On Jul 5, 2023, at 9:46 AM, Paul Lundgren <pflundgren021@...> wrote:
As far as storage goes, I¡¯m thinking of going with the base 256GB SSD and installing only the system and apps. According to what I see in the Storage dialog, my 1TB internal SSD is only about half full. My system, apps and iOS comes to 40GB. Then getting a 1TB external SSD for all files. Does that sound reasonable?
I wouldn¡¯t go that route.
First, Apple tends to throttle the performance of it¡¯s lowest capacity SSD¡¯s:
Second, the Apple Silicon Macs write a LOT of meta data to their hard drives. So even if it seems that you only use a small portion of your SSD, if your SSD has a small capacity, it will likely be close to full in no time. That means that your small SSD will decrease in performance early in its life, and continue to slow down quickly until it becomes unbearably slow much sooner than you would have expected.
I wouldn¡¯t get an Apple Silicon Mac with less than a 1TB hard drive, and I might even consider one larger than that if I intended to make my new Mac last for as much as a decade.
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Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)
Essential But Hard To Find Macintosh Software and Advice
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