External SDD for Mac mini Pro

Take a look at this video which is typical of many comparing the base M4 with the Pro.

You could save a ton of money!

His conclusion is that he would probably get more RAM and a larger SSD.

Forget the larger SSD as that is solved by using a dead cheap (by comparison) external and 16GB RAM is plenty for anyone except busy professionals.

Base M4 mini v Pro

If you are in the UK you can get the base model for £568.99 from John Lewis with a 2 year guarantee.

By a slow HDD I mean no slower than USB 3.0

If you are using USB 2.0 there could be a problem.

USB 3.0 speeds are faster than the speeds needed when exporting or rendering videos so there will be no bottleneck.

Exporting a 4K video is at the most 40MB/s so even a dead slow 200MB/s HDD would have more than enough speed.

The M1 should have been faster than the old 27" but not a great deal.

The M2 is about twice as fast and the M4 roughly three times faster than the old 27".

As long as they are USB 3.0 or faster, external drives should not be a bottleneck.

I don't know where you "read" it but it is not correct.

You need to have realistic expectations of performance which you can only do by comparing yourself with others.

If you are experiencing very slow performance it almost certainly something to do with the way you have got your computer setup or your method of working rather than unsatisfactory equipment . . . in other words "user-error".

You don't need SSDs but they are more robust as they don't have any delicate moving parts and they are the future.

Although they have no mechanical bits they do wear out as every time you write info to them they add a bit of wear to the chips and the number of times they can be written to is finite though they should last many years.

That's why I've got 4 . . . they are not much more than HDDs.

What's "dual lane"?

Addendum: Is it RAID ?

You don't need those speeds unless you are transferring hundreds of gigabytes on a daily basis.

Re: “Since you say enclosures, you recommend me going for internal SSD, not external?”

When you get an external SSD, you can either buy a pre-assembled unit, or buy an internal drive and a separate enclosure and put them together yourself. The end result, either way, is an external SSD as far as your computer is concerned.

About the cost, or about having more choice as to the mechanism.

With desktop hard drives, buying the mechanism separately from the enclosure can make it easier to get drives that use CMR. Many drives now use SMR, which can increase data density, but imposes rewrite performance disadvantages not unlike those associated with flash memory.

The enclosure is just the cover or container of the SSD.

You know what an external HDD looks like? It's a smallish rectangular box with a USB etc. type cable attached.

The box or part you can see is the enclosure and the actual SSD/HDD mechanism is inside.

Once you have slotted the SSD inside and clipped on the cover you would not normally remove it.

I have several external SSDs. 4 of them are SATA types like those below and one is an NVMe which is a longer, thinner shape.

CRUCIAL 1TB SATA SSD

BENFEI SATA SSD ENCLOSURE

The advantage of the Benefei enclosure is that it comes with both USB 3.0 and USB-C connectors so you don't have to purchase any additional adapter.

You just push the SSD into the enclosure and clip on the lid.

"are you kidding me"

I've been following this thread and from your responses it's not been clear at all that you've understood very much about what you need or what you've been told and have just been looking for someone to hold your hand all the way and tell you exactly what to buy and where to buy it. People here have given you good advice and have been very patient with you and I think your response to Ian Brown is very unfair.