Internal vs External SSD's on an M1 iMac

[krawfo]

I'm getting ready to buy a new M1 iMac and am trying to decide whether to pay the extra $180 for the 500GB SSD instead of the stock 250GB one. I'm thinking that for less than $180 I could buy a 1TB external drive but am unsure about performance and other issues that come with a plug in peripheral.
Any thoughts?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Do you have a Mac now? If so, how much disk space is currently used?

Advice will depend on that and what you plan to do on the iMac. You may need to do both!

Max Tech has some good info on external drives in association with M1 Macs:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MaxTechOfficial/videos

A lot of users would have difficulty with less than 500GB internal. In the old machine I'm using I have several symbolic links in my user and system folders pointing to other drives containing data that would otherwise overflow my system drive…and still my system drive is over 500GB.

People that do a lot of one or more of these likely need a lot of space: DAW audio recording, video editing, photography, gaming.

 

[KaliYoni]

This is a fine article from a widely respected Mac expert:

How big should the memory and SSD be in your next M1 Mac?

With Intel Macs, we’ve often bought as little RAM and storage as is essential, and enhanced or upgraded using third-party products. Does this work with Apple Silicon models?

eclecticlight.co

 

[pmiles]

First off, the larger the SSD, the faster it is going to be. So if you want the fastest possible performance from your M1 iMac, get the larger SSD.

Secondly, a larger SSD will incur less wear and tear over time than a smaller SSD because it has more places to swap to.

External drives are always going to be slower than an internal one. The degree to which they are slower has to do with the speed of the drive and the means of interfacing with the computer.

Key thing to remember here, don't treat your system drive like a library. Only store the stuff that you have to on it and dump the rest to an external drive. This frees up space on the system drive to do what it was designed to do... basically act as a swap space.

Remember, your last computer was perfectly fine for you when you bought it... it wasn't until later that it wasn't. This is why buying for the lowest common denominator can backfire on you. If you underestimate your typical usage over time, you end up replacing the computer sooner.

Now if you are merely buying this because of all the hoopla surrounding ARM Macs right now, it doesn't matter what you get because you will replace it when they release the next iteration of ARM Macs.

 

[jz0309]

I recently got a 2TB SanDisk extreme on sale, read/write on my iMac is around 950MBps, my new M1 MBA with 512GB comes in around 2900 read/write.
It all depends on your usage/needs, I use the external to store all my photos and it’s plenty fast for that

 

[krawfo]

Thanks everyone for your replies. The links provided were pretty interesting. My current 2011 iMac has a 256MB SSD, a 500 MB hard drive and 16GB of memory. Disk Utility shows that I'm only using 62.49 GB of the SSD. The hard rive has 462.81 GB used so it's about to burp!
Based on the above I'm considering a 512 GB SSD and 16 GB of memory. In the past it seems I always wished I had bought more memory and storage. To make matters worse I think all the memory and storage is soldered so there's no changing your mind later.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Thanks everyone for your replies. The links provided were pretty interesting. My current 2011 iMac has a 256MB SSD, a 500 MB hard drive and 16GB of memory. Disk Utility shows that I'm only using 62.49 GB of the SSD. The hard rive has 462.81 GB used so it's about to burp!
Based on the above I'm considering a 512 GB SSD and 16 GB of memory. In the past it seems I always wished I had bought more memory and storage. To make matters worse I think all the memory and storage is soldered so there's no changing your mind later.

Correct about the soldering.

Good choices on the options.

 

[NoBoMac]

Key thing to remember here, don't treat your system drive like a library. Only store the stuff that you have to on it and dump the rest to an external drive. This frees up space on the system drive to do what it was designed to do... basically act as a swap space.

This.

Imo, need to approach the problem from the angle of what really do you need on the Mac. If you do get 512GB and move lots of the stuff from the about to burst HDD, your Mac is now about to burst.

I've never had more than 256GB in my Macs, and have not had any issues. Currently only using 83GB. Heavy hitters, like Photos library, I keep on external SSD (Samsung T5(?)) as it's small, fits in the accessories sleeve I have and can be plugged in when needed. And the stalest of my data that I need/want to keep around, onto external HDD, which again, can plug in on the odd chance need to reference it. And in both of the cases, speed is really not that important. If doing heavy duty photo/video editing, then might be an issue, but for most, not going to notice.

 

[Fishrrman]

Regardless of the SSD size you get, I'd suggest spending the $$$ for 16gb of RAM.
The m1 Macs seem to need that as "a baseline" in order to prevent disproportionately large amounts of disk swapping...

 

[Mad Davey]

I got the 2tb internal drive in my M1 Mini. Black magic gives me 3238 writes and 2884 reads, this is fast don't get me wrong however for a new M1 Mac internal drive it seems on the slower side. Is it Black Magic? I think I saw an article somewhere a while ago saying Black Magic might not be getting accurate results on internal drives with new Macs, but I can't find it now. Just curious if anyone knows?

 

[Bodhitree]

I had the same decision to make as you, except that i needed more storage, in the end i ended up getting a 16/512 M1 iMac with a 2 TB Samsung SSD.