External SSD to run programs on

[DUS]

Hi,

 

I recently bought a Mac Mini M2 Pro and am considering adding an external 1 TB SSD to run applications from and to store all other files such as all docs and videos. For the time being, I will not use the external drive for video editing etc.

 

 I am not very familiar with these things, so I watched lots of videos and read lots of articles on SSDs, M2 NVME, M2 Enclosures, USB 4.0/Thunderbolt, USB 3.2 etc.

 

Now, it is always nice to have one of the fastest drives but it also always comes at a price. So I am a bit overwhelmed by all the options available on the market. It seems Thunderbolt 3/4 seems to offer the fastest external enclosure/NVME combos but they are also fairly expensive. If I just want to run my bo standard apps on the external drive  (web browsers, office apps) will the cheap 10GB enclosures plus a decent SSD be (more than) enough? 

 

Any recommendations from you guys as to what I should look at for my use case? In terms of Enclosure/m2 nvme combo?

 

Thank you! 

[ozimoron]

In general you should run apps on the local drive and store data on the external drive. At least that's the most common scenario. The pro has at least a 512 Gb drive, doesn't that have enough space for all your installed apps?

[DUS]

1 hour ago, ozimoron said:

In general you should run apps on the local drive and store data on the external drive. At least that's the most common scenario. The pro has at least a 512 Gb drive, doesn't that have enough space for all your installed apps?

It certainly does have lots of space especially since it is a 1TB drive.

 

I am not familiar with everything tech, pros and cons of whatever, so with my system being new I wonder if reducing the usage of the internal drive MIGHT be beneficial in the very long run (10+ years). I come up with that 10+ years timeframe because I only just upgraded from a Mac Mini 2012.

 

So for the last 10 years I haven’t really followed too much of what’s happening in the tech world, HDD vs SSD etc etc so I understand that my questions might be/sound very stupid to everyone who is tech savvy.

 

But happy to learn more again …

 

 

[ozimoron]

22 minutes ago, DUS said:

It certainly does have lots of space especially since it is a 1TB drive.

 

I am not familiar with everything tech, pros and cons of whatever, so with my system being new I wonder if reducing the usage of the internal drive MIGHT be beneficial in the very long run (10+ years). I come up with that 10+ years timeframe because I only just upgraded from a Mac Mini 2012.

 

So for the last 10 years I haven’t really followed too much of what’s happening in the tech world, HDD vs SSD etc etc so I understand that my questions might be/sound very stupid to everyone who is tech savvy.

 

But happy to learn more again …

 

 

Forget the external drive, you'll never fill the 1Tb drive unless you are an avid photographer or do a lot of video editing. That said, always use an external drive to store valuable data on as a backup.

 

Many people like the SSD drives but if it's for storage, an old style HDD spinning disk drive is more reliable. Make sure it's a good one with an external power supply. The issue here is that HDD's are mechanical and can easily be damaged if dropped or immersed. On the other hand, when an SSD fails it hard fails and all data is lost forever. An HDD drive platter can usually be accessed even if the drive fails and the data recovered. If the data is really valuable, keep a second external drive. A good option might be to have an SSD drive as the first backup as it's smaller and lighter and an HDD at home in the safe for safe storage. That's my strategy.

 

https://www.techradar.com/news/best-external-desktop-and-portable-hard-disk-drives

 

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Edited April 8, 2023 by ozimoron

[spongeworthy]

It really boils down to how much data do you anticipate needing over the next few years, and whatever your comfortable spending. I wouldn't bother planning out 10 years for storage needs as the cost of storage drops quite quickly, especially SSDs as they're newer than HDDs and have more headroom for growth along with the overwhelming majority of R&D resources going into solid state. In 3 years you'll be picking up 4 - 8TB drives for 5k baht, so if you need more space in a few years there will be faster and larger storage options at half the price you'd pay for similar today.

 

As for backups, cloud storage is relatively cheap and more secure than a lone drive in your house which can be either fail, be stolen, lost in a fire or flood, etc. Backblaze is $7/month for unlimited backup storage for 1 PC/Mac with discounts for purchasing 1 or 2 years in advance. I haven't used them myself, nor any other consumer level backup solutions, but there are quite a few to choose from.

[ozimoron]

8 minutes ago, spongeworthy said:

It really boils down to how much data do you anticipate needing over the next few years, and whatever your comfortable spending. I wouldn't bother planning out 10 years for storage needs as the cost of storage drops quite quickly, especially SSDs as they're newer than HDDs and have more headroom for growth along with the overwhelming majority of R&D resources going into solid state. In 3 years you'll be picking up 4 - 8TB drives for 5k baht, so if you need more space in a few years there will be faster and larger storage options at half the price you'd pay for similar today.

 

As for backups, cloud storage is relatively cheap and more secure than a lone drive in your house which can be either fail, be stolen, lost in a fire or flood, etc. Backblaze is $7/month for unlimited backup storage for 1 PC/Mac with discounts for purchasing 1 or 2 years in advance. I haven't used them myself, nor any other consumer level backup solutions, but there are quite a few to choose from.

Fail to pay that $7 just once and paf. Would you really want to trust that for the rest of your life? Or that they won't fail? I would never use the cloud to backup really valuable stuff.

 

If one is really intent on cloud storage then Wasabi might be a better bet at $5.99 / Tb per month. They also have an AWS S3 compatible  API for application generated file storage which is what I use it for.

 

https://wasabi.com/

Edited April 8, 2023 by ozimoron

[DUS]

Based on all you guys have said above so far it seems that I shouldn’t reallyworry too much about “overusing” the internal SSD of the Mac. The reason I asked was particularly due to the fact that you cannot replace the internal SSD if/when it goes belly up. 

 

But based on what you said and what I have read during my “research” it might be a good idea to add an external HDD for backup purposes. I’ve been using a WD MyBook 3TB HDD for a much longer time than what the say is the expected life expectancy of an HDD (3-5 years?). Are the current WD MyBook 4 TB external drives still considered to be ok for backing up your PC/Mac?

[spongeworthy]

1 minute ago, ozimoron said:

Fail to pay that $7 just once and paf. Would you really want to trust that for the rest of your life? Or that they won't fail? I would never use the cloud to backup really valuable stuff.

 

If one is really intent on cloud storage then Wasabi might be a better bet at $5.99 / Tb per month.

Something to keep in mind is that this is just a backup for the event that the on-premise drive fails or is otherwise "lost". If that were to happen at the same time that his cloud provider had some major failure and lost all of their multiple copies of the data, then I guess an on-premise storage solution would be a savior. But in my experience, even small business users can't be bothered to manage rotating drives or tapes on a regular basis. I just don't think a home user who is not a techy or generally OCD about backups will keep up with the routine and connect the drive daily/weekly to keep the backups updated. You certainly don't want to keep a backup drive online and connected 24/7 to protect from potential malware encrypting or deleting the backups.

 

Wasabi is one I do use as a storage bucket for other backup systems, just haven't used their consumer product. They get a thumbs up from me in that the storage has always been fast (from US datacenters) and hasn't failed, but again, no idea what their consumer "PC backup" product is like.

[ozimoron]

1 minute ago, DUS said:

Based on all you guys have said above so far it seems that I shouldn’t reallyworry too much about “overusing” the internal SSD of the Mac. The reason I asked was particularly due to the fact that you cannot replace the internal SSD if/when it goes belly up. 

 

But based on what you said and what I have read during my “research” it might be a good idea to add an external HDD for backup purposes. I’ve been using a WD MyBook 3TB HDD for a much longer time than what the say is the expected life expectancy of an HDD (3-5 years?). Are the current WD MyBook 4 TB external drives still considered to be ok for backing up your PC/Mac?

Yes. To your original question, you should be concerned only about backign up data such as files and photos and not about applications which can always be reinstalled and are frequently updated anyway. If an application is never updated that's a red flag..

[spongeworthy]

3 minutes ago, DUS said:

Based on all you guys have said above so far it seems that I shouldn’t reallyworry too much about “overusing” the internal SSD of the Mac. The reason I asked was particularly due to the fact that you cannot replace the internal SSD if/when it goes belly up.

With standard use I wouldn't worry about the drive lifespan due to usage. Most likely failure will be a hardware failure from a defect. I have TLC drives running 7+ years now in 24/7 environments and they're still going strong (these are consumer level Samsung Evo 2.5" SATA drives).

 

BUT, when SSDs get full, they do get slower. Once you're at 80% or so you'll probably notice a difference in speed. This is where the external drive can come in handy. If you're storing large files such as videos on the external drive, you'll keep your internal drive running at optimally.

 

4 minutes ago, DUS said:

But based on what you said and what I have read during my “research” it might be a good idea to add an external HDD for backup purposes. I’ve been using a WD MyBook 3TB HDD for a much longer time than what the say is the expected life expectancy of an HDD (3-5 years?). Are the current WD MyBook 4 TB external drives still considered to be ok for backing up your PC/Mac?

The life expectancy is based on what they want to warranty and calculated MTBF (mean time between failures) based on warranty claims and other data and testing. I have WD 3.5" enterprise SATA drives in backup servers going on 12 years running 24/7 and surviving multiple moves between data centers. A couple failed over the years due to heat, but if undisturbed and operating in < 30c temps, spinning drives can last a long time.

 

[tgw]

22 minutes ago, DUS said:

Based on all you guys have said above so far it seems that I shouldn’t reallyworry too much about “overusing” the internal SSD of the Mac. The reason I asked was particularly due to the fact that you cannot replace the internal SSD if/when it goes belly up. 

 

But based on what you said and what I have read during my “research” it might be a good idea to add an external HDD for backup purposes. I’ve been using a WD MyBook 3TB HDD for a much longer time than what the say is the expected life expectancy of an HDD (3-5 years?). Are the current WD MyBook 4 TB external drives still considered to be ok for backing up your PC/Mac?

yes, I would advise you to do exactly that and buy an external drive to save backups on.

maybe use a program that makes incremental disk images.

don't know how much of the internal 1TB you will use, but maybe buy 2TB external.

just don't forget to do the backups.

 

people generally say SSD don't fail, but my experience is another completely.

[tomazbodner]

M2 can run software from external drive but not OS. That is only supported on internal SSD, unlike the Intel-based Macs.

You can get external drive from Sandisk (USB 3.2) which runs at similar speed to an internal drive. Especially 256 GB models of M2 Macs have slow internal drives as they use a single flash, unlike older models which ran dual chips, so it may even turn out to be faster externally.

 

I use their 2 TB drive as an external drive (alas for my data, not software) on Intel i9 based iMac for a year now without any issues. Speed is not far off its 1 TB internal SSD, which is same or higher than your Mac Mini.

 

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/sandisk-extreme-pro-v2-portable-ssd-2tb-sdssde81-2t00-g25-i4532559193-s18445318634.html

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by tomazbodner

[ozimoron]

24 minutes ago, tomazbodner said:

M2 can run software from external drive but not OS. That is only supported on internal SSD, unlike the Intel-based Macs.

You can get external drive from Sandisk (USB 3.2) which runs at similar speed to an internal drive. Especially 256 GB models of M2 Macs have slow internal drives as they use a single flash, unlike older models which ran dual chips, so it may even turn out to be faster externally.

 

I use their 2 TB drive as an external drive (alas for my data, not software) on Intel i9 based iMac for a year now without any issues. Speed is not far off its 1 TB internal SSD, which is same or higher than your Mac Mini.

 

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/sandisk-extreme-pro-v2-portable-ssd-2tb-sdssde81-2t00-g25-i4532559193-s18445318634.html

 

USB speeds will never approach that of a hard disk. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the single internal hard drive has a speed around 500 Gb/s and only applies to the 256 Gb drive single. Nobody is going to notice the difference between that and double that. The 1Tb drive is a dual drive anyway I think, 2 x 500 Gb drives so is striped and will run at the higher speed.

[KhunBENQ]

deleted

 

Edited April 9, 2023 by KhunBENQ

[tomazbodner]

1 hour ago, ozimoron said:

USB speeds will never approach that of a hard disk. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the single internal hard drive has a speed around 500 Gb/s and only applies to the 256 Gb drive single. Nobody is going to notice the difference between that and double that. The 1Tb drive is a dual drive anyway I think, 2 x 500 Gb drives so is striped and will run at the higher speed.

Internal SATA HDD will max out at about 200-250 MB/s. Though there are faster options for servers like 10,000 rpm SAS drives, those aren't supported on workstations. A generic SATA-III/mSATA SSD can reach about 600 MB/s, due to limitations of SATA interface. Same goes for M.2 NGFF type SSD (which is based on SATA)

 

On the flip side, USB 3.2 (Gen 2x2) maxes out at 2.5 GB/s (20 Gbps). Obviously PCI Express Gen 4 is speedier, but limited to internal M.2 PCI-Ex SSD drives.

 

All that aside - M2 Mac Mini has no internal SATA ports, and NAND SSD is soldered onboard. So mounting anything internal into it is not going to be an option.

 

 

The red box is where NAND flash chips are. Image is of 256 GB model with low speed storage. 512 GB model would have used 2 NAND chips and nearly double the speed.

 

Googled up a bit more on the SSD in 256 GB model: https://www.macworld.com/article/1483183/ssd-speeds-m2-macbook-pro-mac-mini.html