[HN Gopher] Upgrading an M4 Pro Mac mini's storage for half the ...
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Upgrading an M4 Pro Mac mini's storage for half the price
Author : speckx
Score : 273 points
Date : 2025-07-11 14:06 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Comparing the speeds of a new flash device and an old, used one
| will typically not be valid unless steps are taken to condition
| the new device into a steady operating state.
| Retr0id wrote:
| What might those steps be?
| daneel_w wrote:
| Putting the new one through an equal amount of use that the
| old one saw, because SSD controller firmware is unpredictable
| and many SSDs see reduced performance with time.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I'm surprised and happy that this is possible.
| porphyra wrote:
| There are also shops in China that will upgrade the SSD in a mac
| mini for cheaper and they will do all the work of the DFU restore
| etc.
| ttul wrote:
| And when the machine arrives back in the States, it even has a
| fresh CPC ROM soldered onto the back of the SOC!
| mattl wrote:
| CPC?
| msh wrote:
| Communist party of china aka ccp
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Possibly ParaDOS?
| mattl wrote:
| Ha! I'm sure I asked you about this before but I think
| you hinted at one point about being able to supply PD on
| a format other than disc and I think you said not on
| cassette. What was that?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Don't be rude, your NSA ROM gets lonely sometimes.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| I feel that you're being downvoted by people who don't know
| history.
|
| I'll add some references:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-
| nsa...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_dis
| c...
| bigyabai wrote:
| They know, they just wish it weren't true.
|
| "You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am"
| daneel_w wrote:
| Same with the guy half-joking about Chinese malicious
| implants. Because of course China would never engage in
| espionage. It's interesting to note that he/she got
| downvoted a lot harder.
| chvid wrote:
| Do you actually believe this?
| hollerith wrote:
| I'm not a security researcher, but I get the distinct
| impression that Apple's hardware security is good enough that
| if you actually had an evil-maid attack on the M4 Pro Mac
| mini, it would instantly become the hottest news in the
| security community.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I would not be so sure that Apple's hardware security is
| good enough, taking into account that for several years it
| has been possible to take complete control remotely and
| undetectably over any iPhone, because of a combination of
| hardware and software bugs.
|
| The Apple Mx CPUs had some secret test registers that
| allowed the bypassing of all hardware memory protections
| and which could be accessed by those who were aware of
| their existence, because they were not disabled after
| production, as they should have been. Combined with some
| software bugs in some Apple system libraries, this allowed
| an attacker to obtain privileged execution rights by
| sending an invisible message to the iPhone.
|
| It is unknown whether the same secret test registers were
| also open in the laptop versions of the Apple Mx CPUs.
| There the invisible message attack route would have been
| unavailable, but malicious Web pages might have been able
| to use the same exploit.
|
| This incredible security failure has been hot news for a
| couple of weeks, together with the long list of CVEs
| associated with it, and it has been also discussed on HN,
| but after that it has been quickly forgotten. Now most
| people still think that the Apple devices have good
| security, despite their history showing otherwise. I do not
| think that any other hardware vendor except Apple has been
| caught with a security bug so dumb as those unprotected
| hardware test registers.
|
| This was not a theoretical security failure, but it was
| discovered because some unknown attackers had used it for a
| long time to spy on some iPhone owners. The attack had been
| discovered by studying the logs of WiFi access points,
| which had shown an unusually high outbound traffic coming
| from the iPhones, which were exfiltrating the acquired
| data.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| It is mindboggling simple to override Apple MDM and device
| enrollment for MBPs. In a manner that is one and done,
| survives upgrades etc.
|
| Two minutes or less, 4 DNS entries.
|
| I'm a lot less convinced than you are of the hardiness of
| Apple's security.
| bigyabai wrote:
| To be fair, the parent comment did qualify their
| uncertainty four whole times:
|
| 1) "I'm not a security researcher" (ethos; repeal to
| authority)
|
| 2) "I get" (pathos; personal opinion)
|
| 3) "distinct impression" (pathos; emotional appeal)
|
| 4) "good enough" (logos; implies security is
| immeasurable/infeasible to prove)
|
| Now, I wouldn't get caught _dead_ endorsing a company
| that I have to write so many excuses for. But they _did_
| warn you!
| hollerith wrote:
| I wrote "Apple's _hardware_ security ".
| daneel_w wrote:
| But Jeff doesn't live in China.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Could such a place exist in the US or would Apple shut it down?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I think it could since a lot of shade tree iphone repair
| shops exist. Probably not enough demand to pay for the
| overhead unlike in china though.
| wpm wrote:
| I was quite pleased with the iBoff 2TB SSD I got for my M4 Mini.
| It's sad how badly Apple has some of us conditioned with the
| pathetic amounts of storage they include. I haven't had a Mac
| with more than 512GB of storage, basically, ever? And recently I
| was on my Mini, digging through some old backups, and hesitated
| as I normally would downloading a 40GB zip from my NAS, because
| "oh geeze this is 40GB plus another 40 after decompression, do I
| have enough space?" because 80GB is normally 15% of my Mac's
| storage space. Then I remembered, oh yeah, heaps of storage,
| this'll only cost me 4% of the total. I bought this Mac with the
| 256GB base SSD knowing I could upgrade, and nearly 40% of the
| drive was taken up _out of the box_.
|
| It's pure robbery on Apple's part. Completely beyond the pale
| now. Their ridiculous RAM and storage prices were never that big
| of a deal back in the PowerBook/early Macbook Pro days, because
| you could always opt out if you were a tiny bit handy with a
| small screwdriver (my 2008 unibody lets me swap storage with *1*
| screw, swap a battery with _zero_!). Now? It 's unforgivable. I
| don't care about soldered RAM, I get it, but it is despicable
| charging as much as the entire computer to upgrade the RAM a
| paltry 16GB.
|
| There's profit, and there's actively making your entire product
| experience worse in pursuit of profit. Having to constantly hem
| and haw over oh god oh geeze do I have enough local storage for
| this basic task, having to juggle external storage and copying
| files back and forth (since plenty of their own shit doesn't work
| if its installed on an external SSD), or constantly deleting and
| redownloading larger apps, makes the product experience worse.
| Full stop. At the very least _every_ Mac they sell should have
| 512GB, if not a TB, stock. I 'm tired of acting like SSDs are
| some insanely expensive luxury like it's 2008 again.
| skeezyboy wrote:
| cant you just install macOs on your own hardware or are they
| typically Apple in that department as well?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Are you familiar with Hackintosh? That's what people did with
| Intel based platforms. Apple Silicon put an end to the
| Hackintosh.
| delfinom wrote:
| Hackintosh still exists. macOS 16 will be officially the
| last x86 supporting release.
|
| But I think it's point, the performance of Hackintosh is
| terrible for many reasons as its all a hackjob.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The Hackintoshes I've built were much better performance
| for price compared to equivalent official model. It just
| took a lot longer to get them up an running. We were
| building for production machines vs personal use, so
| things like Messages, AppStore, etc that could be tricky
| to get to work were just not something we cared about.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I ran Hackintoshes for many years. Performance on a
| $1500-2000 Intel platform was always extremely good
| (certainly better than any Mac I was willing to shell out
| for and sometimes better than any Mac that was sold).
| dylan604 wrote:
| That time period of the trash can mac saw a lot of people
| looking to have a useful computer and Hackintosh was the
| only way. We had systems with multiple GPUs that blew the
| doors off the trash can's AMD multiple year old GPUs.
| Then, when the new GPUs came out, Hackintoshes just
| upgraded while the trash can just sat their all sad in
| how useless it was.
|
| The people involved in making the Hackintosh possible
| should be immortalized in stone carvings to be remembered
| for all of time.
| jmb99 wrote:
| Performance was very, very good in my experience.
| Benchmarks normally took a 10% hit vs their equivalents
| on windows, but being able to run macOS on arbitrary
| consumer hard made performance incredibly cheap. My first
| proper bang-for-buck machine was an i7-4790k with an R9
| 270x GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a combination of SSD and HDD
| storage. Total cost was around $1300 CAD if I remember
| correctly, which is absurdly cheap compared to what you'd
| have to pay at the time for a Mac with that performance.
| I also ran macOS on a 2x E5-2670 machine with 64GB of
| RAM, as well as a 2x E5-2697 v2 machine, and an i9-12900k
| machine with an RX 6950XT GPU, all of which were
| incredible value compared to an off-the-shelf Mac. It's
| only recently that Macs are catching up to hackintoshes
| performance-to-dollar wise, because Apple Silicon is
| very, very good. Once I get my WRX90 workstation
| hackintoshed it should give the Mac Studio and Mac Pro a
| run for their money, but not for much longer if Apple
| drops support for x86 after macOS 16.
| MYEUHD wrote:
| Source? Last year I installed macOS 14 on a Thinkpad X230
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure, if you want to linger onto old versions of the OS,
| but once Apple quits supporting Intel it will be over.
|
| So maybe I'm calling it early, but it will at some point
| be pointless to continue running the old Intel systems.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Can't emulate or spoof m series chip?
| dylan604 wrote:
| with what? the m series is everything on the chip. you're
| suggesting an Intel CPU an Nvidia GPU and a bunch of RAM
| sticks to be emulated to present itself to the OS as a
| single device?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not at any usable level of performance. It's a completely
| different hardware architecture.
| dylan604 wrote:
| man, perspective here is quite funny to me. I just wrote a
| diatribe about SSD speeds vs my HDD experience in life. At $699
| to have 5+GB/s throughput would make a younger me look at you
| like you had two heads and just walked out of UFO. There's no
| way it could be that fast/small/cheap in any future without
| alien tech. I get that Apple's pricing is higher than other
| options. Even still, it's dirt cheap compared for the
| performance that allows high-end to consumers.
|
| Even still, I'm a huge fan of taking advantage of the cheaper
| options with an portable external chassis and a nice
| thunderbolt cable. While not quite as fast as the internal
| version, it's still 2+GB/s worth of speed that exceeds my
| needs/use.
|
| So from my perspective, it's dirt cheap compared to your
| insanely expensive perspective
| wpm wrote:
| >taking advantage of the cheaper options with an portable
| external chassis and a nice thunderbolt cable.
|
| This has a number of downsides on macOS. I am well aware of
| the cheapness of this, but you also get a worse user-
| experience. I have a huge NAS that I could connect to over
| 10GbE too, save for no native iSCSI drivers. I have a handful
| of external SSDs in enclosures, but I can't easily boot off
| of it (and if I do, certain features of the OS get disabled).
| I can't easily or reliably move my home folder to it. I can't
| clean up my desk without buying expensive external "docks" or
| something that in addition to a standard M.2 SSD, come out to
| _more_ expensive than the iBoff upgrade. I have to waste my
| time juggling files back and forth from the external to the
| internal in situations where I either want to (for faster
| speeds) or need to (in cases where Apple 's software refuses
| to work if its not on the internal SSD).
|
| Yeah, 20 years ago the thought of 5GB/s for less than a grand
| was fantasy. It's not fantasy anymore, and it's not 20 years
| ago. I'm tired of pretending it is to justify these
| outrageous prices Apple is extracting from their customers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There maybe some Stockholm Syndrome, but to be clear, I'd
| be much happier with cheaper anything too.
|
| You're also acting like I'm suggesting running the OS from
| the external. That's just a weird way to think about it.
| The system drive is just that, for the system and apps and
| home folder. Media belongs on a different volume. Granted,
| I'm a media person with professional workflow mentality
| where the media is never small enough to fit on a system
| drive. Plus, "back in the day" the media drives were much
| faster than the system drive. So it's all turned up on its
| head in that regard
| nordsieck wrote:
| > It's pure robbery on Apple's part. Completely beyond the pale
| now. Their ridiculous RAM and storage prices were never that
| big of a deal back in the PowerBook/early Macbook Pro days,
| because you could always opt out if you were a tiny bit handy
| with a small screwdriver (my 2008 unibody lets me swap storage
| with _1_ screw, swap a battery with zero!). Now? It 's
| unforgivable. I don't care about soldered RAM, I get it, but it
| is despicable charging as much as the entire computer to
| upgrade the RAM a paltry 16GB.
|
| For what it's worth, I completely agree with you.
|
| But.
|
| I suspect that Apple isn't _solely_ doing this for profit.
| Apple 's pricing structure aggressively funnels people into the
| base config for each CPU.
|
| Thinking about getting an M4 with upgraded ram? A base config
| M4 pro starts to look pretty good.
|
| In practice, this means that Apple's logistics is dramatically
| simplified since 95% of people are ordering a small number of
| SKUs.
|
| > There's profit, and there's actively making your entire
| product experience worse in pursuit of profit.
|
| It was really egregious when the base config only came with 8
| GB of ram. I'll admit that storage can be a bit tight depending
| on what you're trying to do, but at least external storage is
| an option, however ugly and/or inconvenient it may be for some.
| int0x29 wrote:
| Don't want to deal with the logistics of lots of SKUs? Don't
| sell them. Trying to upsell people is a money move. Selling a
| SKU where the 80+gb OS is like 40% of the disk is a good SKU
| to cut. Especially if some consumers are unlikely to realize
| how little space they will actually have.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The idea is to then also funnel them into icloud drive
| plans
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Don't want to deal with the logistics of lots of SKUs?
| Don't sell them. Trying to upsell people is a money move.
| Selling a SKU where the 80+gb OS is like 40% of the disk is
| a good SKU to cut.
|
| This isn't a profitable move from Apple's perspective -
| they try to keep the base unit at about the same price
| across generations. That's what happened when they moved
| from 8 GB of ram to 16 GB.
| gmanley wrote:
| The RAM has always been the biggest issue, for me. I'd almost
| always prefer to have my larger data on an external system. In
| my case an NAS or several RAID enclosures. Having the data
| "mobility" is important. My normal workflow is to have my
| active work on the system in question and then move it back
| forth as I finish or swap projects. In recent years, I have
| never maxed out my storage on my Macs. To be fair, I don't work
| with a bunch of 4K video editing, or other huge datasets, so
| maybe that's where it becomes more of a problem.
| yread wrote:
| 700$ for 4TB! Getting robbed in broad daylight and writing a
| happy blogpost about it
| kevincox wrote:
| Getting robbed less is better than getting robbed more.
| master_crab wrote:
| True. But I don't know if I'd be gleeful if the robber left
| me the credit cards and took the cash.
|
| Looks like you also have to do the upgrade yourself (so it's
| not all just cash money being forked over).
| apparent wrote:
| Also surely voids AppleCare, if you have it.
| flkenosad wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're getting down voted for. Apple is
| the most corrupting capitalist force in the computing
| world. What they're doing should be criminal.
| fckgw wrote:
| Oh brother
| tuananh wrote:
| > I was provided the $699 M4 Pro 4TB SSD upgrade by M4-SSD.
| It's quite expensive (especially compared to normal 4TB NVMe
| SSDs, which range from $200-400)...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, that kind of culture is why while I appreciate many of
| Apple's technologies, I rather let customers or employers
| provide hardware if they feel so inclined for me to use Apple.
|
| Privately it is all about Linux/Windows/Android.
|
| Very good insights,
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cult_of_Mac
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Custom low volume hardware is going to be more expensive.
| dylan604 wrote:
| SSD speeds are nothing short of miraculous in my mind. I come
| from the old days of striping 16 HDDs together (at a minimum
| number) to get 1GB/s throughput. Depending on the chassis, that
| was 2 8-drive enclosures in the "desktop" version or the large
| 4RU enclosures with redundant PSUs and fans loud enough to
| overpower arena rock concerts. Now, we can get 5+GB/s throughput
| from a tiny stick that can be used externally via a single cable
| for data&power that is absolutely silent. I edit 4K+ video as
| well, and now can edit directly from the same device the camera
| recorded to during production. I'm skipping over the parts of
| still making backups, but there's no more multi-hour copy from
| source media to edit media during a DIT step. I've spent many a
| shoot as a DIT wishing the 1s&0s would travel across devices much
| faster while everyone else on the production has already left, so
| this is much appreciated by me. Oh, and those 16 device units
| only came close to 4TB around the time of me finally dropping
| spinning rust.
|
| The first enclosure I ever dealt with was a 7-bay RAID-0 that
| could just barely handle AVR75 encoding from Avid. Just barely to
| the point that only video was saved to the array. The audio
| throughput would put it over the top, so audio was saved to a
| separate external drive.
|
| Using SSD feels like a well deserved power up from those days.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| > I come from the old days of striping 16 HDDs together (at a
| minimum number) to get 1GB/s throughput
|
| Woah, how long would that last before you'd start having to
| replace the drives?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Depending on the HDD vendor/model. We had hot spares and cold
| spares. On one build, we had a bad batch of drives. We built
| the array on a Friday, and left it for burn-in running over
| the weekend. On Monday, we came in to a bunch of alarms and
| >50% failure rate. At least they died during the burn-in so
| no data loss, but it was an extreme example. That was across
| multiple 16-bay rack mount chassis. It was an infamous case
| though, we were not alone.
|
| More typically, you'd have a drive die much less frequently,
| but it was something you absolutely had to be prepared for.
| With RAID-6 and a hot spare, you could be okay with a single
| drive failure. Theoretically, you could lose two, but it
| would be a very nervy day getting the array to rebuild
| without issue.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| I asked because I did a makeshift NAS for myself with three
| 4tb ironwolf, but they died before the third year. I didn't
| investigate much, but it was most likely because of power
| outages and a lack of a nobreak PSU at that time. It's
| still quite a bit of work to maintain physical hard drives
| and the probability of failure as I understand tend to
| increase the more units the array has because of inverse
| probability (not the likelihood of one of them failing but
| the likelihood of none of them failing after a period of
| time, which is cumulative)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Any electronic gear that you care about _must_ be
| connected to a UPS. HDDs are very susceptible to power
| issues. Good UPS are also line conditioners so you get a
| clean sine wave rather than whatever comes straight from
| the mains. If you 've never seen it, connect a meter to
| an outlet in your home and what how much fluctuations you
| get throughout the day. Most people think about
| spikes/surges, while forgetting that dips and under-
| volting is damaging as well. Most equipment have a range
| of acceptable voltage, but you'd be amazed at the number
| of times mains will dip below that range. Obviously
| location will have an affect on quality of service, but I
| hear my UPSes kick in multiple times a week to cover a
| dip if only for a couple of seconds.
|
| The fun thing about storage pools is that they can lull
| you into thinking they are set it and forget it. You have
| to monitor SMART messages. Most drives will give you a
| heads up if you know where to look. Having the fortitude
| to have a hot spare instead of just adding it to the
| storage pool goes a long way from losing data.
| nordsieck wrote:
| If you're interested in some hard data, Backblaze publishes
| their HD failure numbers[1]. These disks are storage
| optimized, not performance optimized like the parent comment,
| but they have a pretty large collection of various hard
| drives, and it's pretty interesting to see how reliability
| can vary dramatically across brand and model.
|
| ---
|
| 1. https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-
| drive...
| dylan604 wrote:
| The Backblaze reports are impressive. It would have been
| very handy to know which models to buy. They break it down
| to capacity of the same family of drives so a 2TB might be
| sound, but the 4TB might be more flaky. That information is
| very useful when it comes time to think about upgrading
| capacity in the arrays. Having someone go through these
| battles and then give away the data learned would just be
| dumb to not take advantage of their generosity.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Many years ago I felt like I dodged a bullet splurging
| for the 4TB Seagates instead of the 3TB Seagates I
| needed.
| HansHamster wrote:
| Can confirm. My 3TB Seagate was the only disk so far
| (knocking on wood) that died in a way that lost some
| data. Still managed to make a copy with dd_rescue, but
| there was a big region that just returned read errors and
| I ended up with a bunch of corrupt files. Thankfully
| nothing too important...
| lvl155 wrote:
| You should try now-discontinued Intel Optane especially p5800x.
| I got my OS running on them and they are incredible.
| the8472 wrote:
| Just a few more years until we get MRAM as viable storage
| technology. And affordable fusion, and hovercars.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| The endurance on those drivers is amazing.
|
| I have (stupidly) used a too small Samsung EVO drive as a
| caching drive, and that is probably the first computer part
| that I've worn out (bar a mouse & keyboard).
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| I'm running 12 of them for ZFS cache/log/special, and they
| are fast/tough enough to make a large array on a slow link
| feel fast. I shake my fist at Intel and Micron for taking
| away one of the best memory technologies to ever exist.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| This hits home even more since I started restoring some vintage
| Macs.
|
| For the ones new enough to get an SSD upgrade, it's night and
| day the difference (even a Power Mac G4 can feel fresh and fast
| just swapping out the drive). For older Macs like PowerBooks
| and classic Macs, there are so many SD/CF card to IDE/SCSI/etc.
| adapters now, they also get a significant boost.
|
| But part of the nostalgia of sitting there listening to the
| rumble of the little hard drive is gone.
| brailsafe wrote:
| > For older Macs like PowerBooks and classic Macs, there are
| so many SD/CF card to IDE/SCSI/etc.
|
| Would those be bandwidth limited by the adapter/card or CPU?
| Can you get throughput higher than say, a cheap 2.5" SSD over
| Sata 3/4?
| eptcyka wrote:
| You are limited at first by the IDE/SCSI interface, so
| below SATA speeds.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I had a 2011 MBP that I kept running by replacing the HDD
| with an SSD, and then removed the DVD-ROM drive with a second
| SSD. The second SSD had throughput limits because it was
| designed for shiny round disc, so it had a lower ability
| chip. I had that until the 3rd GPU replacement died, and
| eventually switched to second gen butterfly keyboard. The
| only reason it was tolerable was because of the SSDs, oh and
| the RAM upgrades
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Did you ever have the GPU issue? My sister had a 2011, I
| had to desolder a resistor (or maybe two?) on it to bypass
| the dGPU since it was causing it to boot loop. But now it's
| still running and pretty happily for some basic needs!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, that's why it was on the 3rd repair. Apple knew they
| had issues and replaced it for me before by replacing the
| entire main board. Twice. The last time I took it in,
| they would no longer replace for free and wanted $800 for
| the repair. That was half the cost of modern laptop, so I
| chose no. I was unaware of being able to disable the GPU
| like that. I still have it on a shelf, but honestly, I
| don't see trying to do the hack now but might have
| considered back then.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I posted how I did it on my blog: https://www.jeffgeerlin
| g.com/blog/2017/fixing-2011-macbook-p...
|
| Might still be worth doing for someone into older
| computers, I've considered putting a few of my old
| computers on the free pile at a VCF!
| thecosas wrote:
| > But part of the nostalgia of sitting there listening to the
| rumble of the little hard drive is gone.
|
| I remember this being a key troubleshooting step. Listen/feel
| for the hum of the hard drive OR the telltale click clack,
| grinding, etc that foretold doom.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Thank the gawds we no longer have to worry about the click
| of death
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Now it's just a silent glitch of death.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| I've just finished CF swapping a PowerBook 1400cs/117. It's a
| base model with 12MB RAM, so there are other bottlenecks, but
| OS 8.1 takes about 90 seconds from power to desktop and
| that's pretty good for a low-end machine with a fairly heavy
| OS.
|
| Somehow the 750MB HDD from 1996 is still working, but I admit
| that the crunch and rumble of HDDs is a nostalgia I'm happy
| to leave in the past.
|
| My 1.67 PowerBook G4 screams with a 256GB mSATA SSD-IDE
| adapter. Until you start compiling code or web surfing, it
| still feels like a pretty modern machine. I kind of wish I
| didn't try the same upgrade on a iBook G3, though...
| thepryz wrote:
| I just picked up a 1.5GHz Powerbook G4 12-inch in mint
| condition. RAM is maxed out but I've been putting off the
| SSD-IDE upgrade because of how intrusive it is and many
| screws are involved.
| hollandheese wrote:
| >I kind of wish I didn't try the same upgrade on a iBook
| G3, though...
|
| Oh god. Those were the worst things ever to upgrade the
| hard drive. Just reading this gave me a nightmare flashback
| to having to keep track of all the different screws. This
| is why my vintage G3 machine is a Pismo instead of an
| iBook.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| Yeah this machine will probably never be the same. It
| does have an SSD now! But also a CD drive that isn't
| latching properly and the entire palmrest clicks the
| mouse button.
|
| It doesn't help that I'm not a great laptop repair tech
| as is, but wow are those iBooks terrible. The AlBook was
| fine, and the Unibody MacBooks just a few years later had
| the HDD next to the battery under a tool-less latch.
| jorvi wrote:
| It's not really the SSDs themselves that are incredibly fast
| (they still are somewhat), it's mostly the RAM cache and clever
| tricks to make TLC feel like SLC.
|
| Most (cheap) SSDs their performance goes off a cliff once you
| hit the boundary of these tricks.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > once you hit the boundary of these trick
|
| Tell me more. When do I hit the boundary? What is perf
| before/after said boundary? What are the tricks?
|
| Tell me something actionable. Educate me.
| jdiff wrote:
| Your tone is quite odd here. I'm having difficulty parsing
| your intention, but I'm going to assume you're being
| genuine because why not.
|
| For the RAM cache, you hit the boundaries when you exhaust
| the RAM cache. It performs faster, but is smaller and once
| full, data has to be off/loaded at the rate of the slower
| backing NAND. It might not be RAM, either, sometimes faster
| SLC NAND is used for the cache.
|
| It's not really possible to describe it much more
| concretely than that beyond what you've already been told,
| performance falls off a cliff when that happens. How long
| "it" takes, what the level of performance is before and
| after, it all depends on the device.
|
| There are many more tricks that SSD manufacturers use, but
| caching is the only one I know of related to speed so I'll
| leave the rest in the capable hands of Google.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The latency of modern NVMe is what really blows my mind (as low
| as 20~30 uS). NVMe is about an order of magnitude quicker than
| SAS and SATA.
|
| This is why I always recommend developers try using SQLite on
| top of NVMe storage. The performance is incredible. I don't
| think you would see query times anywhere near 20uS with a
| hosted SQL solution, even if it's on the same machine using
| named pipes or other IPC mechanism.
| Numerlor wrote:
| Then there's optane that got ~10us with. The newest
| controllers and nand is inching closer with randoms but
| optane is still the most miraculous ssd tech that's normally
| obtainable
| robaato wrote:
| But they've retired it??
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Eventually we'll have machines with unified memory+storage.
| You'll certainly have to take a bit of a performance hit in
| certain scenarios but also think about the load time
| improvements. If you store video game files in the same
| format they'd be needed at runtime you could be at the main
| menu in under a second.
| bob1029 wrote:
| At a minimum, we should be able to get everything to DRAM
| speeds. Beyond that you start to run into certain
| limitations. Achieving L1 latency is physically
| impossible if the storage element is more than a few
| inches away from the CPU.
| wslh wrote:
| So, now someone can strip several SSDs to gain more performance
| as well for other purposes than video editing, right?
| contingencies wrote:
| While you're at it add the USBC power hack
| https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini
|
| I've been traveling for business with this as my sole machine for
| 3 months straight and it has proven to be an excellent system.
| beanjuice wrote:
| What is the benefit over a macbook in this case?
| wpm wrote:
| The linked repo has a pretty good rundown of possible
| reasons:
|
| > If non-square screens on Macbook Pros make your blood boil
| with rage
|
| > If you can't afford or don't want to pay for a Macbook Pro
| (smart choice)
|
| > If you have ergonomics concerns with shrinking laptops and
| one size fits all keyboards
|
| > If you like your systems to be repairable and modular
| rather than comprised of proprietary parts shoehorned in to a
| closed source design available only from a single vendor for
| a limited time
|
| > If you are blind (and don't want to carry a screen around)
|
| > If you want to use AR instead of a screen and therefore
| prefer to be untethered
|
| > If you are on a sailing ship, submarine, mobile home,
| campervan, paraglider, recumbent touring bicycle, or
| otherwise off-grid
|
| > If you want a capable unix system to power a mobile
| mechatronic system
|
| I'd add in not having to deal with a Macbook in clamshell
| mode doing stupid crap like forcing you to double-tap the
| touchID button sometimes, refusing to connect to external
| keyboards and mice on wake, and some of the other annoyances
| I have dealt with.
|
| Also, a Mac Mini is small, and a MacBook is not, at least as
| a function of "desk area" vs "area consumed".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well, some of those are reasonable. It's pretty hard to
| look at a 16 inch model and complain about "shrinking
| laptops".
| contingencies wrote:
| 1. cheaper 2. different form factor 3. more choice of
| battery/kb/mouse/screen/camera 4. not landfill when you have
| to replace battery/kb/mouse/screen/camera 5. doesn't have an
| annoying chunk out of the screen 6. doesn't have a video
| camera pointed at you all the time 7. keyboard that suits
| large hands 8. keyboard in preferred layout 9. not subject to
| apple tax on most components/upgrades
| afandian wrote:
| I wonder why Apple left those two large power pads? They don't
| look like typical test points.
|
| Are the populated from the existing PSU input or just there in
| case anyone wanted to mod it?
| contingencies wrote:
| They probably use them in production as test jig connects for
| passing power. They are vertical inter-board rails. When
| making physical connections for high current contacts it pays
| to have a larger surface area in case there is a poor
| connection as substantial draw may occur for short periods.
| Also, such surfaces may degrade over time, so extra surface
| area is desirable.
| joshvm wrote:
| > Fix the cables in place. This can be very fiddly. It helps
| greatly to have a fine pointed set of tweezers to assist with
| placement, bending and the application of pressure whilst
| screw-down is underway. Take your time and try to get all the
| cable core under the screw or at least a fair amount.
|
| If you do this mod, you should really use crimped ring
| connectors instead of just hooking the power cables around the
| screws. It greatly reduces the risk of pull-out since the screw
| retains the connector, which also means less chance of shorts
| and a much easier install. Also since the terminals are uniform
| and flat, you get much more even clamping. I would also add
| heat shrink over the crimp.
|
| I don't have a Mini so can't comment on the right size to buy,
| but you can buy ring terminals in practically any diameter for
| next to nothing:
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/terminals/ring-co...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The article speculates on why Apple integrates the SSD controller
| onto the SOC for their A and M series chips, but misses one big
| reason, data integrity.
|
| About a decade and a half ago, Apple paid half a billion dollars
| to acquire the patents of a company making enterprise SSD
| controllers.
|
| > Anobit appears to be applying a lot of signal processing
| techniques in addition to ECC to address the issue of NAND
| reliability and data retention. In its patents there are mentions
| of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted,
| exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally
| trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been
| worn considerably.
|
| Through all of these efforts, Anobit is promising significant
| improvements in NAND longevity and reliability.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-br...
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Through all of these efforts, Anobit is promising significant
| improvements in NAND longevity and reliability.
|
| Every flash controller does this. Modern NAND is just math on a
| stick. Lots and lots of math.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Presumably Apple want to be able to guarantee the quality of
| such logic.
|
| Still sucks that you can't use standard parts.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Sure, and I agree with that goal. In fact I would like NVMe
| controllers to simply not exist. The operating system
| should manage raw flash, using host algorithms that I can
| study in the the source code.
| nine_k wrote:
| How do you think it would be _electrically_ connected to
| the CPU?
|
| Same thing with DDR5: the electrical layer is a beast,
| it's a reason enough to require its own controller.
| daneel_w wrote:
| _> How do you think it would be electrically connected to
| the CPU?_
|
| On the CPU's PCIe bus. NVMe drives are PCIe devices,
| designed specifically to facilitate such interfacing.
|
| Edit: Pardon, misread the actual statement you responded
| to. Of course one shouldn't hook NAND directly to the
| CPU. I'll leave my response for whatever value the info
| has.
| gruturo wrote:
| I'm with you, but.... no. At the level where the
| controller is operating, things are no longer digital.
| Capacity (as in farads, not bytes), voltage, crosstalk,
| debouncing, traces behaving like antennas, terminations,
| what have you. Analog values, temperature dependencies,
| RF interference. Stuff best dealt with custom logic
| placed as close as possible to it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The physical interface controller can exist to that
| extent, of course. But I think the command interface it
| should present to the host system should be a physical
| one, not a logical translation. The host should be
| totally aware of the layout of the flash devices, and
| should command the things that the devices are actually
| capable of doing: erase this, write that, read this.
|
| We already see the demand for this in the latest NVMe
| protocol spec that allows the host to give placement
| hints. But this is a half-measure that suggests what
| systems really want, which is not to vaguely influence
| the device but instead to tell it exactly what to do.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Contrary to popular belief, you _can_ run many different
| off-the-shelf brand NVMe drives on all of the NVMe-fitted
| Intel Macs. All you need is a passive adapter. My 2017
| MacBook Air has a 250GB WD Blue SN570 in it.
|
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2015-ma
| c...
| riobard wrote:
| Not all Intel Macs. Only those without T2 chip, as T2
| acts as the storage controller.
| wpm wrote:
| Note that this isn't too long after Apple abandoned efforts to
| bring ZFS into Mac OS X as a potential default filesystem.
| Patents were probably a good reason, given the Oracle buyout of
| Sun, but also a bit of "skating to where the puck will be" and
| realizing that the spinning rust ZFS was built for probably
| wasn't going to be in their computers for much longer.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| When Apple announced the creation of APFS they mentioned that
| their intent was to handle data integrity at the hardware
| level.
| throw0101c wrote:
| See:
|
| > _Apple File System uses checksums to ensure data
| integrity for metadata but not for the actual user data,
| relying instead on error-correcting code (ECC) mechanisms
| in the storage hardware.[18]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System#Data_inte
| gri...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| More evidence they thought hdds were on their way out was the
| unibody macbook keynote. They made a big deal about how the
| user can access their hdd from the latch on the bottom
| without any tools as they said ssd was on the horizon.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Patents were probably a good reason, given the Oracle
| buyout of Sun_
|
| There is no reason to speculate as the reason is know (as
| stated by Jeff Bonwick, one of the co-inventors of ZFS):
|
| >> _Apple can currently just take the ZFS CDDL code and
| incorporate it (like they did with DTrace), but it may be
| that they wanted a "private license" from Sun (with
| appropriate technical support and indemnification), and the
| two entities couldn't come to mutually agreeable terms._
|
| > _I cannot disclose details, but that is the essence of it._
|
| * https://archive.is/http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zf
| s...
|
| * https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mail.opensolaris.org/p
| i...
| dylan604 wrote:
| How is it known when the quote you gave says "may be" which
| implies it's not known and is speculation on their part as
| well?
| duskwuff wrote:
| The reply to the "it may be..." message is from a
| @sun.com email address, and confirms "that is the essence
| of it".
|
| Fixed links for the message and reply:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20091028/http://mail.opensola
| ris...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20091028/http://mail.opensola
| ris...
| throw0101c wrote:
| "I cannot disclose details, but that is the essence of
| it." -- Jeff Bonwick of Sun, co-inventor of ZFS
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The article speculates on why Apple integrates the SSD
| controller onto the SOC for their A and M series chips, but
| misses one big reason, data integrity._
|
| If they're really interested with data integrity they should
| add checksums to APFS.
|
| If you don't have RAID you can't rebuild corrupted data, but at
| least you know there's a problem and perhaps restore from Time
| Machine.
|
| For metadata, you may have multiple copies, so can use a known-
| good one (this is how ZFS works: some things have multiple
| copies 'inherently' because they're so important).
|
| Edit:
|
| > _Apple File System uses checksums to ensure data integrity
| for metadata but not for the actual user data, relying instead
| on error-correcting code (ECC) mechanisms in the storage
| hardware.[18]_
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_File_System#Data_integri...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > If they're really interested with data integrity they
| should add checksums to APFS.
|
| Or you can spend half a billion dollars to solve the issue in
| hardware.
|
| As one of the creators of ZFS wrote when APFS was announced:
|
| > Explicitly not checksumming user data is a little more
| interesting. The APFS engineers I talked to cited strong ECC
| protection within Apple storage devices. Both NAND flash SSDs
| and magnetic media HDDs use redundant data to detect and
| correct errors. The Apple engineers contend that Apple
| devices basically don't return bogus data.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/a-zfs-developers-
| ana...
|
| APFS keeps redundant copies and checksums for metadata, but
| doesn't constantly checksum files looking for changes any
| more than NTFS does.
| sitkack wrote:
| That is a weak excuse to rely on data integrity in the
| hardware. They most likely _had_ that feature and removed
| it so they wouldn 't be liable for a class action lawsuit
| when it turns out the NAND ages out due to bug in the
| retention algorithm. NTFS is what, 35 years old at this
| point? Odd comparison.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The point is that NTFS makes zero effort to maintain file
| integrity at any level.
|
| Handling file integrity at the hardware level is a big
| step up.
| protimewaster wrote:
| That solution doesn't help anyone who's using external
| storage, though, so it kinda feels like a half billion
| dollars spent on a limited solution.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| There is nothing preventing you from running OpenZFS on
| external storage if you are worried that the hardware you
| purchased is less reliable.
| protimewaster wrote:
| That's my point, though, is that it seems weird to spend
| a half billion dollars just to solve the problem for an
| extremely common use case by saying "use OpenZFS".
|
| Why not come up with a solution that covers external
| storage too, instead of spending all that money and
| relying on external solutions? I just don't understand
| why they couldn't have optional checksums in APFS.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It's far more weird that NTFS still makes zero effort to
| maintain file integrity on any level, on internal or
| external disks.
|
| ReFS exists, so Microsoft knew they needed to do
| something, but they have utterly failed to protect the
| vast majority of users.
| protimewaster wrote:
| To be fair, though, NTFS predates APFS by over 20 years.
|
| Don't get me wrong, there's no reason Microsoft can't
| transition to another filesystem (like offering ReFS
| outside of Server or whatever Windows variants support it
| currently), but I don't understand why a company would
| transition to a new filesystem in 2016 and not include a
| data checksums option. Hell, ReFS predates APFS, and I
| think it even has optional data checksums.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| To be fair, NTFS is still the default Windows 11
| filesystem in 2025, and Microsoft still makes zero effort
| to insure file integrity when you use that default
| Windows filesystem.
|
| Handling file integrity in hardware is a big step up.
| protimewaster wrote:
| > Handling file integrity in hardware is a big step up.
|
| Is there any evidence that Apple actually has better
| hardware data integrity than anyone else, though? They
| make claims in the article linked a few posts back, but
| AFAIK SSDs in general make use of error correcting codes,
| not just Apple's SSDs.
|
| That article also points out how even multi-million
| dollar arrays are known to return bad data, and previous
| Apple SSD devices have been known to do the same.
|
| I agree that the state of default filesystems is bad, but
| I'm not convinced that Apple's hardware solution is
| anything more than them saying, "Trust me, bro."
| p_ing wrote:
| ReFS is available on Windows 10/11 client; it's what the
| DevDrive feature uses. And the current Insider allows
| installation of the OS/boot volume on ReFS.
|
| https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/testing-instaling-
| windows-...
| slt2021 wrote:
| maybe apple doesn't want you to use external storage,
| because storage size is how apple upsells devices and
| grabs larger premium.
|
| By using external storage, instead of paying $10k more
| for more storage, you are directly harming Apple's
| margins and the CEO's bonus which is not ok /s
| dylan604 wrote:
| Externally connected devices are not sexy, and Apple is
| concerned about image and looking sexy.
| creddit wrote:
| No one requires you to use APFS for your external
| storage!
| amethyst wrote:
| And yet it's the default when formatting a device on
| macOS.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Being afraid to not use the default is evidence of not
| being a power user!
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Or you can spend half a billion dollars to solve the
| issue in hardware._
|
| And hope that your hardware/firmware doesn't ever get bugs.
|
| Or you can do checksumming at the hardware layer _and_
| checksumming at the software /FS layer. Protection in
| depth.
|
| ZFS has caught issues from hardware, like when LBA 123 is
| requested but LBA 456 is delivered: the hardware-level
| checksum for LBA 456 was fine, and so it was passed up the
| stack, but it wasn't actually the data that was asked for.
| See Bryan Cantrill's talk "Zebras All the way Down":
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE2KDzZaxvE
|
| And if checksums are not needed for a particular use-case,
| make them toggleable: even ZFS has a _set checksums=off_
| option. My problem is not having the option _at all_.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| When the vast majority of the devices you sell run on
| battery power, it makes far more sense from a battery
| life perspective to handle issues in hardware as much as
| possible.
|
| For instance, try to find a processor aimed at mobile
| devices that doesn't handle video decoding in dedicated
| hardware instead of running it on a CPU core.
| flkenosad wrote:
| Good point.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > [...] _handle issues in hardware as much as possible._
|
| 1. There is hardware support for (e.g.) SHA in ARM:
|
| * https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0514/g/intro
| ducti...
|
| But given Apple designs their own CPUs they could add
| extensions for anything they need. Or use a simpler
| algorithm, like Fletcher (which ZFS uses):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%27s_checksum
|
| 2. It does not have to be enabled by default for every
| device. The _main_ problem is the lack of it _even as an
| option_.
|
| I wouldn't necessarily use ZFS checksums on a laptop, but
| ZFS has them for when I use it on a not-laptop.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Worth noting, for ZFS - you can use the "copies" property of
| the dataset to save 2 or (usually) 3 separate copies of your
| data to the drive(s).
| brookst wrote:
| Believing that giant companies are monolithic "theys" leads
| to all sorts of fallacies.
|
| Odds are very good that totally different people work on the
| architecture of AFS and SoC design.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Even still, those people report to people that report to
| people until you eventually get to the person in charge of
| the full product.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Not just durability. Performance too. Apple has a much better
| SSD controller that is vertically integrated into the stack.
| pkaye wrote:
| Do Apple SSDs have a much longer longevity and reliability?
| I've not looked at the specific patents nor am I an expert on
| signal processing but I've worked on SSD controllers and NAND
| manufacturers in the past and they had their own similar ideas
| as this.
| fckgw wrote:
| From my experience working on Mac laptops, yeah. SSD failures
| are incredibly rare but on the flip side when they do go out
| repairs are very costly.
|
| I know if my previous job at a large hard drive manufacturer
| we had special Apple drives that ran different parts and
| firmware than the regular PC drives. Their specs and
| tolerances where much different than the PC market at a
| whole.
| paxys wrote:
| So you pay $700 for an SSD that otherwise retails for $200 and
| then do an "unauthorized" modification of your own computer and
| void the warranty to install it, but that's still preferable
| because it otherwise costs $1200 directly from Apple. The Apple
| tax is really something else.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| > an "unauthorized" modification of your own computer and void
| the warranty to install it
|
| Citation needed. This modification doesn't look to me at all
| like it'd void the warranty unless you damage the machine while
| you do the installation.
|
| If you need to make a warranty claim, you should of course
| reinstall the factory one before you do so, since the vendor
| doesn't expect users to replace that and won't have any
| practices of looking/removing so they can return it to you if
| you take your machine in for service with a non-Apple card
| there.
|
| But voiding your warranty for this has been roundly rejected,
| in the US at least, as long as you don't damage your equipment
| by doing it.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Apple even provides a support page with details on the
| process, for example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/121508
| xyst wrote:
| The people behind the "kingsener" YT channel have been doing
| these types of upgrades for a long time.
|
| He recently posted an upgrade of this same process as a short -
| https://m.youtube.com/shorts/b-Z5GhYhbjM
|
| It's wild to see how much Apple invests in making these as
| hostile to the user to upgrade. But also cool to see people out
| there with the skills to desolder the chips, memory, and storage
| and replace with a much faster alternative.
|
| If Apple truly cared about their carbon footprint, devices would
| be easily serviceable and upgradeable by user
| vachina wrote:
| Apple solves carbon footprint by making devices that you will
| want to use for at least 10 years.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Being relatively greener than a trash-tier dell laptop doesnt
| make you a green supplier in absolute terms...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You mean the company that had several generations of those
| terrible laptop designs that made you rip out the whole
| chassis when your keyboard became unusable after dust got
| into the keys?
|
| New in box after having been stored in a warehouse for twenty
| years maybe. Apple isn't any greener than any of their
| competitors.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Tangential, just based on a funny coincidence noticeable in the
| article: What do all these M's stand for, anyway? I guess the M.2
| might be inherited from the m in mSATA and mPCIe(?).
|
| For Apple... they had A for for their cellphone chips, which
| vaguely made sense because they were the only chips _A_ pple made
| at the time. But then, M for their laptop chips? M as in...
| mobile, or mini? But they use it in their Macs Pro, including
| their workstation-y ones...
| mdasen wrote:
| M as in Mac
| bee_rider wrote:
| Oh. I'm an M as in dummy, haha.
| gpm wrote:
| Honestly the external option seems a lot better value for the
| money for almost all use cases. Something like half the cost. No
| tinkering with the internals of the very expensive thing. You can
| move it between computers, upgrade the stick in it, etc.
|
| I'm sure there are cases where you really do care about speeds
| >3GB/s (and USB-4, the port on the mac, should max out at ~5
| which is still marginally lower than the internal one). But I
| doubt they are common. It's hard to process most data in a
| meaningful way that fast.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Not worth the hassle and the faffing. Just pay Apple their tax.
| Your time is far more valuable. And if it's not then you have
| bigger fish to fry.
| hollerith wrote:
| That is a sensible attitude, but some of us welcome an excuse
| to get out the box of tools and take something physical apart.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Apple won't upgrade the storage for you aftermarket, as far as
| I'm aware. There's no tax you can pay them to take your current
| machine and bump the spec.
|
| Frankly, this is exactly the sort of head-up-ass attitude that
| will end with Apple being smacked around by investigatory
| commissions like what happened to John Deere and Microsoft.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'd rather start with replaceable batteries in smartphones.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You can replace the battery on an iPhone yourself these
| days. Apple's terrible design makes the process involve
| shipping specialized hardware to your joke, for which you
| need to hand over a good chunk of change in collateral to
| be able to use, but it can be done.
|
| My suspicion for their shitty process is that it was set up
| purely so Apple can tell regulators "see, consumers can't
| be trusted to replace their own batteries, look what it
| takes", but they do offer a programme for it.
|
| The stupidest part about the whole thing is that the
| official URL looks like a total scam:
| https://selfservicerepair.com/en-US/home
| radley wrote:
| Dunno... $500 for 30 minutes of fun work?
|
| To be fair, I did this upgrade and actually ended up wasting
| several hours because the first SSD failed after a few weeks.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Your time is far more valuable.
|
| Damn I wis--
|
| > And if it's not then you have bigger fish to fry.
|
| You make it sound like anyone in tech that isn't making giant
| piles of money screwed up their career.
|
| And if I take that literally, wouldn't I have to be making at
| least a thousand dollars an hour?
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I made a 16TB external SSD RAID0 using four 4tb SATA drives and a
| Terramaster external enclosure... for less than $700 [1]
|
| Not as fast as a single nVME in external Acadis enclosure... but
| it is fast.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/TERRAMASTER-D4-320-External-Drive-
| Enc... _[sold out]_
| crawsome wrote:
| $1200 for 4TB upgrade is so ridiculous. Manufacturers holding RAM
| for ransom is very annoying. Esp when the lowest setting isn't
| even meant to be purchased, and the specs are so low they will
| underperform, or be obsolete in a few years.
|
| This is kind of why people start cloning macs in the 90s. They
| were too expensive straight from the factory.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| > It's still more expensive than a normal nvme, but not by too
| much.
|
| It's double the price, double is too much.
| gandalfian wrote:
| Mothers mac mini 2014? Slow as a dog, 30 second pauses, became
| unusable. Extremely tricky to reach the 5400rpm hard disc. Found
| a third party adaptor could bodge an nvme under the easily
| removable base flap. Suddenly transformed it to a fast nippy
| useable machine. (She paid up for the 8gb ram originally). But
| still rather annoyed that Apple essentially crippled their own
| product and it could only be fixed by chance. Wasn't a cheap
| pc...
| moooo99 wrote:
| I completely quit buying Apple devices all togehter, but I still
| occasionally check their website. The SSD upgrade prices are
| ridiculous and funny, especially since I keep meeting people that
| are convinced that Apples SSDs are somehow magically better than
| my 60 EUR Samsung M.2 and the price is hence justified.
|
| The upgrade prices - 13" MacBook Air: 256GB to 512GB -> 256GB for
| 250 EUR
|
| - 14" MacBook Pro: 512GB to 1TB -> 512GB for 250 EUR
|
| So the Air upgrade is twice the price for what is - as far as I
| was able to figure out - the same hardware?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Double check the SoCs. The base model MacBook Air has a slower
| GPU than the base model MacBook Pro and the upgraded MacBook
| Air. When shopping for Apple products, you need to compare
| every number on the spec page individually because Apple is
| scared of model numbers.
|
| For a while, some MacBooks also had slower disks because some
| capacities used one NAND chip while others used two. I believe
| they stopped doing that for their latest models, though. That
| kind of fuckery means you need to look up benchmarks for each
| individual model, because the performance differences aren't
| clear from the product description.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Non upgradeable storage and ram is ridiculous.
|
| Interestingly, when M4 mac mini went on sale, version with 32GB
| RAM/1TB drive was priced exactly 2x as 16GB RAM / 512GB drive
| version. This kinda implies that Apple sells only RAM and
| storage, and gives away the rest for free.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There is someone on YT (Doctor Feng, or similar, though I can't
| find) who literally will have people ship him entry level
| iPhones/iPads/MBPs, etc, and he'll upgrade them to 4 and 8 TB
| SSDs. And create ASMR videos of the process.
|
| Even with upgradable memory:
|
| When I bought my "cheesegrater" Mac Pro, I wanted 8TB of SSD.
|
| Except Apple wanted $3,000 for 7TB of SSD (considering the
| sticker price came with a baseline of 1TB).
|
| I bought a 4xM.2 card and 4x2TB Samsung Pro SSDs, which cost me
| $1,300. However, I kept the 1TB "system" SSD, which was faster,
| at 6.8GBps versus the system drive's 5.5 GBps.
|
| Similar to memory. OWC literally sells the same memory as Apple
| (same manufacturer, same specifications). Apple also wanted
| $3,000 for 160GB of memory (going from 32 to 192). I paid
| $1,000.
| radley wrote:
| I bought one during their preorder period. The first SSD started
| to fail due to overheating. I just received and installed the
| replacement this week. Fingers crossed that it will be okay.
|
| Important note: the seller provides no warranty for the SSDs. I
| was fortunate that they offered a 1-year warranty when I bought
| mine, but that is no longer the case now. $700 is a pretty big
| risk when there's no warranty.
|
| FWIW, the non-Pro-compatible SSDs were overpriced initially as
| well, but they came down in price as they became more prevalent.
| Wait a few months, and we'll probably see the same with Pro-
| compatible SSDs.
| userbinator wrote:
| _I was provided the $699 M4 Pro 4TB SSD upgrade by M4-SSD. It 's
| quite expensive (especially compared to normal 4TB NVMe SSDs,
| which range from $200-400)_
|
| Depends what type of flash that's comparing. QLC is cheap, TLC a
| bit more expensive, MLC nearly unobtainable, and SLC insanely
| expensive unless you SLC-mod a QLC drive.
| blinded wrote:
| nicely done
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