I opted for the base M4 mini and use a 2TB external drive (because I'm cheap). So far I still have 180GB free space on the internal drive so it's working for my use case since I'm a casual user now that I'm retired.
The real limitation on small drives is that the total amount of data you can write increases with drive size. If you’re constantly writing to your main drive, it can cause issues, but these are fairly inexpensive computers that likely don’t see hard use and eventually need replacement anyways.
This sounds good to me - I have a 4TB so it is good to know it is working for you. I will mostly be keeping video projects and photo projects on the external drive and not on the M4 mini!
for downloads, you can just set the browser to always ask where to save those downloads and so everytime you download something, you can directly save them on the external if its connected. what I didn't know was the app store setting...that one is definitely useful.
Yes, you can do that but since you need to really clean out the downloads folder every month or so so it's clean I like to just copy them over to the external as it forces me to keep my Mac super clean.
Good info~! I'm a career IT'er (just retired) and a longtime Apple user (since Apple II+). I just bought my mini and opted for more memory (24Gig) over increasing onboard storage, but I picked up a 2TB NVME for an external drive. For the pure simplicity of it, I'll be using the 3rd method you describe. I'm retiring my 2012 iMac and can't wait to fire up this Mac Mini~! Always looking forward to what you put out next. 👍
This sounds perfect for me. I don’t want to go through the hassle of moving my entire home directory to an external drive, but moving creating specific folders on the external drive makes a lot of sense, and will save me a lot of money. Thanks for your help with this issue.
Thank you, sir! Perhaps one of the more positive aspects of waiting for an AliExpress delivery is that it gives you plenty of time to watch virtually every video on a specific topic, like this one. I’m about to repurpose my late 2015 27” iMac as a sort of studio display for my base model Mac Mini (256GB/16GB). The iMac was upgraded long ago with a 2TB internal SSD via SATA, which raises some concerns about how to handle it comfortably. The first videos I watched suggested outsourcing the entire home directory or, even riskier, mounting the entire core installation externally, as you also mentioned here. However, I’ve decided to go with your preferred method: moving only the largest files to a 40Gbps external drive with a 2TB NVMe 4.0 SSD. That way, I won’t have to worry about relocating everything and can leave the riskier approaches to the more adventurous users.
Thanks and good luck with everything. Let me know how it goes with the 27" iMac. I assume you ordered a display board (third party) to try and make that an external monitor.
Thanks for this reality check! I got the base M4 Mini configuration (on sale at Costco) and saw some videos that convinced me that putting my home folder on the external thunderbolt SSD was a good idea. But I was worried I’d do something wrong. You just helped me decide to bag it and just move large files off the Mini, like I already do with my 256 GB MacBook Pro. Thanks! 😅
Ok, thank you and good luck. Option 2 can work good but it can also cause unknown issues at times so I like to make sure people know about that is all.
I'm picking up my M4 Mini 512Gb from Costco today. Got a great price. I'm still reading up on pros and cons going internal or external on the home folder. Look before you leap...
For those opting for External SSD, be sure to plug directly into one of the Mac Mini ports. Had experience where I plugged external SSD into one of the Hub that has type-c port in it, it works and all that, but when the OS went to sleep, it wakes up the Hub but not the SSD so I had to remove and insert the disk again, very annoying. I don't know, maybe each Hub behaves differently.
Thanks for this. I had come across method 2 on TH-cam and was going to use it but you have convinced me that method 3 is safer so I'll go with that for sure. I've been waiting for my SSD enclosure to arrive and am grateful it took a couple of days as I would have missed this video if it had got to me sooner! Thanks again.
Thank you for this great video. I just ordered my Mac mini 512 gb ssd and I’m just researching how to store on an external drive. I was really worried about storage. I now have to learn about backing things up but this is a great start.
Yes, you can drag them back and add them to places like the dock as well but for simplicity I kept it simple. Also the video was almost 20 min. But thanks for the info and that is useful for sure.
@ I just got my owc enclosure in the mail yesterday and did the second method last night, but it does make me nervous so I might revert back to having my home folder on the internal and just keep photos and apps on the ex. I might have done something wrong because I couldn’t delete some smaller App Store apps from my main account, I had to log into my backup admin.
Great informative video! I’ve been a PC user all my life and decided I would buy a Mac mini this time around with 24 Gb RAM and a 512 Gb SSD. I want to keep it simple and was thinking of doing exactly what is suggested here with the 3rd option (large programs and data on an external drive). Subscribing now!
Thanks for the sub. Yes, that config will be plenty of power for that option and good luck as a new Mac user. Give it a few months and you will never go back.
I bought an M4 Mac Mini on Amazon with 24GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. The prices for all the M4's were changing pretty often on Amazon and I bought mine when there was a discount and promotion that totalled $120. Couple that with the 5% reward you get when buying on Amazon with their credit card and I saved about $160. I think the 24GB, 512 GB version is a nice future proof sweet spot for the M4 Mini, especially with Amazon discounts.
I bought mine with a student discount but that’s essentially the decision I made too. 32 would’ve been great too but I think for how much work I’ll be doing, 24 is fine
@@jamaicaturner1046 Yes, 32 would have been nice. I installed 32 GB of aftermarket (Crucial) RAM on my iMac back in the day when RAM was removable. I was often using most of it. Hopefully, the RAM is used more efficiently and effectively in the M4. Anyway, I’m glad I went for 24 GB instead of the base 16 GB.
Great video. Thanks!. I agree with the option 3 and I went that route too, however I moved the Photo library to the external drive too. There are several youtube videos explaining how to default the photo library to an external drive!. cheers
For the downloads you should just go to the settings of your browser and make a folder in the external drive the default download folder. This way you won't have to transfer manually the Downloads folder to another drive. If you disconnect your external drive macOS will download everything automatically to the original Download folder.
You can do that but I wanted to keep this simple for the video. There are a ton of ways to also have files automatically copy over. But you still need to clean out the downloads and the system I proposed forces you to do this.
@@craigneidel as a principle you should probably avoid writing on the download folder of your internal ssd, especially if it's a small one. Downloads will eventually wear your ssd's tbw, which on many apple devices is soldered. Even if you empty it afterwards, the "damage" is already done.
Nah... I like to use my tech but understand what you mean and have done videos on that. Also there has been not issues with any M-chip macs for about 5 years now and you would need to write about 1500 TB before needing to really worry about it. Even when a drive reaches it TBW limit they can last double, triple, 10 times if quality drives. In theory you are correct for sure but I buy the tech to use it and figure if I do method #3 I will save just that much more data on my main drive and it will last even longer.
Hi Craig, great video. A little tip I found when setting up my Mac Mini M4 base model and something it might be worth including in a future productivity video. I needed the machine for cloud backups to Dropbox. I was able to use a USB-C to SATA adapter for a 2TB drive which I already owned and used that as the host for the Dropbox folder. It runs nice and cool and at around 330 megabytes per second transfer is plenty fast enough for Dropbox and media storage. The issue came about when starting the machine it took a few seconds for the drive to mount (longer if one of the other login apps was updating). About 25% of the time Dropbox had already started before the disk had mounted, causing it to spew out an error message. I was able to avoid the problem by creating an app in Automator (included in Mac OS). It adds a ten second pause, then opens Dropbox. I added that delay app to my login and now I am always up and running before Dropbox fires up and starts its syncing. Its real niche, but I am sure there are other applications which could benefit from either a delayed start or shutdown which you can also do in Automator. Hope this information helps somebody out :-)
If you are a Firefox user you can set the download destination to any folder you want in settings. I wonder if other browsers have the same option. Great videos , keep them coming!!
Thanks. Some apps outside of app store allow for different install locations. Some don't though. Hence the 512 GB on the main drive for me and to keep me from sweating things.
Had the Mini M4 256.. something was up with it so I took it to Apple and they took it back and I got the 512 version. Don't need tons of space. First it was way over 14days yet they took it back. Ok I had benched the 256 it was baout 3300. Now the 512 and I have benched it allot because its 4400. If ANYONE says just that small bump you won't notice.. I thought I would never see the diff.. man you can. I am SO happy something went wrong with the 256gb one. VERY happy now
14:37 How do I automatically download to my external hard drive? "If you are using Safari, go to Safari menu (on the menu bar) -> Preferences -> General. You will see an option that lets you change the download folder, so tell Safari to save your downloads in your external hard drive."
Yes, thank you. But you still need to sort this out that is why I like to download to downloads on main drive and then move if I need to keep to the second drive.
my files don't take up that much space but my music and photo libraries are the ones that grow - can we use the same method 3 for external library w/o messing up HOME files? would love to set up photos and music on diff externals and have included in one Time Machine back-up
Some people move their photos library only to the external and not the entire home directory. I would search for that in Google and see if it's right for you.
Same question. Plus, over the years I have backed up the music library to different drives and now I'm confused about what to keep and what can be deleted. Very frustrating.
I keep only the operating system/systems on the main drive. IMovie library Photos Library and all other files on external drives. (And ALWAYS have duplicates of your most important stuff.) This has multiple benefits: Your computer will boot and run faster without clutter on your main drive. If you have a catastrophic failure (Logic board) and you need to replace your computer, it's as simple as unplugging your external drives and plugging them into the replacement computer. (There may be some speed bumps in the beginning with iMovie and Photos if your replacement computer has a different version of MacOS) If you want to upgrade your computer, same as above, simply unplug your external drives and plug them into the new computer. Also, if you run into a situation where your boot drive becomes corrupted or fails, It's as simple as replacing the drive, installing the OS and you are back in business.
Yes that can work good but I wanted to show people a safe way to use external storage. Whenever you store key folders on external drives they can break with things like os updates. Normally not hard to fix if tech savvy.
@craigneidel You misinterpreted what I said, I don't split up any of the operating systems folders. OS stays intact on the main drive. All files (Photos, movies, documents etc) on the external drives. All installed programs are on the main drive as well. Another benefit is you can setup a fresh install of your OS and all your apps/programs. Then immediately make a time machine backup on an external drive. This way if you have a failure in the future you can do a time machine install that will bring you back to day 1 with all the OS and programs restored in one step.
This is such a helpful video! Thank you so much for sharing it! I am moving from a 2017 MBP and really struggled with the risk of doing method 1 & 2. Though I am a techie (in non-computer areas), I know how fast things can go wrong! I appreciate your metered approach and for explaining it so thoroughly. My mini arrives on Friday! Looking forward to your future videos and checking out some of your past video library. Thanks you so much- I will be using your link for the SSD PS. Do you have any videos on moving movie DVDs to a storage device? Most videos are pretty confusing- I appreciate your straight forward approach. I will look back through your videos and see if I can find anything on this…. I want to be able to bring my DVD collection in a condensed format, with me on some extended RV travel next year. I imagine need another storage device from some of the other YT videos that I have watched so far.😅
Thank you and I'm glad the video was able to help you a little bit. I don't have any videos on moving movie DVDs but wish you luck on finding an answer on that. Take care.
I used to run my home folder on an external drive with a MacStudio. However, there are some apps that don't work well with it. Also, some home-brew apps and scrypted would not work without a lot of changes. I never got scrypted working completely. To me, it seemed like such a little used method that it made finding support material online for issue very difficult. Lastly, if you do this, use an actively cooled SSD enclosure or you will see major thermal throttling if doing anything stressing the drive even a little bit. It seems like a good option, but it is not well supported, as the video states. One thing to consider for any external SSD method is cloud storage. Apple's changes to this make moving the cloud cache very difficult for OneDrive, etc., thus eating up your internal drive capacity.
Mounting HDs on a folder like HOME or /usr/local/ etc. was standard with UNIX in the past. Of course it's administrative work for people who knew what they were doing and learned how an OS actually works.
How do you get iMessage to store media on an external drive. For me, iMessage is the biggest storage hog and I thought it stored on the iCloud but it stores media locally. Dropbox is also notorious for filing up the drive
Please do a video on how to keep your ripped library on an external drive, and can access your files on an Apple TV in a different room. I can’t figure out how to point the tv app to an external drive. Thank you very much!
Craig may I ask do you edit directly of the external drive as well so therefore adding the editing application software to it and if yes can you give us demonstration on how its done .
I'll see if in the future I can do a video on it but all editing software needs to be setup differently when editing off an external. I recommend searching for this via google based on your exact setup and program you are using. I do edit off externals and I actually use my 2017 5K iMac with 48 GB even today and I run the entire OS off the SSD there but I don't recommend that for more modern macs.
Man I got the 512 m4pro and I didn’t open the box cuz I don’t know if it’s gonna be enough for my music production/video editing software. I wanted to use an external nvme and have my sound libraries and videos on that. I don’t know if I should return it. My 2tb older Mac has very thing inside it and I’ve used 800 gb. I just can’t find the files systems that holds the sound libraries to be able to see how much of it there is actually being used. Ugh 😩
Student with a internal hard drive with a 100G partition for Bootcamp/Windows on old Mac. Required for coursework. Setting up new Mac with 512G internal drive. Would you do the 100G partition and Bootcamp/Windows on the new internal HD, or set it up on a fast external SSD? No clue if that's possible or not? How do you manage photos/videos with your system? Thanks
That's a tough one and if it's required for School I would set it up that way. I just keep my photos on the main drive and back them up myself but you can move the photos to an external drive if need be and that should not be an issue.
512gb is sweet spot but I was impatient and 256 was all in stock. So bought a TB enclosure and use a nvme ssd on 1TB as my home directory. I made a backup account so in the rare instance my drive goes down, I’m not 100% screwed, aside from normal backups too.
great video! good tips. i plan to store my Photos libraries and (hopefully, if i can figure it out) my Messages cache externally. I was shocked to find that all the photos, videos, animated gifs, etc that you receive in Messages are stored for… ever? It is consuming many GBs of storage on my internal drive. Use the Storage screen to see what’s taking up space - some interesting surprises in there! (Photos libraries were not a surprise)
Thanks for the video. Very helpful. I am about to migrate from a 2020 iMac to this new setup with an external SSD. What is the best way to migrate from a single drive on imac to this two-drive setup? Should i migrate my apps or just reinstall them? I presume that i should populate Dropbox and other cloud storage on the external SSD fresh from cloud and not from old imac?
I normally reinstall my apps for a clean new system but everybody is different. It's hard for me to review each setup as I don't want to tell you something that is wrong. But I normally do clean installs on most things.
I have bought Resolve Studio not via the App Store, so I have to install in manually. But I can't set a different path during install. So I can't really use your last method, right?
On some apps you can't and need to install on the main drive. But you can normally do your editing on the external drive and run the actual program on the internal. So all of the large files are on the external. That is the reason to start with a 512 in my opinion.
Thanks for the video... where does Time Machine fit into all of this? Would you recommend using Time Machine to keep backups of files and if so would it make sense to have it use another external drive or the same external drive?
Great easy solution - if you are downloading from the Store. But what about moving other apps onto the external drive? My Applications folder is nearly 60GB and contains several apps that are over 5GB, such as Photoshop etc. Is it as simple as copying them over?
60 GB is nothing if you have the 512 GB Drive. Some apps not in the store allow you to install to alternative locations at install. Some you will want to keep on the drive hence pick the right size but 60 GB is fine for a 512 GB setup.
Great video! I completely agree with you on option 3. Now, I never done this. I'm assuming we install Mac mini as normal and then add the external to be used for any app we want? Meaning when I "install the app" I need to install on the external drive right?
Thanks, Craig for this awesome video, i am planing to buy Mac mini M4 Pro and i was wondering if i could download Pixelmator Pro on external SSD and run the application to do my photo editing. Eagerly awaiting your response.
This was great, thank you. 1 question, downloading plug-ins for music creation goes to Library-audio-vst. Is it possible to move those on external or it'll be problems?
Depending on the size of these I like to leave them on the internal. I normally move everything or nothing except maybe the photos library but that is only how I do it to try and avoid any issues down the road.
I decided on 256gb and 24gb, buying a 2tb Samsung 990 pro external drive, in an Acasis fan driven enclosure*. I have left system o/s and Home directory on the internal storage. * 10% discount available through Amazon UK just now
In the second method which is moving your home folder to external drive? Do you have to keep the external SSD drive always connected to the Mac Mini? If you Eject the external SSD normally or unplug the ext. SSD during a reboot will it create problems?
This is the option I was looking for. I want my programmes to be installed on main drive, and ‘files’ to be on external. Is there a way to have iCloud files on external? I’m really battling with google on making OneDrive files live on the external, but so far, it only ever creates a shortcut on there (to the main drive).
Thanks for the feedback and info. There is a way and you can search for it on Google but I don't normally move those as it has the potential for issues, although small.
With a new Mac mini M4, I have established all my files including the boot files on a Samsung 990Pro. Everything appears to work correctly, but when trying a software update, I receive the following: "User Interaction Required. An error occurred while installing the selected updates." Do you have guidance as to what interaction is required? I have full back up files and a bootable drive for emergencies on separate drives.
I don't but if anybody knows how to fix this (without extensive research) please post here. This is one of the reason and a good example of why I normally just keep the boot files on the drive. Thanks for sharing and if somebody has a solution then please post.
If I use an external SSD with my Mac and follow the third method, and I’m not planning to turn my Mac off at all, can I leave the SSD plugged in all the time, such as connecting it to the back of the Mac and not unplugging it every time I use it? Also, if I don’t turn off my Mac, is there a risk of the SSD disconnecting automatically? Most importantly, could this cause damage to either the Mac or the external SSD?”
You can normally put the apps in the dock etc. and link to them. I just open up the external and since I like to keep thing separate so I know what is where.
Are External storage NVMe SSD's for Windows Readable/Wrightable on the M4 MACs? i.e. can I use one External Storage on my Old and New Computer as Video storage for Davinci Resolve.
Ok I moved all my photos and such on the drive but the other users (my kids ) are able to click into it and access the drive Is there a way to only have that external drive to be view and access on admin user only?? Thanks
I would need to research that one but I'm sure you can lock or protect an outside directory but it does make it more difficult. Hence the reason for option #3 where you keep that on the internal drive and only apps and downloads etc. you move out.
Hay Craig please suggest me that i am confused to buy a mac mini m4 or an custom pc my budget is under $1000 my workflow is heavy graphic designing but little video editing main productivity tasks
The base M4 is more than capable for your use case. I’d get at least the 512GB SSD. I have the M2 Mac Mini with 16Gb memory and 1TB SSD. And it is perfectly capable of doing the stuff you want. M4 would be even better.
You had already asked me this in another video. I can't make that determination for you as it comes down to what is best for your exact workflow. I had said I think the Mini is great but just not sure.
Hay craig i am confused to buy mac mini m4 16gb ram with 513 gb rom vs 24 gb ram with with 256 gb rom if i campare which will win or does external ssd i can buy with 24gb ram with 256 gb
When formatting with APFS there is a default setting of “Ignore ownership on this volume”. What do you use? My concern is to retain the privacy privileges when multiple people use the computer, each with their own login.
On your Mac, click the Finder icon in the Dock to open a Finder window. Select the disk, then choose File > Get Info. Click the arrow next to Sharing & Permissions to expand that section. If the lock at the bottom right is locked , click it to unlock the permissions. Select the “Ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox.
@@craigneidel On your Mac, click the Finder icon in the Dock to open a Finder window. Select the disk, then choose File > Get Info. Click the arrow next to Sharing & Permissions to expand that section. If the lock at the bottom right is locked , click it to unlock the permissions. Select the “Ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox.
Craig, someone mentioned a dual boot method. I am considering the same to save some money (I want to try sticking with the 256 GB internal.) Should I sign into both internal and external drives with the same iCloud account? If one day, Apple makes it incredibly difficult to boot MacOS off the external drive, how difficult would it be to use the internal drive as the main drive? (i.e. how would I tell it to run applications off the external? Would I lose all my user preferences?) I really like the idea of keeping the MacOS on an external so if I want to upgrade and buy the newest Mac Mini 2-3 years from now, I basically wouldn't have to do anything for set up (which would further justify my cost savings of $200 to not buy Apple's upgrade to the internal HD, which would end up being 20% the price of the computer - $1000 vs $800.) In other words, I'd rather save the $200 each time I want to buy a new Mac Mini as I do not see the immediate benefit of having 512 GB right away...also, maybe the base Mac Mini three years from now will automatically come with a 512 GB internal.
I tried to lay out the options in the video and if you want to go with loading the OS on an external drive that is an option. There is a ton of info on that online to review. You just need to make sure and read about the issues before doing it. The main one is having fail save backups and then it's not a terrible option.
I'm planning to buy the Crucial X9 Pro, but I want to use it on both my Windows laptop and Mac Mini (majority of the time it'll stay plugged into my Mac Mini) and keep it plugged into my Mac mini and run Illustrator , Photoshop, After Effects and Lightroom etc. files from the SSD and occasionally use it for some file transfers from my Windows laptop. Will this setup run smoothly?
I have not tested this with formatting the drive as ExFat so it can run on both. I recommend APFS but then it won't work on the Win system. But it could work and you can test that out when you install an Apple app on the external. I just have not tested that myself so don't know.
Really enjoy your videos...thank you! Question: I just purchased a new M4 Mac Mini, .5TB storage and 24GB RAM. This is my first Mac as I've always used Windows. I've ordered an external SSD enclosure and a 4tb SSD drive. I plan to leverage the external drive as much as possible, but not for OS boots or Home drives. I have about 250gb of my own pictures and videos that I plan to keep on the external drive. My question is regarding if I can/should leverage the Photos app for all my photos and videos, while still leveraging the external storage? Similar question on documents that I have, although those are much smaller than the pictures and videos in terms of storage requirements. Thanks!
Depending on the pictures size I migrate those to the external drive and archive those over time. When you have 250 GB of photos that you want to keep in Apple photos you need to do something with them in order to save that space. Some people will migrate their photos library to an external drive which is not hard and if you search for that on Google it will show you how.
I'm looking to grab an NVME enclosure with 2 slots, RAID 1 them in Disk Utility and use that as my big chunk o' storage, then have another single NVME SSD that's bigger than the combined size of the internal and external drives to act as Time Machine. My bank account is going to be very empty in the new year lol. All my big files are already external, like my media library which is close to 6TB (almost 20 years of music, DVD and Blu-ray rips!) and backed up to 2 other big ass external drives.
What did i do is to make my external 2T USB 4 SSD as my boot drive then I could forget all the hassle! The read/write speeds soar to 31xx which is 50% faster than the internal one!
Making the external on the M4 Mac will break apple intelligence and other items a bit. Yes, I boot off externals on older systems as I stated in video.
You did not talk about moving pictures video and music to external drive. So if you keep all that on internal drive. 512 go will be gone. Moving games and documents is great. And in App Store download app over 1 gb to external is good .
You can move the photos library only if you want and you can do a search for that in Google. I don't want to touch that with a 10 foot pole for peoples photos because somebody will screw it up and blame me for 50 years of memories (funny).
If the drive is fast enough and it's possible to install those on an external drive I don't see why not but I have not used those before so maybe do a search to see if it can cause other issues. I used Xcode a while back but never JetBrains.
For formatting, I did my external drive to FAT something because I may want to connect it to my pc sometimes. What’s the best format setting to use on pc a Mac?
Yes, but the downloads directory would need to be cleaned out from downloads to their final folders and that is what I was saying. since you have to do that anyhow mapping it isn't that important.
Hi Craig really great video. Thanks!! At 7:24 you mentioned that Apple won't help you. But choosing en external drive for your home is a legit option and not a hack (Advanced options of user account). So I wonder why Apple won't give support.
If you move away from Apple hardware and have a file structure issue I don't think they will help you. I mean they might help but it might cost you more than the Mac mini if you need to pay for it. I'm guessing it won't be covered. Thanks for watching.
Great work! I love all your videos. I recently picked up a Mac Mini M2 with 512GB and am considering your third suggestion. Instead of the enclosed SSD you mentioned, would it be okay to use a 2TB SanDisk Extreme Go Portable SSD (it was on sale at Costco), or could that cause any issues?
Yes, but I don't have that drive to test. But, I'm sure it will be fine etc. especially with method #3 since with that method you can disconnect the drive and things will still work as normal except you just can't access apps on external.
Thanks for a very educational video with a new to me alternative solution. What about software like adobe photoshop/premiere or music software like cubase with method 3? Can it also be installed into the external drive (which it can with method 2)? And do I need a Thunderbolt 5 SSD (I just bought the Mac Mini M4 Pro) or is Thunderbolt 4 (such as Samsung 990 Pro) ok to run these quite heavy programs?
Thank you for the feedback. If you can't get it from the App Store then sometimes it will ask you where to install the software and then you can install on the external drive. You don't need thunderbolt 5 at all and that is overkill for any of this and Thunderbolt 4 enclosures are good enough for sure.
Main issue is that software update no longer works out-of-the-box when starting up from an external drive - edit: when using Apple Mx silicon You can still update it, but you have to use Terminal for that
so if you all the main mac info is on the external hard drive and youre using that as the main drive if you click on an application on the dock is it going to open?
I'm not sure what you are asking. I said to leave only some data on the main drive and explained how to open the apps on the external SSD in the video. The apps won't show up unless you access the external drive to open them or create shortcuts to them.
Hey Craig, I have a 2TB Samsung 980 pro in a thunderbolt enclosure. How do I figure out the cache size? Samsungs website says 2GB low power DDR4 SD ram. Then I looked it up and then the AI result says it should have around 200GB. I’m new to this.
@craigneidel its where you move files to the ssd, but use a symbolic link as a redirection to make the computer think the files are in the same spot they were before the move. So the storage is on the sad, but the computer acts as if its still In the internal drive when it looks to access the data.
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I opted for the base M4 mini and use a 2TB external drive (because I'm cheap). So far I still have 180GB free space on the internal drive so it's working for my use case since I'm a casual user now that I'm retired.
2 TB will last you a very long time. Nice.
The real limitation on small drives is that the total amount of data you can write increases with drive size. If you’re constantly writing to your main drive, it can cause issues, but these are fairly inexpensive computers that likely don’t see hard use and eventually need replacement anyways.
Yeah, so far we have not seen any issues with the SSDs on the M-chip macs and we are going on 5 years but time will tell.
Me too 🔥🔥
This sounds good to me - I have a 4TB so it is good to know it is working for you. I will mostly be keeping video projects and photo projects on the external drive and not on the M4 mini!
for downloads, you can just set the browser to always ask where to save those downloads and so everytime you download something, you can directly save them on the external if its connected. what I didn't know was the app store setting...that one is definitely useful.
Yes, you can do that but since you need to really clean out the downloads folder every month or so so it's clean I like to just copy them over to the external as it forces me to keep my Mac super clean.
@@craigneidel downloading directly to external drive prevents tear-down of internal ssd (keeps tbw low)
Good info~! I'm a career IT'er (just retired) and a longtime Apple user (since Apple II+). I just bought my mini and opted for more memory (24Gig) over increasing onboard storage, but I picked up a 2TB NVME for an external drive. For the pure simplicity of it, I'll be using the 3rd method you describe. I'm retiring my 2012 iMac and can't wait to fire up this Mac Mini~! Always looking forward to what you put out next. 👍
My first Apple computer was the II+. I taught myself how to build spreadsheets using Appleworks.
@@bryans8656 THAT's what I'm talkin' about~!
Thanks for watching and good luck with everything.
This sounds perfect for me. I don’t want to go through the hassle of moving my entire home directory to an external drive, but moving creating specific folders on the external drive makes a lot of sense, and will save me a lot of money. Thanks for your help with this issue.
For sure and thanks for watching.
You can drag and drop the app from external to Launchpad and it will put an icon/shortcut there.
Yes, that should work.
Thank you, sir! Perhaps one of the more positive aspects of waiting for an AliExpress delivery is that it gives you plenty of time to watch virtually every video on a specific topic, like this one. I’m about to repurpose my late 2015 27” iMac as a sort of studio display for my base model Mac Mini (256GB/16GB). The iMac was upgraded long ago with a 2TB internal SSD via SATA, which raises some concerns about how to handle it comfortably.
The first videos I watched suggested outsourcing the entire home directory or, even riskier, mounting the entire core installation externally, as you also mentioned here. However, I’ve decided to go with your preferred method: moving only the largest files to a 40Gbps external drive with a 2TB NVMe 4.0 SSD. That way, I won’t have to worry about relocating everything and can leave the riskier approaches to the more adventurous users.
Thanks and good luck with everything. Let me know how it goes with the 27" iMac. I assume you ordered a display board (third party) to try and make that an external monitor.
Thanks for this reality check! I got the base M4 Mini configuration (on sale at Costco) and saw some videos that convinced me that putting my home folder on the external thunderbolt SSD was a good idea. But I was worried I’d do something wrong. You just helped me decide to bag it and just move large files off the Mini, like I already do with my 256 GB MacBook Pro. Thanks! 😅
Ok, thank you and good luck. Option 2 can work good but it can also cause unknown issues at times so I like to make sure people know about that is all.
I'm picking up my M4 Mini 512Gb from Costco today. Got a great price. I'm still reading up on pros and cons going internal or external on the home folder. Look before you leap...
For those opting for External SSD, be sure to plug directly into one of the Mac Mini ports. Had experience where I plugged external SSD into one of the Hub that has type-c port in it, it works and all that, but when the OS went to sleep, it wakes up the Hub but not the SSD so I had to remove and insert the disk again, very annoying. I don't know, maybe each Hub behaves differently.
Yes, if you are using it for anything important especially options #1 and #2 in my video then I would go direct.
Thanks for this. I had come across method 2 on TH-cam and was going to use it but you have convinced me that method 3 is safer so I'll go with that for sure. I've been waiting for my SSD enclosure to arrive and am grateful it took a couple of days as I would have missed this video if it had got to me sooner! Thanks again.
Ok, thank you for watching. Good luck with everything.
Thank you! I recently did exactly what you said about keeping apps on external drive. I can say that it definitely works!
Nice, thank you.
Thank you for this great video. I just ordered my Mac mini 512 gb ssd and I’m just researching how to store on an external drive. I was really worried about storage. I now have to learn about backing things up but this is a great start.
@@debbiechutka2492 thanks for watching
12:56 if you drag the app from the external drive to the launchpad icon they’ll stay stored on your ex drive but show up normally in launchpad.
Yes, you can drag them back and add them to places like the dock as well but for simplicity I kept it simple. Also the video was almost 20 min. But thanks for the info and that is useful for sure.
@ I just got my owc enclosure in the mail yesterday and did the second method last night, but it does make me nervous so I might revert back to having my home folder on the internal and just keep photos and apps on the ex. I might have done something wrong because I couldn’t delete some smaller App Store apps from my main account, I had to log into my backup admin.
yeah, it can work but it can also get messy (option #2) with no guarantees. That is why I like option 3 the best here.
Great informative video! I’ve been a PC user all my life and decided I would buy a Mac mini this time around with 24 Gb RAM and a 512 Gb SSD. I want to keep it simple and was thinking of doing exactly what is suggested here with the 3rd option (large programs and data on an external drive). Subscribing now!
Thanks for the sub. Yes, that config will be plenty of power for that option and good luck as a new Mac user. Give it a few months and you will never go back.
I bought an M4 Mac Mini on Amazon with 24GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. The prices for all the M4's were changing pretty often on Amazon and I bought mine when there was a discount and promotion that totalled $120. Couple that with the 5% reward you get when buying on Amazon with their credit card and I saved about $160. I think the 24GB, 512 GB version is a nice future proof sweet spot for the M4 Mini, especially with Amazon discounts.
I bought mine with a student discount but that’s essentially the decision I made too. 32 would’ve been great too but I think for how much work I’ll be doing, 24 is fine
Yes, that will be a nice setup for sure.
@@jamaicaturner1046 Yes, 32 would have been nice. I installed 32 GB of aftermarket (Crucial) RAM on my iMac back in the day when RAM was removable. I was often using most of it. Hopefully, the RAM is used more efficiently and effectively in the M4. Anyway, I’m glad I went for 24 GB instead of the base 16 GB.
@ thanks for letting me know. I may make that switch tbh
Great video. Thanks!. I agree with the option 3 and I went that route too, however I moved the Photo library to the external drive too. There are several youtube videos explaining how to default the photo library to an external drive!. cheers
Yes, you can drag that over etc. and there is some good info on Google about that. Thanks for sharing.
For the downloads you should just go to the settings of your browser and make a folder in the external drive the default download folder. This way you won't have to transfer manually the Downloads folder to another drive. If you disconnect your external drive macOS will download everything automatically to the original Download folder.
You can do that but I wanted to keep this simple for the video. There are a ton of ways to also have files automatically copy over. But you still need to clean out the downloads and the system I proposed forces you to do this.
@@craigneidel as a principle you should probably avoid writing on the download folder of your internal ssd, especially if it's a small one. Downloads will eventually wear your ssd's tbw, which on many apple devices is soldered. Even if you empty it afterwards, the "damage" is already done.
Nah... I like to use my tech but understand what you mean and have done videos on that. Also there has been not issues with any M-chip macs for about 5 years now and you would need to write about 1500 TB before needing to really worry about it. Even when a drive reaches it TBW limit they can last double, triple, 10 times if quality drives. In theory you are correct for sure but I buy the tech to use it and figure if I do method #3 I will save just that much more data on my main drive and it will last even longer.
Hi Craig, great video. A little tip I found when setting up my Mac Mini M4 base model and something it might be worth including in a future productivity video. I needed the machine for cloud backups to Dropbox. I was able to use a USB-C to SATA adapter for a 2TB drive which I already owned and used that as the host for the Dropbox folder. It runs nice and cool and at around 330 megabytes per second transfer is plenty fast enough for Dropbox and media storage. The issue came about when starting the machine it took a few seconds for the drive to mount (longer if one of the other login apps was updating). About 25% of the time Dropbox had already started before the disk had mounted, causing it to spew out an error message.
I was able to avoid the problem by creating an app in Automator (included in Mac OS). It adds a ten second pause, then opens Dropbox. I added that delay app to my login and now I am always up and running before Dropbox fires up and starts its syncing.
Its real niche, but I am sure there are other applications which could benefit from either a delayed start or shutdown which you can also do in Automator. Hope this information helps somebody out :-)
Thanks for the tip. Yes, I have done a few videos on Automator and like it. You can do some nice things with that program. Thank you.
If you are a Firefox user you can set the download destination to any folder you want in settings. I wonder if other browsers have the same option. Great videos , keep them coming!!
Thanks. Some apps outside of app store allow for different install locations. Some don't though. Hence the 512 GB on the main drive for me and to keep me from sweating things.
Chrome, safari can, also.
Had the Mini M4 256.. something was up with it so I took it to Apple and they took it back and I got the 512 version. Don't need tons of space. First it was way over 14days yet they took it back. Ok I had benched the 256 it was baout 3300. Now the 512 and I have benched it allot because its 4400. If ANYONE says just that small bump you won't notice.. I thought I would never see the diff.. man you can. I am SO happy something went wrong with the 256gb one. VERY happy now
Yes in a video I did a few days ago I covered the speeds. Thanks for the update.
Please describe in what way you feel the difference?
Thx, I’m first time Mac user and after this video I don’t try now
Method 2, I go safe tomorrow with the third… good timing and very informative!
Ok, thank you.
Thanks!
Thank you very much I appreciate that for sure.
Thank you again.
Thanks for highlighting some of the potential issues with an external SSD. None of those videos discuss this.
Thank you for watching and the comment. Appreciate that.
Keep up the great videos! Easy to follow, serious content, true helper. Thanks,
Thank you and I appreciate that.
14:37 How do I automatically download to my external hard drive?
"If you are using Safari, go to Safari menu (on the menu bar) -> Preferences -> General. You will see an option that lets you change the download folder, so tell Safari to save your downloads in your external hard drive."
Yes, thank you. But you still need to sort this out that is why I like to download to downloads on main drive and then move if I need to keep to the second drive.
Hey Craig!, Thanks for posting this video.
You bet, hope it's helpful.
my files don't take up that much space but my music and photo libraries are the ones that grow - can we use the same method 3 for external library w/o messing up HOME files? would love to set up photos and music on diff externals and have included in one Time Machine back-up
Some people move their photos library only to the external and not the entire home directory. I would search for that in Google and see if it's right for you.
Same question. Plus, over the years I have backed up the music library to different drives and now I'm confused about what to keep and what can be deleted. Very frustrating.
Danke!
Thank you I appreciate that for sure. Means a lot. Thanks.
Thank you again.
I am new to Mac thank you very much for that. 👍
For sure.
I keep only the operating system/systems on the main drive.
IMovie library
Photos Library
and all other files
on external drives.
(And ALWAYS have duplicates of your most important stuff.)
This has multiple benefits:
Your computer will boot and run faster without clutter on your main drive.
If you have a catastrophic failure (Logic board) and you need to replace your computer, it's as simple as unplugging your external drives and plugging them into the replacement computer.
(There may be some speed bumps in the beginning with iMovie and Photos if your replacement computer has a different version of MacOS)
If you want to upgrade your computer, same as above, simply unplug your external drives and plug them into the new computer.
Also, if you run into a situation where your boot drive becomes corrupted or fails, It's as simple as replacing the drive, installing the OS and you are back in business.
Yes that can work good but I wanted to show people a safe way to use external storage. Whenever you store key folders on external drives they can break with things like os updates. Normally not hard to fix if tech savvy.
@craigneidel You misinterpreted what I said, I don't split up any of the operating systems folders.
OS stays intact on the main drive.
All files (Photos, movies, documents etc) on the external drives.
All installed programs are on the main drive as well.
Another benefit is you can setup a fresh install of your OS and all your apps/programs. Then immediately make a time machine backup on an external drive.
This way if you have a failure in the future you can do a time machine install that will bring you back to day 1 with all the OS and programs restored in one step.
Thank Craig another great video
Thank you
Hi Craig, thanks for this informative video! I'm picking up my mac mini later >> today
Thanks for the sub and good luck with everything. They are nice machines and I'm sure you will love the new M4 mini.
This is such a helpful video! Thank you so much for sharing it!
I am moving from a 2017 MBP and really struggled with the risk of doing method 1 & 2. Though I am a techie (in non-computer areas), I know how fast things can go wrong! I appreciate your metered approach and for explaining it so thoroughly. My mini arrives on Friday!
Looking forward to your future videos and checking out some of your past video library.
Thanks you so much- I will be using your link for the SSD
PS. Do you have any videos on moving movie DVDs to a storage device? Most videos are pretty confusing- I appreciate your straight forward approach.
I will look back through your videos and see if I can find anything on this…. I want to be able to bring my DVD collection in a condensed format, with me on some extended RV travel next year. I imagine need another storage device from some of the other YT videos that I have watched so far.😅
Thank you and I'm glad the video was able to help you a little bit. I don't have any videos on moving movie DVDs but wish you luck on finding an answer on that. Take care.
I used to run my home folder on an external drive with a MacStudio. However, there are some apps that don't work well with it. Also, some home-brew apps and scrypted would not work without a lot of changes. I never got scrypted working completely. To me, it seemed like such a little used method that it made finding support material online for issue very difficult. Lastly, if you do this, use an actively cooled SSD enclosure or you will see major thermal throttling if doing anything stressing the drive even a little bit. It seems like a good option, but it is not well supported, as the video states. One thing to consider for any external SSD method is cloud storage. Apple's changes to this make moving the cloud cache very difficult for OneDrive, etc., thus eating up your internal drive capacity.
@@db-cp7xb yes thanks for the additional details and why option 3 is my preferred solution.
Mounting HDs on a folder like HOME or /usr/local/ etc. was standard with UNIX in the past. Of course it's administrative work for people who knew what they were doing and learned how an OS actually works.
You can do it but like I said if you don't know what you are doing I don't recommend it.
How do you get iMessage to store media on an external drive. For me, iMessage is the biggest storage hog and I thought it stored on the iCloud but it stores media locally. Dropbox is also notorious for filing up the drive
I would do a search on Google for those as I can't cover it here quickly but maybe I'll do a video on this in the future.
Thank you! This video was very informative, keep up the good work! 😊
Thank you.
Okay Okay you convinced me on method 3. I was gonna go #2 but I didn't want my computer to take a 💩
Thanks. Pick the method that is right for you but I just wanted to show people what i think is the best way but it's just an opinion.
I also moved my (very large) Dropbox and Google drive folders to the external drive.
Thanks for the post.
I would never alter the default directory structure - Mac or Win. Thanks for the information.
Thank you
Please do a video on how to keep your ripped library on an external drive, and can access your files on an Apple TV in a different room. I can’t figure out how to point the tv app to an external drive. Thank you very much!
Not sure I can do all these videos but good luck with things and thanks for watching.
great info. Easy and keep your Mac and info safe
Thank you.
Craig may I ask do you edit directly of the external drive as well so therefore adding the editing application software to it and if yes can you give us demonstration on how its done .
I'll see if in the future I can do a video on it but all editing software needs to be setup differently when editing off an external. I recommend searching for this via google based on your exact setup and program you are using. I do edit off externals and I actually use my 2017 5K iMac with 48 GB even today and I run the entire OS off the SSD there but I don't recommend that for more modern macs.
Another great video. Craig do you have one on accessing a PC from a Mac? Setting up file sharing.
Thank you. I don't have one on that yet.
Great infos !
Thank you.
Many thanks. That's a very nice video...
Thank you.
Man I got the 512 m4pro and I didn’t open the box cuz I don’t know if it’s gonna be enough for my music production/video editing software. I wanted to use an external nvme and have my sound libraries and videos on that. I don’t know if I should return it. My 2tb older Mac has very thing inside it and I’ve used 800 gb. I just can’t find the files systems that holds the sound libraries to be able to see how much of it there is actually being used. Ugh 😩
Interesting that the Apple Store creates a library file on the external. What about apps not from the store?
Same question here
Apps not from the store will go on the internal drive. Some of those apps ask you where to install them and if they do then install on external drive.
Student with a internal hard drive with a 100G partition for Bootcamp/Windows on old Mac. Required for coursework.
Setting up new Mac with 512G internal drive. Would you do the 100G partition and Bootcamp/Windows on the new internal HD, or set it up on a fast external SSD? No clue if that's possible or not?
How do you manage photos/videos with your system?
Thanks
That's a tough one and if it's required for School I would set it up that way. I just keep my photos on the main drive and back them up myself but you can move the photos to an external drive if need be and that should not be an issue.
512gb is sweet spot but I was impatient and 256 was all in stock. So bought a TB enclosure and use a nvme ssd on 1TB as my home directory. I made a backup account so in the rare instance my drive goes down, I’m not 100% screwed, aside from normal backups too.
As long as you know how to fix it that can work well for sure.
great video! good tips. i plan to store my Photos libraries and (hopefully, if i can figure it out) my Messages cache externally. I was shocked to find that all the photos, videos, animated gifs, etc that you receive in Messages are stored for… ever? It is consuming many GBs of storage on my internal drive. Use the Storage screen to see what’s taking up space - some interesting surprises in there! (Photos libraries were not a surprise)
Yes, if you dig deep there will be some surprises for sure. Thanks for watching the channel.
Thanks for the video. Very helpful. I am about to migrate from a 2020 iMac to this new setup with an external SSD. What is the best way to migrate from a single drive on imac to this two-drive setup? Should i migrate my apps or just reinstall them? I presume that i should populate Dropbox and other cloud storage on the external SSD fresh from cloud and not from old imac?
I normally reinstall my apps for a clean new system but everybody is different. It's hard for me to review each setup as I don't want to tell you something that is wrong. But I normally do clean installs on most things.
I was right about larger storage 512GB or 1 TB.
I'm not sure what you mean.
I have bought Resolve Studio not via the App Store, so I have to install in manually. But I can't set a different path during install. So I can't really use your last method, right?
On some apps you can't and need to install on the main drive. But you can normally do your editing on the external drive and run the actual program on the internal. So all of the large files are on the external. That is the reason to start with a 512 in my opinion.
@@craigneidel Okay thanks! I guess I'll try the third method then and try to outsource everything I can from within the apps (cache locations, etc).
I think that is a good option.
Do recommend the external storage option over using iCloud?
I do but you can also use iCloud. I just never trust my data to any one company in the cloud.
Thanks for the video... where does Time Machine fit into all of this? Would you recommend using Time Machine to keep backups of files and if so would it make sense to have it use another external drive or the same external drive?
You would want to use another external Drive otherwise you would lose everything if your backup failed.
So where do you store your pictures, videos and music files with your preferred method? Do you store the photo app library on the external SSD? Thanks
You can if they are large or if they are only a few GB each I leave these on the main drive and that is the reason I get the 512 GB version.
Great easy solution - if you are downloading from the Store. But what about moving other apps onto the external drive? My Applications folder is nearly 60GB and contains several apps that are over 5GB, such as Photoshop etc. Is it as simple as copying them over?
60 GB is nothing if you have the 512 GB Drive. Some apps not in the store allow you to install to alternative locations at install. Some you will want to keep on the drive hence pick the right size but 60 GB is fine for a 512 GB setup.
Can you buy hard drive for Mac mini 4 16 gb ram? I can for storage… was wondering in apple if it exists? Thanks!
I'm not sure what you are asking. Apple doesn't make an external drive if that is what you are asking.
Great video! I completely agree with you on option 3. Now, I never done this. I'm assuming we install Mac mini as normal and then add the external to be used for any app we want? Meaning when I "install the app" I need to install on the external drive right?
I have that in the video how to setup the App store so it installs apps larger than 1 GB on the external drive. Format external drive as APFS.
What about using a M1 mac inline ? booting from a ext hard drive?
It's possible to do that.
Thanks, Craig for this awesome video, i am planing to buy Mac mini M4 Pro and i was wondering if i could download Pixelmator Pro on external SSD and run the application to do my photo editing. Eagerly awaiting your response.
I am not sure but if you can download it from the App store and if it's more than 1 GB then I don't see why not.
This was great, thank you. 1 question, downloading plug-ins for music creation goes to Library-audio-vst. Is it possible to move those on external or it'll be problems?
Depending on the size of these I like to leave them on the internal. I normally move everything or nothing except maybe the photos library but that is only how I do it to try and avoid any issues down the road.
I decided on 256gb and 24gb, buying a 2tb Samsung 990 pro external drive,
in an Acasis fan driven enclosure*. I have left system o/s and Home directory on
the internal storage.
* 10% discount available through Amazon UK just now
Nice discount and good luck with everything. Thanks for watching.
trying to choose in between the Zike and the Qwiizlab enclosure, any tips or advice?
It's hard to decide. If you have the ability to order the Zike (on their website only normally) it is a good one but some have issues getting that.
In the second method which is moving your home folder to external drive? Do you have to keep the external SSD drive always connected to the Mac Mini? If you Eject the external SSD normally or unplug the ext. SSD during a reboot will it create problems?
You always want it connected that is why I don't like that method for everybody.
Instead of manually doing that why not create a symbolic link download in your home directory that links to the external drive?
There are other ways to do it but again, things can cause issues if Apple changes things in OS updates.
GOOD POST !!!!!!!
Thank you.
This is the option I was looking for. I want my programmes to be installed on main drive, and ‘files’ to be on external. Is there a way to have iCloud files on external? I’m really battling with google on making OneDrive files live on the external, but so far, it only ever creates a shortcut on there (to the main drive).
Thanks for the feedback and info. There is a way and you can search for it on Google but I don't normally move those as it has the potential for issues, although small.
With a new Mac mini M4, I have established all my files including the boot files on a Samsung 990Pro.
Everything appears to work correctly, but when trying a software update, I receive the following:
"User Interaction Required. An error occurred while installing the selected updates."
Do you have guidance as to what interaction is required?
I have full back up files and a bootable drive for emergencies on separate drives.
I don't but if anybody knows how to fix this (without extensive research) please post here. This is one of the reason and a good example of why I normally just keep the boot files on the drive. Thanks for sharing and if somebody has a solution then please post.
If I use an external SSD with my Mac and follow the third method, and I’m not planning to turn my Mac off at all, can I leave the SSD plugged in all the time, such as connecting it to the back of the Mac and not unplugging it every time I use it? Also, if I don’t turn off my Mac, is there a risk of the SSD disconnecting automatically? Most importantly, could this cause damage to either the Mac or the external SSD?”
I don't think it will cause issues just make sure the SSD is a quality one and you can test it when you get it.
If I go with option 3, can I use the external drive with both my Mac mini m4 and MacBook Pro m1 ? I want to share files and apps between both
I don't think you can share the apps but share the internal storage and files I think would work. But just give it a try.
Using method 3, can you display app alias’ on your internal desktop?
You can normally put the apps in the dock etc. and link to them. I just open up the external and since I like to keep thing separate so I know what is where.
are there any disadvantage of booting mac os on external ssd or anything not function properly ?
Yes I talked about that in video
Are External storage NVMe SSD's for Windows Readable/Wrightable on the M4 MACs? i.e. can I use one External Storage on my Old and New Computer as Video storage for Davinci Resolve.
If it's formatted in Exfat it can work on both but when using a program on the Mac I format at APFS as that is Macs file structure.
you can move home folder and create second administrator for home folder. on mac if something happen to external drive . and be able to boot i think?
yes, you can do things like that but if all your data is on the account that get's messed up it basically just moves you back to a clean setup.
Ok I moved all my photos and such on the drive but the other users (my kids ) are able to click into it and access the drive Is there a way to only have that external drive to be view and access on admin user only?? Thanks
I would need to research that one but I'm sure you can lock or protect an outside directory but it does make it more difficult. Hence the reason for option #3 where you keep that on the internal drive and only apps and downloads etc. you move out.
Any review or thoughts on the OWC? Currently on sale for $94.99 at the moment
It's a solid choice from what I hear but they make a ton so I'm only guessing on model you are talking about. But they are all similar etc.
Hay Craig please suggest me that i am confused to buy a mac mini m4 or an custom pc my budget is under $1000 my workflow is heavy graphic designing but little video editing main productivity tasks
The base M4 is more than capable for your use case. I’d get at least the 512GB SSD.
I have the M2 Mac Mini with 16Gb memory and 1TB SSD. And it is perfectly capable of doing the stuff you want. M4 would be even better.
You had already asked me this in another video. I can't make that determination for you as it comes down to what is best for your exact workflow. I had said I think the Mini is great but just not sure.
Hay craig i am confused to buy mac mini m4 16gb ram with 513 gb rom vs 24 gb ram with with 256 gb rom if i campare which will win or does external ssd i can buy with 24gb ram with 256 gb
When formatting with APFS there is a default setting of “Ignore ownership on this volume”. What do you use? My concern is to retain the privacy privileges when multiple people use the computer, each with their own login.
I am not sure as I have not seen that message before and not sure how you generated it.
On your Mac, click the Finder icon in the Dock to open a Finder window.
Select the disk, then choose File > Get Info.
Click the arrow next to Sharing & Permissions to expand that section.
If the lock at the bottom right is locked , click it to unlock the permissions.
Select the “Ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox.
@@craigneidel On your Mac, click the Finder icon in the Dock to open a Finder window.
Select the disk, then choose File > Get Info.
Click the arrow next to Sharing & Permissions to expand that section.
If the lock at the bottom right is locked , click it to unlock the permissions.
Select the “Ignore ownership on this volume” checkbox.
Ok, thanks for the update.
Craig, someone mentioned a dual boot method. I am considering the same to save some money (I want to try sticking with the 256 GB internal.) Should I sign into both internal and external drives with the same iCloud account? If one day, Apple makes it incredibly difficult to boot MacOS off the external drive, how difficult would it be to use the internal drive as the main drive? (i.e. how would I tell it to run applications off the external? Would I lose all my user preferences?)
I really like the idea of keeping the MacOS on an external so if I want to upgrade and buy the newest Mac Mini 2-3 years from now, I basically wouldn't have to do anything for set up (which would further justify my cost savings of $200 to not buy Apple's upgrade to the internal HD, which would end up being 20% the price of the computer - $1000 vs $800.) In other words, I'd rather save the $200 each time I want to buy a new Mac Mini as I do not see the immediate benefit of having 512 GB right away...also, maybe the base Mac Mini three years from now will automatically come with a 512 GB internal.
I tried to lay out the options in the video and if you want to go with loading the OS on an external drive that is an option. There is a ton of info on that online to review. You just need to make sure and read about the issues before doing it. The main one is having fail save backups and then it's not a terrible option.
I'm planning to buy the Crucial X9 Pro, but I want to use it on both my Windows laptop and Mac Mini (majority of the time it'll stay plugged into my Mac Mini) and keep it plugged into my Mac mini and run Illustrator , Photoshop, After Effects and Lightroom etc. files from the SSD and occasionally use it for some file transfers from my Windows laptop. Will this setup run smoothly?
I have not tested this with formatting the drive as ExFat so it can run on both. I recommend APFS but then it won't work on the Win system. But it could work and you can test that out when you install an Apple app on the external. I just have not tested that myself so don't know.
@craigneidel thanks for seeing the reply! If I keep my X9 pro plugged (APFS) in and edit off it will it cause any issue the SSD?
I don't see why it would and I have edited off my externals for a few years now.
Should you move adobe and lightroom classic app to external hard drive. Thanks for this. I like method 3 and will use.
If you have a drive that performs well I don't see an issue with that.
Do you recommend leaving photo library on internal drive?
I normally leave it on the main drive but that is just how I do it.
Photo library seems like the most obvious thing to run from an external drive.
Yes, you can move it if you need to with space.
Really enjoy your videos...thank you! Question: I just purchased a new M4 Mac Mini, .5TB storage and 24GB RAM. This is my first Mac as I've always used Windows. I've ordered an external SSD enclosure and a 4tb SSD drive. I plan to leverage the external drive as much as possible, but not for OS boots or Home drives. I have about 250gb of my own pictures and videos that I plan to keep on the external drive. My question is regarding if I can/should leverage the Photos app for all my photos and videos, while still leveraging the external storage? Similar question on documents that I have, although those are much smaller than the pictures and videos in terms of storage requirements. Thanks!
Whatever you do, always keep backups.
Ideally, even have a backup for your back up.
Depending on the pictures size I migrate those to the external drive and archive those over time. When you have 250 GB of photos that you want to keep in Apple photos you need to do something with them in order to save that space. Some people will migrate their photos library to an external drive which is not hard and if you search for that on Google it will show you how.
I'm looking to grab an NVME enclosure with 2 slots, RAID 1 them in Disk Utility and use that as my big chunk o' storage, then have another single NVME SSD that's bigger than the combined size of the internal and external drives to act as Time Machine. My bank account is going to be very empty in the new year lol. All my big files are already external, like my media library which is close to 6TB (almost 20 years of music, DVD and Blu-ray rips!) and backed up to 2 other big ass external drives.
Yes, all this can get quite expensive but it's still fun to do. Good luck with everything.
What did i do is to make my external 2T USB 4 SSD as my boot drive then I could forget all the hassle! The read/write speeds soar to 31xx which is 50% faster than the internal one!
Making the external on the M4 Mac will break apple intelligence and other items a bit. Yes, I boot off externals on older systems as I stated in video.
You did not talk about moving pictures video and music to external drive. So if you keep all that on internal drive. 512 go will be gone. Moving games and documents is great. And in App Store download app over 1 gb to external is good .
You can move the photos library only if you want and you can do a search for that in Google. I don't want to touch that with a 10 foot pole for peoples photos because somebody will screw it up and blame me for 50 years of memories (funny).
If I install Xcode and JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA on an external drive and also create projects there, will there be any issues with this?
If the drive is fast enough and it's possible to install those on an external drive I don't see why not but I have not used those before so maybe do a search to see if it can cause other issues. I used Xcode a while back but never JetBrains.
For formatting, I did my external drive to FAT something because I may want to connect it to my pc sometimes. What’s the best format setting to use on pc a Mac?
Yes, for a PC exFAT is what you want but when you are dealing with Apple file structures like the 2nd method I would only do APFS.
Hi, why not changing the downloads to be for the external?
You can but you still need to organize the files out of the downloads so it really doesn't matter here.
thanks a lot Craig, i meant to map the downloads directory to the external SSD drive
Yes, but the downloads directory would need to be cleaned out from downloads to their final folders and that is what I was saying. since you have to do that anyhow mapping it isn't that important.
@@craigneidel thanks so much Craig, waiting for more educating videos👋
Thanks.
Hi Craig really great video. Thanks!! At 7:24 you mentioned that Apple won't help you. But choosing en external drive for your home is a legit option and not a hack (Advanced options of user account). So I wonder why Apple won't give support.
If you move away from Apple hardware and have a file structure issue I don't think they will help you. I mean they might help but it might cost you more than the Mac mini if you need to pay for it. I'm guessing it won't be covered. Thanks for watching.
Great work! I love all your videos. I recently picked up a Mac Mini M2 with 512GB and am considering your third suggestion. Instead of the enclosed SSD you mentioned, would it be okay to use a 2TB SanDisk Extreme Go Portable SSD (it was on sale at Costco), or could that cause any issues?
Yes, but I don't have that drive to test. But, I'm sure it will be fine etc. especially with method #3 since with that method you can disconnect the drive and things will still work as normal except you just can't access apps on external.
Thanks for a very educational video with a new to me alternative solution. What about software like adobe photoshop/premiere or music software like cubase with method 3? Can it also be installed into the external drive (which it can with method 2)? And do I need a Thunderbolt 5 SSD (I just bought the Mac Mini M4 Pro) or is Thunderbolt 4 (such as Samsung 990 Pro) ok to run these quite heavy programs?
Thank you for the feedback. If you can't get it from the App Store then sometimes it will ask you where to install the software and then you can install on the external drive. You don't need thunderbolt 5 at all and that is overkill for any of this and Thunderbolt 4 enclosures are good enough for sure.
@@craigneidel Thanks for the fast reply. It's very much appreciated :)
For sure...
Main issue is that software update no longer works out-of-the-box when starting up from an external drive - edit: when using Apple Mx silicon
You can still update it, but you have to use Terminal for that
Not on my older Macs like my 2017. I was able to do OS updates fine on that.
@@craigneidel It's on Apple silicon
It worked fine on my Intel mini
Ok, got it.
so if you all the main mac info is on the external hard drive and youre using that as the main drive
if you click on an application on the dock is it going to open?
I'm not sure what you are asking. I said to leave only some data on the main drive and explained how to open the apps on the external SSD in the video. The apps won't show up unless you access the external drive to open them or create shortcuts to them.
Will 1000mbs external hard drive work like a samsung T7?
Yes that is fine for almost everything
@@craigneidel you said 3000mpbs external hard disk, so was wondering if there is a performance drop with slower external ssd
@polaris1985 I said 2500 MB/s with thunderbolt 4 enclosures is optimal but 1000 MB/s is fine for almost everything.
Not just the mac mini, the iMac as well!
Yes, any mac.
Hey Craig, I have a 2TB Samsung 980 pro in a thunderbolt enclosure. How do I figure out the cache size? Samsungs website says 2GB low power DDR4 SD ram. Then I looked it up and then the AI result says it should have around 200GB. I’m new to this.
I just leave it alone at factory settings.
@@craigneidelhow do you change the settings? Is there software for that?
I don't change any settings.
What about symbolic linking?
Symbolic linking?
@craigneidel its where you move files to the ssd, but use a symbolic link as a redirection to make the computer think the files are in the same spot they were before the move. So the storage is on the sad, but the computer acts as if its still
In the internal drive when it looks to access the data.
Which size SSD does the M4 Pro start with? 512 GB?
256gb
@@craigneidel Thank you. I found Apple's website and finally found the specs.
Strange, the M4 Pro starts at 512GB here in Australia, doesn’t even offer 256.
I just noticed he said pro. Yes, that is 512 GB.
I noticed you said Pro not just M4. That is 512 GB.