Cost-Effective Alternatives to Apple's Storage Upgrades

Question

How can one increase storage capacity of Apple devices without spending too much?

Answer 1

It is quite expensive to extend Apples storage by purchasing its options hence an alternative is making your own storage using an NVMe SSD and an enclosure. For instance, a Western Digital Black SN770 NVMe SSD could set you back anywhere from $59 to $126 for size, and combining it with TBU-405 Acasis enclosure which costs $140. It is safer to say that this combination is cheaper than the Apple’s enhancement and also looks better as the transfer speed of data is quicker.

Comments

Hi, Craig. Please receive my sincere thanks for this great content. I went out and got the Acasis case coupled with the WD black SSD for my Mac Mini Pro. Boy, what a great investment! I was able to transfer my photos and music to my external 2 TB SSD and therefore leave my 512 GB internal drive to run the system without pressure. Boy, it flies!  And I saved hundreds of dollars, too. Thanks tons! You’re the best.

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thanks Craig, I have a 2013 iMac with about 700gb of data on the 1TB internal storage and have just purchased a Mac Mini M2 Pro with 512gb of memory.  I have jsut ordered the Acasis enclosure and a 2tb WB SN770 NVME SSD and plan on storing my Music (140GB) Movies (120GB) and  Photos (51GB) on the external drive and keeping the internal drive free for day to day work.  2TB of external memory plus the acasis case cost me AUD$400, versus AUD$900 to upgrade Mini M2 to 2TB, so much much cheaper (1TB would have probably done me but the difference between 1TB and 2TB was that much so went with 2TB)

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NOTE: My M1 mac studio cannot support two TB4 enclosure for lack of power.  It can only support 1.  I am not sure if M2 solve this issue.  BTW, buy TB4 NVME enclosure which is 40Gbps instead of the 10Gbps if you want to install and run OS on external NVME drivers because the speed differences is huge especially related to the random 4K Read/write performance.  Also, WD SN 850NX 2TB is just $90 on a recent deal.  You can choose this instead of SN770(it is HBM which means it doesn't have onbroad DRAM cache).  Other than ACASIS, other similar brands are also the same as they are using the same Intel 7440 chipset.  I have brought the Konyead nvme enclosure at $100 and they are also great.

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Bought a adata sx8200 pro 1tb for 35usd and a ugreen 10gbps for 18usd, Speeds are good enough for me but so much cheaper. Thanks for the idea.

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Thanks for sharing. You just saved ~$250.

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Many, many thanks. This is just the advice I needed. I have a low-end refurb Mac Studio coming from Apple. I'd planned to get a Mac mini, but when I configured it like I wanted, the refurb Mac Studio was cheaper because those with those features come stock. Where I refused to pay Apple's Robber Baron upgrade prices was in the SSD. I ordered it with 512 GB despite the fact that the data on my existing 2012 Mac mini takes up almost 500 GB. I desperately need an external SSD.

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Thanks for this content. I've been using a couple of Crucial's 1TB external SSDs for video, but they fill up very quickly, and they do take a longer than what you demonstrated to copy files.

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For me it's not so much the speed of the drive as it is what I can install on it. On Macs there are many applications, plug-ins, etc that won't allow you to install them on an external drive. The only way I found around that problem is to clone the Macs drive with the OS and then boot from the external cloned drive, then some applications were able to run from that drive.

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A few comments about SSD drives: The smaller the drive, the less overprovisioning in the drive, which means it will last less long than a larger SSD. So, the 2TB drives will tend to last longer than the 1TB drives. Additionally, all SSDs have a cache to make them appear faster than they really are. The only test you did that got beyond that cache was the two large file test. That will have shown the actual speed of the drive.

And the reason why Apple’s larger internal drive is faster on the M2 Mac is because there are two physical NAND chips on the motherboard (which is the storage). Writing to and reading from two NAND chips is faster than just one. I think that Apple’s low-end drive offering is designed to meet a price point with a less-useful system. I would not purchase the 256-MB system; there is not enough room for the OS and for applications on that drive. Also, you would have to move your /User space to the external drive. On a laptop, that would be a real pain.

Finally, you lose ports for every drive you plug in. With the M2 Mac Mini, if you are operating with two Apple Studio Displays, you have no Thunderbolt ports, save the USB3 ports on the display. The Mac Mini with the M2 Pro has four Thunderbolt ports, so an external drive is a possibility. Now, not everyone is going to hook two Apple Studio monitors up to a Mac Mini but the limitations in these systems quickly become apparent when hooking up peripherals.

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Do you find choosing the cheapest drive as you did detrimental to performance when you start to fill up the drive? I went with a couple of cheaper kingston sticks and although they were blazing fast at first after filling them up to over 60%, performance dropped by over 75%. I’m now inclined to stick to the more expensive pro sticks.

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Question, considering switching to Mac Mini from Desktop PC. I own several apple products, I only use computer for media viewing and editing content for my tennis channel. Don't do gaming on computer at all. I see there is rumor of M4 processor coming to Mac Mini potentially. Should I wait since my PC is still working fine or go ahead and buy a mac mini with 16GB RAM and 256GB hard drive plus external drive as you mentioned? If you recommend buying mac mini now and not to wait, do I need to get the M2 Pro?