External SSD for storage - A little advice please

[Nerdio]

I am getting closer to moving into the Mac desktop environment (I have used iPhone and iPad for years). I am a bit of a newbie to some of technology like Thunderbolt. The plan is for an M4 Mac Mini with 512Gb storage and 24Gb of RAM. This should hopefully support the use of Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint with Lightroom and Photoshop as the two larger apps that I will be using.

I don't want to spend a fortune on internal storage to ultimately be limited by it in the future, so I am thinking of buying a 4Tb NVme SSD and putting this in an enclosure to connect to the rear of the Mac Mini. I will then move my Home folders onto this and leave my applications installed on the Mac Mini (512Gb should be more than enough?).

1) This seems to be a popular strategy, and reasonably cost-efficient. Are there any problems, pitfalls, or better solutions?

2) I cannot find any SSD enclosures that support Thunderbolt 4, but plenty that support USB 4. My understanding is that the Thunderbolt 4 ports will support USB 4, and the transfer speed is the same, so do I need to worry about Thunderbolt 4?
(The highest possible performance is not really the issue, I just want to be throttling the system for the sake of a few quid).

3) Any recommendations for an SSD enclosure?


Thanks

 

[deckard666]

I have to say I just went with 4 2TB USB 3.2 SSD on the back of my M2 Mini Pro which at my fairly (amateur) level of some retro gaming emulation (hello Rjujinx and Retroarch) and the occasional Ableton audio stuff has far surpassed any needs I have. I think it was a grand total of 350 quid all in and obv there are some great deals coming around for BF soon....

My music collection which is 650gb and my 200gb photos live on those SSD external drives and my boot internal SSD drive which is 512gb has over 150gb left even allowing for over a 100 gig of audio ableton stuff.

All backed up using Carbon Copy Cloner to a few external hard drives I have left over from previous Macs.

 

[All Taken]

The alternative is to place a fresh install onto your external SSD. I’ve done this with my M4 mini but have since changed to the home folder residing on my external instead, due to Apple Intelligence being disabled when used from an external boot drive.

You can run a script in terminal to enable it, whether this is required each and every update remains to be seen, I decided it isn’t worth the faff.

On to enclosures… I’m guessing by you saying quid you’re in the UK like me, so I’ll give you my experience from the last week.

ORICO 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure with Built-in Cooling Fan, Upgraded Transparent 40Gbps External Hard Drive Enclosure, Support UASP & TRIM, Support 2230 2242 2260 2280(only M key) Black

【40Gbps High Speed Transfer】With data transfer rates of up to 40Gbps, this NVMe enclosure can transfer a 3GB file in just one second. Tested with a Samsung 980PRO on a Macbook with a Thunderbolt 4 interface, it delivers read/write speeds of up to 2831/2787 MB/s. Great for speeding up game loading...

amzn.eu

I’ve tried the Orico external 40Gbps enclosure which has fantastic read/write performance reaching up to the 3100Mbps range in testing. £51.99 seems a great buy on the surface too. However, it’s too noisy, the fan is tiny and can’t be disabled, you wouldn’t want to, I’ll get to that momentarily.

The body is plastic which does little for acting as a heat sink, there is one small heat sink above the SSD connected via a thermal pad, well almost, except it isn’t, and that’s the issue… even with a noisy fan it’s not doing anything for cooling because the SSD isn’t making contact via the thermal pad to the small heat sink surrounded by plastic. It’s a massive gap and I didn’t feel great using more pads to pack the distance given how tiny a radiator area it has anyway. The blue LED light is also very bright and constant, if you’re in an environment where this could be a concern, avoid. Returned.

Deal: UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, 40Gbps NVMe Enclosure with USB4, [Lager Aluminum Shell & PWM Fan], Support UASP & TRIM, M.2 Enclosure Compatible with M & M+b Keys and Size in 2230/2242/2260/2280 SSDs

UGREEN M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, 40Gbps NVMe Enclosure with USB 4, [Lager Aluminum Shell & PWM Fan], Support UASP & TRIM, M.2 Enclosure Compatible with M & M+b Keys and Size in 2230/2242/2260/2280 SSDs

amzn.eu

Next up we have the Ugreen at £69.99, same read and write performance maxing out the Thunderbolt 4 connection. LED is more subdued, however the fan is extremely loud, it’s smaller still than the Orico and really shows it as it needs to spin harder. It’s obnoxiously loud. Very well built enclosure but I couldn’t live with the noise, it’s too much for 24/7 usage. Thermal pad makes good contact with the heat sink screw down lid but it doesn’t make great contact with the rest of the metal body so is limited in its ability to dissipate heat at a reasonable rate. You will find it throttles even with the god awful fan noise. Again, fan can’t be disabled and shouldn’t be anyway. Can’t recommend it.

ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure,Built-in Cooling Fan, Support 2280 M-Key(B+M Key),PCIe to Type-C Adapter Compatible for Thunderbolt 3/4 USB 3.2/3.1/3.0,Aluminum SSD Shell Up to 2700MB/s

[Lightning-Speed Data Transfer] This Type C Interface M2 NVMe Enclosure is equipped with USB C interface, and the transmission speed is up to 40gbps. As fast as lightning, 2.5G files can be read in less than 1 second. Data transmission does not wait. It is suitable for USB 4/3.2/3.1/3.0 interface...

amzn.eu

Finally I bit the bullet and bought the Acasis enclosure with the built in fan. I didn’t want to spend £105, but given my experience with the smaller fan enclosures I thought it’s worth a shot. LED is perfectly balanced, noticeable when looking for it but not overly bright. Fan is larger and quieter, I mean whisper quiet in comparison. It’s barely audible until you place your ear to the enclosure, and it shifts a fair amount of air too.

Read/write are up in the 2700Mbps range which is a perfectly acceptable tiny drop for me. The fan is switchable too. Even with the fan off I’m seeing temperatures in the 40c range with hours of use. I wish I had spent the extra to begin with.

My recommendation is the Acasis, however, if you can get away with a fanless unit and want to spend less I suspect many of the large/full lid fanless style units would perform equally well. I’m happy with this as a solution as I trust the temperature range with my 8TB disk for for always on usage.

Searching 40Gbps M.2 enclosure gives many options.

Hope that helps

 

[mgscheue]

I just got the Acasis with the fan as well. Using it with a Samsung 990 Evo Plus and I agree that it's great. Very quiet and cool.

 

[shadowboi]

I had been using external drives ever since my first iMac 2012. Since it got USB 3 I had even installed multiple operating systems on each drive to use different applications and environments. Mac is very versatile in terms of SSD-Computer friendship.

And regarding your questions:

1) This seems to be a popular strategy, and reasonably cost-efficient. Are there any problems, pitfalls, or better solutions?

No pitfalls really. Internal storage would be always faster tho, but you will probably not notice speed differences in real life scenarios. Also it is always the best strategy to store important info on external drive - if Mac dies for some reason your data is safely stored outside.

2) I cannot find any SSD enclosures that support Thunderbolt 4, but plenty that support USB 4. My understanding is that the Thunderbolt 4 ports will support USB 4, and the transfer speed is the same, so do I need to worry about Thunderbolt 4?
(The highest possible performance is not really the issue, I just want to be throttling the system for the sake of a few quid).

You don't really need Thunderbolt/USB 4, especially if there are no disks that support the protocol. USB 3.2 might be more than enough.

3) Any recommendations for an SSD enclosure?

I can recommend a drive, not enclosure. Very fast disk and seems to be reliable

 

[All Taken]

I’m really impressed with how effective the Acasis is. My setup is used as a media server too and is in the living area so the last thing we want is a bright LED and loud fan. It’s silent from anything more than 10cm away, not that it needs the fan running 24/7 anyway as the enclosure does an amazing job at radiating the heat passively.

Size next to M4 Mini if anyone is wondering:

 

[All Taken]

Internal storage would be always faster tho, but you will probably not notice speed differences in real life scenarios.

Compared with most PCIe4 M.2 over a thunderbolt 4 connection the internal storage on the base M4 is slower.

It’s a win for your wallet and for speed if you can manage with external storage.

Depends on the needs and of course I agree with your point, some would be happy with 10Gbps instead and not notice any real difference if their workflow allows for it.

 

[deckard666]

I run Plex off one of the SSDs from my LG TV via wifi about 30 feet and 2 rooms away and its flawless even with 4k HDR but then realistically a HDD would be more than sufficient too....

 

[MrGimper]

I had been using external drives ever since my first iMac 2012. Since it got USB 3 I had even installed multiple operating systems on each drive to use different applications and environments. Mac is very versatile in terms of SSD-Computer friendship.

And regarding your questions:

No pitfalls really. Internal storage would be always faster tho, but you will probably not notice speed differences in real life scenarios. Also it is always the best strategy to store important info on external drive - if Mac dies for some reason your data is safely stored outside.


You don't really need Thunderbolt/USB 4, especially if there are no disks that support the protocol. USB 3.2 might be more than enough.


I can recommend a drive, not enclosure. Very fast disk and seems to be reliable

It's also the best strategy to have a backup strategy that would make this a moot point. You'd also need another Mac to connect the drive to should yours fail unless you use a FAT file format.

External SSDs can also fail, and also bear in mind the Mac Mini has a socketed SSD.

I'm not saying don't go external, but think about it all.

 

[ForkHandles]

I am getting closer to moving into the Mac desktop environment (I have used iPhone and iPad for years). I am a bit of a newbie to some of technology like Thunderbolt. The plan is for an M4 Mac Mini with 512Gb storage and 24Gb of RAM. This should hopefully support the use of Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint with Lightroom and Photoshop as the two larger apps that I will be using.

I don't want to spend a fortune on internal storage to ultimately be limited by it in the future, so I am thinking of buying a 4Tb NVme SSD and putting this in an enclosure to connect to the rear of the Mac Mini. I will then move my Home folders onto this and leave my applications installed on the Mac Mini (512Gb should be more than enough?).

1) This seems to be a popular strategy, and reasonably cost-efficient. Are there any problems, pitfalls, or better solutions?

2) I cannot find any SSD enclosures that support Thunderbolt 4, but plenty that support USB 4. My understanding is that the Thunderbolt 4 ports will support USB 4, and the transfer speed is the same, so do I need to worry about Thunderbolt 4?
(The highest possible performance is not really the issue, I just want to be throttling the system for the sake of a few quid).

3) Any recommendations for an SSD enclosure?


Thanks

Firstly your use case, MS Office and Photoshop.

An M4 is absolute overkill for your needs with or without 24GB of RAM. My old M1 with 8Gb never had any issues. You are future proofing yourself for donkey years to come, congrats.

I guess you know what your storage needs are for your own PC/Linux desktop are.
Apple plays nicely with externals so knock your socks off.

My flow involves video. I load the source file onto the Mac, make and render the video, the offload the source files again onto a back up.

Never a problem.

I also buy into the Apple iCloud storage for my main back up strategy. Good piece of mind and save me from time machining constantly.

 

[Nerdio]

Thank you everyone for your replies and advice.
I have a clear idea about what I will most likely do, and a sound recommendation for an enclosure (Acasis).

Thanks

 

[Tcubed]

I am getting closer to moving into the Mac desktop environment (I have used iPhone and iPad for years). I am a bit of a newbie to some of technology like Thunderbolt. The plan is for an M4 Mac Mini with 512Gb storage and 24Gb of RAM. This should hopefully support the use of Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint with Lightroom and Photoshop as the two larger apps that I will be using.

I don't want to spend a fortune on internal storage to ultimately be limited by it in the future, so I am thinking of buying a 4Tb NVme SSD and putting this in an enclosure to connect to the rear of the Mac Mini. I will then move my Home folders onto this and leave my applications installed on the Mac Mini (512Gb should be more than enough?).

1) This seems to be a popular strategy, and reasonably cost-efficient. Are there any problems, pitfalls, or better solutions?

2) I cannot find any SSD enclosures that support Thunderbolt 4, but plenty that support USB 4. My understanding is that the Thunderbolt 4 ports will support USB 4, and the transfer speed is the same, so do I need to worry about Thunderbolt 4?
(The highest possible performance is not really the issue, I just want to be throttling the system for the sake of a few quid).

3) Any recommendations for an SSD enclosure?


Thanks

I’ve added a TB4/USB4 WavLink 40Gbps m.2 case and a 4TB Orico NVMe PCIe 4x4 (7000MB/s) to my Mac Mini M4. I changed the user folder to be on the external drive and the application directory to be on the external drive (changing external to be boot prohibits AI from working), so most work files will be placed there automatically. Read speeds are over 3.5k, writes about 3.1k on external. On the 256Gb internal reads are just over 2.5K, writes about 2.3k. So external is faster than internal! I plan to add a second identical ‘raided’ TB4/USB4 drive which should add about 1k to performance through striping. So with right hardware an external TB4/USB4 is actually faster than the 2 chip 256Gb internal drive. Until you get to a 4 chip config (1Tb) I think external will remain faster.

The drive and case cost $248(amazon) and I have 16x the base storage.

 

[Ifti]

The Acasis enclosure mentioned and pictured further up the thread is great.

Also the OWC 1M2 is an awesome drive and comes well recommended!