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DC7222

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 22, 2021
22
20
Thinking of paying the extra couple hundred $ for 16GB of ram on the new iMac, but don't want to cough up $400 for a terabyte of hard drive. How feasible is it to stick to the base 256GB and then just load everything (photos, files, etc.) onto a (cheaper) external SSD?
 
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grahamwright1

Cancelled
Feb 10, 2008
210
202
Yes - that’s what I’m doing with a Samsung T5 external drive. It has my Photos library on it plus some of my other larger files. Remember that you really DO need a separate backup of everything as well!
 
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Javi74

macrumors member
Dec 5, 2020
39
12
If you were talking about a macbook I wouldn't recomend, but talking about an imac I don't see why not.
I have an Air with 256 GB and decided to use Onedrive (1 TB/year for 70 € when subscribing Office 365).
 

junkw

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2010
545
458
Haifa, Israel
you can store "cold" stuff (holiday videos etc..) on services like BackBlaze B2 for like 0.005/GB/month and 0.01/GB download
 

KeithJenner

macrumors 65816
Sep 30, 2010
1,264
364
I currently have 256gb SSD on my iMac and then I have external HDDs which hold my music, video and photo libraries.

Being HHDs they are obviously slower than you will have if you get an external SSDs.

I've had that setup for a while and it works fine. However I do get fed up with the wait sometimes when using them. Part is the wake up time if, for example, I start playing music after the drive hasn't been accessed for a while, which again shouldn't be as bad for you if using SSD's (although I suspect there will still be a wait sometimes and being external will be slower than the internal).

I have decided to go with the 2TB version this time so I can get my music and photo libraries back internal (my TV/Movie library is about 5TB so that has to stay external). I'm really looking forward to the extra speed when starting music or loading photos) but I really don't think that you will have a problem with the setup you suggest.

One other thing, whilst making my decision I did look at various options for external SSD's and was surprised at the number of reviews I read from people complaining that they were slow. That seemed to be for many different models. I am always reluctant to read too much into reviews from strangers, but it was a factor in my final decision.
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
Thinking of paying the extra couple hundred $ for 16GB of ram on the new iMac, but don't want to cough up $400 for a terabyte of hard drive. How feasible is it to stick to the base 256GB and then just load everything (photos, files, etc.) onto a (cheaper) external SSD?
For the iMac it should work pretty well. If you get something like backblaze for online backups you should be covered. Also, get the 4 port version or you might end up buying a thunderbolt/USB dock when you run out of ports. If you aren’t too concerned about speed on the external, you can get a 10 Gbps USB 3.2 external and save some money. Still pretty fast.
 
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