You can easily upgrade the ssd soon, there are some brands already start selling 2tb ssd without any mods for m4 mini, and it is only like $100
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Upgrading M4 Mac Mini SSD: Pre-Soldered 2TB Chip Options
- Thread starter ItsAShaunParty
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Teardowns have revealed M4 mac mini's use the exact same SanDisk NANDs that have been used in iPhones for a couple of years. Ofc this does not mean they are bad, they're very reliable, but I doubt they are "enterprise endurance" grade.
But most of all, they are NANDs chips Apple has been buying in huge bulk-amounts and just throws in anything, implying that they probably are pretty darned cheap for Apple!
there are some brands in China start shipping the orders, so they will be soon on temu or tiktok, i feel it
The way I see the internal storage of Macs is exactly the same way as I see it on PC: the "boot device" is for system, programs, and SOME user data.
Want to store (more accurately, archive) data? Get an external drive, and get several of them, and have multiple copies of data! You never know WHEN (not IF) a drive will fail.
You don't really want to be using your boot device as daily storage and swap because that can and will shorten the life of the drive. That drive is life, because if it does fail, it will be a total PITA while you get a replacement drive fitted.
256 GB internal did me fine on my old Mac, and my new Mini has 512 GB. I don't regret it at all. As of this writing I have 410 GB remaining, and I can free up a lot of that space by putting my docs on a far cheaper external drive with 8x the capacity.
When the Mini was new out of the box, it used only 34 GB of storage.
IMHO it is not worth invalidating the warranty over the internal storage. Get 512 GB or 1 TB internal, and run everything else off externals.
I'm definitely pleased I put the money into RAM and not SSD.
Want to store (more accurately, archive) data? Get an external drive, and get several of them, and have multiple copies of data! You never know WHEN (not IF) a drive will fail.
You don't really want to be using your boot device as daily storage and swap because that can and will shorten the life of the drive. That drive is life, because if it does fail, it will be a total PITA while you get a replacement drive fitted.
256 GB internal did me fine on my old Mac, and my new Mini has 512 GB. I don't regret it at all. As of this writing I have 410 GB remaining, and I can free up a lot of that space by putting my docs on a far cheaper external drive with 8x the capacity.
When the Mini was new out of the box, it used only 34 GB of storage.
IMHO it is not worth invalidating the warranty over the internal storage. Get 512 GB or 1 TB internal, and run everything else off externals.
I'm definitely pleased I put the money into RAM and not SSD.
There is a huge gap between China domestic pricing and overseas pricing that you are seeing. There are more than a few competitions in China that has already been shipping these boards, and they are undercutting each other to as low as RMB 699-799 for 2TB, which is around the USD $100 mark.
The temporary unavailability of these boards overseas is being taken advantage of, therefore the $300 price tag. This will change soon.
Apple in its history very seldom used "enterprise grade" storage, not even in the XServe RAIDs. But they do use sufficiently good components that the general consumer usage does not need to worry about wearing. Then with these 3rd party NAND sourcing, the make / model and the source of the NANDs like you said has to be similar if not the exact same supply line that Apple hired, because the potential incompatibility is just not worth it even for the seller. What we need to worry about is if they are defects binned from supply chain, or even ripped from "recycled" phones which already has TBs of write registered.
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Are they using the same quality of NAND, though? Or is endurance more like consumer level? Even then, 2TB for $100 for a relatively low volume item is at the same price level of high volume consumer SSDs.
Those same questions can be asked to the "pricier" offerings, and the answer will still be "unknown". But yes it is kind of true if someone can seriously undercut it means something has to give. Like anything 3rd party, everything is a gamble. But at least with these daughter card you aren't soldering, if something goes wrong you just swap your Apple card in. This is the whole point of their appeal.
But seriously $300 is way too much. Even considering if they do a sort of NAND source and endurance quality assurance or what not.
$300 is indeed a lot if the cost of those chips are much lower locally than we are led to believe. Still a lot less than what Apple deems fit to charge, especially with its supply chain advantages and I agree that we can compromise on the quality of the chips, as this module becomes basically a consumable, so long as they avoid bin rejects/refurbs that might fail as often as bargain bin consumer SSDs seem wont to do.
After reading the thread, I always find these kinds of discussions evolve into costing etc. My take, as an almost 25+ year Apple user, is that you have to make your peace with it. Apple always have been, and always will be, an expensive company. Are their upgrade prices extortionate? Yes. I remember the days of upgrading the RAM and replacing HD's etc for (relative!) peanuts: it's annoying, but I can't change it so I kinda' just accept it (I know many people would take umbrage with that though!). I've 'downgraded' to a Mini rather than replacing my iMac because it's like HiFi separates. I can replace bits of the setup as and when. This eases the financial burden when something needs replacing, or I want to 'up-spec'. I've got the base model M4 Mini, but have 2 x Sabrent SSD enclosures which house a 2TB and 4TB SSD. You could argue that the cost of those would have allowed me to upgrade internally, but I like the idea of increasing or swapping those components out myself when needs be (I have two WD Passports backing up everything too), plus I can then keep the internal SSD lean, and I keep all of those if I decide to sell the Mini on. That's not to say anyone that's commented is wrong, it's all preference: as my wife would say, 'you do you'.
I replaced my M2 Mini upon the release of the M4 because for me, the spec bump, and the fact my M2 was under 12 months old, made it's resale quite good and futureproofed me just that little bit longer. I also had the Satechi SSD Hub with that too, so it's something I'll consider this time as, regardless of opinion on USB-A, it is still something that I use at home.
What I actually wanted to ask was whether anybody knows the dimensions of the new Satechi SSD Hub? I want to add it to my Mac, but my Mac sits under a non-adjustable riser on my desk, so need to know if I'll need to rebuild my riser to suit!
I replaced my M2 Mini upon the release of the M4 because for me, the spec bump, and the fact my M2 was under 12 months old, made it's resale quite good and futureproofed me just that little bit longer. I also had the Satechi SSD Hub with that too, so it's something I'll consider this time as, regardless of opinion on USB-A, it is still something that I use at home.
What I actually wanted to ask was whether anybody knows the dimensions of the new Satechi SSD Hub? I want to add it to my Mac, but my Mac sits under a non-adjustable riser on my desk, so need to know if I'll need to rebuild my riser to suit!
They seem to be available on Aliexpress now for around $200 for 2tb. Interestingly they are selling 2 versions. One version uses sandisk chips and other version, for a little more money, uses Toshiba chips. Does anyone know if the Toshiba version is worth the upgrade? The sandisk 2tb is $186 and the Toshiba 2tb is $214. Also prices on Aliexpress seem to fluctuate with the wind.
All sorts of versions are up on Aliexpress now.
However, caution is warranted for a variety of reasons:
Some of the prices are for bare PCBs without NAND.
Translations are odd and sometimes hilarious, sometimes befuddling.
It's early, definitely want to see some success cases first with some burn-in time.
As mentioned, prices are all over the map, saw one 2TB board at nearly $600 so something is amiss there.
To the folks going on about using external SSD: I've been doing that for many many years. Hell, I've got one mini acting as a server with dozens of TBs storage. Been there, done that, don't need any lectures from people on it.
Unfortunately, there are some things which do not and may never work with external storage. These are documented elsewhere and this isn't the place to get into that. I have verified over dozens of hours that what I would like to do with an M4 mini is not possible on external storage. It's an artificial limitation placed there by Apple, I have to believe it's fully intentional and not a bug - it's also a clear regression from prior MacOS versions.
For now, I'm waiting to see if - miracle of miracles - Apple deals with the regression (not holding my breath) and to see which internal SSD expansion works reliably at a reasonable cost. Pretty sure the latter is what's going to play out.
And to re-iterate, I've done internal SSD and RAM upgrades on Macs for many years now. It's not complicated nor is it dangerous. Literally zero (0) failures and issues.
Bottom line, had Apple not made the change to only allow certain operations on internal SSD, I'd already be using a brand new M4 mini with external storage.
But here we are.
However, caution is warranted for a variety of reasons:
Some of the prices are for bare PCBs without NAND.
Translations are odd and sometimes hilarious, sometimes befuddling.
It's early, definitely want to see some success cases first with some burn-in time.
As mentioned, prices are all over the map, saw one 2TB board at nearly $600 so something is amiss there.
To the folks going on about using external SSD: I've been doing that for many many years. Hell, I've got one mini acting as a server with dozens of TBs storage. Been there, done that, don't need any lectures from people on it.
Unfortunately, there are some things which do not and may never work with external storage. These are documented elsewhere and this isn't the place to get into that. I have verified over dozens of hours that what I would like to do with an M4 mini is not possible on external storage. It's an artificial limitation placed there by Apple, I have to believe it's fully intentional and not a bug - it's also a clear regression from prior MacOS versions.
For now, I'm waiting to see if - miracle of miracles - Apple deals with the regression (not holding my breath) and to see which internal SSD expansion works reliably at a reasonable cost. Pretty sure the latter is what's going to play out.
And to re-iterate, I've done internal SSD and RAM upgrades on Macs for many years now. It's not complicated nor is it dangerous. Literally zero (0) failures and issues.
Bottom line, had Apple not made the change to only allow certain operations on internal SSD, I'd already be using a brand new M4 mini with external storage.
But here we are.
As i do not use Apple AI (not active in Europe anyway) or iCloud i have not experienced any non working function while working on my external TB4 NVME.
Temps while updating to 15.2:
After the full update and over 100GB written and still installd active as spotlight ...:
This should tell you everything when complaining about high temps even when sleeping, btw. my MBA M2 is sleeping and waking perfect with the Acasis TBU405 TB3/4 WD SN770 2TB.
If you try to use a Samsung NVME or an ASMEDIA Chipset enclosure or have the NVME TB Enclosure connected to an Hub, anything can happen.
we are getting closer to the 200€:
(also here the Version with Toshiba NANDS is more expensive)
btw. i am writing this booted from the external even VM´s or Office License anything just works OOB.
Temps while updating to 15.2:
After the full update and over 100GB written and still installd active as spotlight ...:
This should tell you everything when complaining about high temps even when sleeping, btw. my MBA M2 is sleeping and waking perfect with the Acasis TBU405 TB3/4 WD SN770 2TB.
If you try to use a Samsung NVME or an ASMEDIA Chipset enclosure or have the NVME TB Enclosure connected to an Hub, anything can happen.
we are getting closer to the 200€:
(also here the Version with Toshiba NANDS is more expensive)
btw. i am writing this booted from the external even VM´s or Office License anything just works OOB.
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I took one for the team and bought the 2tb with Toshiba nand chips from taobao. So far after tax and some foreign exchange fee, it cost me $216 usd. Taobao is not user friendly if you don’t speak English but I think that price includes shipping to the US. The last I checked, the seller shipped it to the Taobao warehouse and I guess Taobao will ship to the US.
I’ve purchased items on Aliexpress and it is very easy to use but the prices were higher. I don’t know why the price is higher for Toshiba (kioxia) nand but I’m assuming they are higher quality. The version with the sandisk nand costs less. I did some research and I found out that Apple uses both Toshiba (kioxia) and sandisk nands in their products so I have no idea. Will let you guys know when and if I get it.
I’ve purchased items on Aliexpress and it is very easy to use but the prices were higher. I don’t know why the price is higher for Toshiba (kioxia) nand but I’m assuming they are higher quality. The version with the sandisk nand costs less. I did some research and I found out that Apple uses both Toshiba (kioxia) and sandisk nands in their products so I have no idea. Will let you guys know when and if I get it.
AFAIK, Toshiba is also used in iPhones, so there is a higher demand. Then SanDisk is only used on iPads and Macs. I have not seen a direct performance difference test between the two, but have heard that SanDisk actually benches higher. And the most important bit, the same SanDisk NANDs are used on the vanilla M4 mini Apple boards, so presumably better compatibility.
So if all the above is true, you would think the SanDisk should cost higher, but it is the other way round, very strange.
Here is an article / blog post that talks about it, if you want some sort of source, as unreliable as this may be:
(go into Safari reader mode and then translate to English)
I really don't know the difference but after checking the price of the nand chips on Aliexpress, it does seem like that Toshiba (kioxia) nand cost more. This seller refers to the Toshiba nand as the small size and the sandisk nand as the big size.
I'm assuming the nand that starts with SD is sandisk and the K6B2 nand is for Kioxia which is Toshiba's nand company.
I'm assuming the nand that starts with SD is sandisk and the K6B2 nand is for Kioxia which is Toshiba's nand company.
The article above talked about the size difference also, but not in the xy dimensions, it is the z thickness on SanDisk is higher. Not familiar with how these NANDs are used on phones, but can imagine SanDisk being too thick means it doesn’t fit inside certain models, so that the iPhones only use Toshiba which makes a lot of sense.
For the M4 mini board there is no space constraints though, I think it is safe to just go SanDisk since it costs less, and shouldn’t perform any worse.