What I want to do is have an external drive to use for storage, and also back up everything with Time Machine. Which I currently have a 4TB Seagate HDD.

I really won’t do much besides storing about 60,000 family pictures & movies, which we may edit using Photos now and then, but nothing special. Excel and Word docs, along with PDF of manuals, I do my taxes and general email and internet usage.

Wondering what would be the best setup for me to do this? Is SATA SDD, NVME SDD, or another HDD going to be the best bet for me? Doubt I need the speed of an NVME and stability/not losing my data is most important. Also, I do back up my photos on iCloud, but like to keep the originals on the local drive.



I recently lost my iMac to a hard drive failure so I’m trying to do a better job at backing up.



If you have a set up in mind that would be best, I would appreciate hearing what you would recommend. I get the new Mac Mini on 03/18 so looking to order a setup soon.

Thank you!

 

[TonyAguila]

I just b originalought a M2 Mac Mini, upgraded the RAM to 16GB, but didn’t want to spend the $200 on going to 512GB for storage. What I want to do is have an external drive to use for storage, and also back up everything with Time Machine. Which I currently have a 4TB Seagate HDD.

I really won’t do much besides storing about 60,000 family pictures & movies, which we may edit using Photos now and then, but nothing special. Excel and Word docs, along with PDF of manuals, I do my taxes and general email and internet usage.

Wondering what would be the best setup for me to do this? Is SATA SDD, NVME SDD, or another HDD going to be the best bet for me? Doubt I need the speed of an NVME and stability/not losing my data is most important. Also, I do back up my photos on iCloud, but like to keep the originals on the local drive.



I recently lost my iMac to a hard drive failure so I’m trying to do a better job at backing up.



If you have a set up in mind that would be best, I would appreciate hearing what you would recommend. I get the new Mac Mini on 03/18 so looking to order a setup soon.

Thank you!

I have a Mac Studio Max with two terabytes of RAM. Just like you, I balked at spending an unreasonable amount on Apple RAM even though from past experience I was determined to have four terabytes. I found the solution in an external NVMe drive, four terabytes, and eventually got a second, also four terabytes. Since you have Thunderbolt 4, the speed should keep you happy.

After a lot of research I settled on the Acasis enclosure for around $100, and the Western Digital WD_BLACK 4TB SN850X SSD for $300. The 2 terabytes is about $150, and the 1 terabyte about $85. The nice thing with the setup is you can always purchase a higher capacity drive if and when you need more storage, and you can always get another enclosure for the first one. I ended up getting a second set for a total of eight terabytes. Can’t be happier. You can do your own research but I think this is as close as you can get to the best value. And this is the closest you can get to the speeds of Apple’s internal SSDs, about 50%. That’s because they cheat and use two SSDs, set up in a pair (Raid 0). Currently, Raid 0 setups for external SSDs are erratic at best. I wouldn’t trust them.

Acasis now has an external enclosure with a built-in fan. I got one of those too, but set it aside. It was not performing as well as the original ones. I solved the overheating problem by placing them on top of the Studio which runs so cool that it is an ideal heatsink. The new Mac mini, I expect, also runs cool. Not the case with my Intel Mac mini, which I still use… a lot.

 

[bassett72]

Appreciate the response but that seems like overkill. Would I need the speed of a NVME or would Sata most likely be fine???

 

[TonyAguila]

Appreciate the response but that seems like overkill. Would I need the speed of a NVME or would Sata most likely be fine???

You don’t need NVMe speeds and you can go with SATA hard drives. I used to get pairs of Western Digital 2TB Elements Portable HDD from Amazon at around $70 each for Time Machine drives for the mini. For my Studio setup, I have a pair of 12 TB Seagates.

You can try one to see if the speed is adequate for you, and you can always turn them into TM drives should you choose to get NVMe.

 

[Rodananne]

I have a Mac Studio Max with two terabytes of RAM.

I don't think you have. Only NASA is likely to have a computer with that much RAM.
bassett72, the new M3's get along quite well on 8GB RAM I would have saved that money and spent it on storage. I haven't had less than 512GB on any of my Macs for 8 years now, my wife has just upped to 1TB.
Anyhow, sounds like you're committed now. I'd like to know who advised you on this choice, I mean 256GB is tiny these days and industry standards advise keeping 25-30% of that storage free for memory swap which only leaves roughly 180GB of usable storage minus the OS and native apps.

 

[TonyAguila]

I don't think you have. Only NASA is likely to have a computer with that much RAM.
bassett72, the new M3's get along quite well on 8GB RAM I would have saved that money and spent it on storage. I haven't had less than 512GB on any of my Macs for 8 years now, my wife has just upped to 1TB.
Anyhow, sounds like you're committed now. I'd like to know who advised you on this choice, I mean 256GB is tiny these days and industry standards advise keeping 25-30% of that storage free for memory swap which only leaves roughly 180GB of usable storage minus the OS and native apps.

My bad! It’s 2 terabytes of flash storage, and 32 gibibytes of random access memory. I wanted to opt for four terabytes of storage but the premium Apple was charging was simple highway robbery.

 

[Rodananne]

No worries, just a typo, done it myself. Did make me smile though.