Apple expenses a ton for storage upgrades on Macs. Worse, you can’t prolong the built-in storage after shopping for the Mac. Fortunately, smarter options exist, so long as you don’t thoughts plugging an exterior disk into your Mac.
Right here’s a breakdown of the perfect methods to broaden your Mac’s storage, together with preferrred options based mostly on explicit wants.
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Simply improve your Mac’s storage
Macs are quick, attractive, environment friendly … and wildly overpriced in the case of storage. Apple expenses a premium to improve your Mac storage (suppose $200 simply to double the SSD measurement of an M4 MacBook Professional from 512GB to 1TB). And the corporate gives zero choices to improve later.
Nevertheless, with a very good exterior storage resolution, you possibly can add terabytes of quick, dependable storage to your Mac for lower than Cupertino needs for a number of hundred additional gigabytes. In truth, if you happen to juggle between a number of Macs, this resolution turns into much more engaging, particularly if you happen to steadily mess around with giant video information and paperwork.
Cult of Mac examined the perfect exterior storage options — from budget-friendly exhausting drives to blisteringly quick Thunderbolt SSDs — that will help you discover the fitting decide based mostly in your private wants, workflow and pockets.
Desk of contents: Simply improve your Mac’s storage
Exterior HDDs: The most affordable manner so as to add extra storage
Need quite a lot of storage on a price range for storing your film library and years of photographs? Get an exterior exhausting drive if you need probably the most bang in your buck. Most 4TB or 5TB exterior drives retail for between $100 and $120.
The issue with this method to upgrading your Mac storage? Exterior exhausting drives are sluggish. I might solely suggest them for backup and information archiving functions. I exploit a 1TB exterior exhausting drive to again up my complete Google Images library as soon as a month. Plus, I’ve a Western Digital 4TB exterior exhausting disk completely related to my Mac mini for storing all my motion pictures, movies and different content material.
Ideally, I’d suggest selecting an exterior exhausting drive with drop safety, corresponding to these from LaCie. With out that ruggedization, a single unintentional drop may put your information at critical danger.
Enormous capability
LaCie Rugged 5TB Transportable Exterior HDD
This tough little solid-state drive is USB 3.0/2.0 appropriate, shock/mud/rain-resistant and designed for Macs and PCs. Is available in orange or grey colours.
- Reasonably priced
- Enormous capability
- Comes with free Adobe software program membership
- Not the quickest information switch
- Adobe software program membership is just one month
Exterior USB-C SSDs: Midrange possibility with loads of upsides
Photograph: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
A USB-C exterior strong state drive gives probably the most inexpensive approach to improve your Mac’s storage with out breaking the financial institution. In contrast to exterior exhausting drives, the most recent SSDs are transportable and straightforward to hold round. Extra importantly, they’re quick in the case of information switch — actually quick. Most exterior SSDs can attain speeds between 650 MB/s and 850 MB/s. That’s greater than sufficient to run your favourite Mac apps and retailer your steadily accessed information.
I exploit a 1TB Samsung T7 SSD with my Mac mini to edit all my GoPro movies. With solely 512GB of inner storage, my Mac fills up quick, making the exterior drive a lifesaver. Plus, I can plug the SSD into my MacBook Professional and decide up modifying proper the place I left off. Since I don’t edit 6K, 8K or 10-bit movies, this resolution works positive.
I additionally sync my Dropbox and Google Drive folders to this exterior storage, saving area on the Mac mini.
Quick, transportable and inexpensive
One of the best half about these exterior SSDs? They provide a quick, transportable storage resolution on a price range. A 1TB Samsung T9 SSD retails for round $175, with a 2TB mannequin coming in at $215. This mannequin even helps sooner learn/write speeds of as much as 2,000 MB/s, although you’ll be restricted by your Mac’s 10Gbps USB-C port.
Alternatively, take into account the Samsung T7 SSD. It’s extra inexpensive, with the 2TB mannequin obtainable for simply $140. Whereas it’s not as rugged because the T9 and gives barely slower speeds, it nonetheless delivers nice worth for on a regular basis use.
Whereas exterior USB-C SSDs are already transportable, you possibly can take into account the Kingston XS1000 and XS2000 for much more portability.
Take a look at different choices in our purchasing information: Greatest exterior SSDs for Mac or iPad in 2024.
Transportable, inexpensive SSD
Samsung T9 Transportable SSD
4.5
The Samsung T9 solid-state drive is sufficiently small and difficult sufficient to go virtually wherever. Join it to your Mac, iPad and even iPhone by way of its USB-C port to switch information at as much as 10Gb/s. Out there in a spread of capacities from 1TB to 4TB.
- Small and transportable
- Quick USB-C connectivity
- Works with all of your computer systems
Thunderbolt SSDs and enclosures: The quickest, however priciest, Mac storage improve
Photograph: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Need more room in your Mac with out giving up on efficiency? Contemplate shopping for a Thunderbolt SSD. They use NVMe (quick for “Non-Risky Reminiscence Specific”) drives and ship learn and write speeds that match your Mac’s inner SSD. In truth, if you happen to personal an entry-level Mac with 256GB of storage, a Thunderbolt SSD will exceed its speeds. Most Thunderbolt 4 drives usually obtain speeds of two,700 MB/s or increased, with some able to reaching peak speeds increased than 5,100 MB/s.
With such speeds, you possibly can straight edit 8K RAW, ProRes and different heavy codecs off the exterior Thunderbolt SSD. That’s not it. Newer NVMe drives can hit peak speeds of greater than 7 GB/s, saturating the Thunderbolt 4’s 40Gbps bandwidth. In the event you need much more velocity and don’t thoughts splurging, get a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure with one of many newer NVMe drives from Samsung or Western Digital. These can hit insanely excessive 10GB/s speeds.
Thunderbolt 4 drive or NVMe Thunderbolt enclosure?
To attain this type of speedy Mac storage improve, you possibly can both purchase an exterior Thunderbolt 4 drive or an NVMe Thunderbolt enclosure. With the latter, you need to purchase an NVMe drive your self. This offers you the pliability to extend the drive’s storage capability later if wanted. Nevertheless, you need to be sure to purchase an enclosure that particularly says Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4.
Thunderbolt SSDs pack spectacular velocity right into a type issue that’s simply barely bigger than USB-C SSDs. They arrive with a heatsink or different passive cooling resolution for warmth dissipation. Due to USB-C compatibility, Thunderbolt SSDs work with all kinds of PCs. While you plug them right into a non-Thunderbolt USB-C port, their speeds drop to 10Gbps or much less.
Yow will discover high quality Thunderbolt enclosures for between $100 and $120, and a 1TB NVMe drive usually prices about $80. Exterior Thunderbolt SSDs usually price round $200. This makes them the costliest resolution of the lot, albeit nonetheless cheaper than what Apple needs for a storage improve.
Utilizing an NVMe drive and an exterior enclosure, you possibly can bump your Mac’s storage to as a lot as 8TB for much less $1,000. One of the best half? You should purchase one other exterior Thunderbolt SSD to immediately double your Mac’s storage.
OWC Specific 1M2 Transportable NVMe Thunderbolt (USB-C) SSD Enclosure
The OWC Specific 1M2 NVMe Thunderbolt enclosure stands out for delivering real-world speeds of over 3,100MB/s. It really works with a variety of M.2 SSDs in 2230, 2242, and 2280 sizes. It’s also backward appropriate with USB-C.
- Aluminum warmth sink for warmth dissipation
- Helps full Thunderbolt 4 speeds with appropriate drives
- Two-year guarantee
- Not as transportable as exterior USB-C SSDs
In the event you want entry to terabytes of superfast storage, get the OWC ThunderBay 4 enclosure. You hand over portability with this resolution, but it surely will provide you with entry to as much as 96TB(!) of storage. The enclosure itself doesn’t include any drives. As a substitute, you need to purchase them individually. The enclosure can home as much as 4 SSDs and ship a sustained velocity of 1,500 MB/s over Thunderbolt.
Extremely succesful
OWC ThunderBay 4 enclosure
This rock-solid enclosure is nice for enormous video and picture libraries, Time Machine backups, or as a foolproof RAID array. Helps as much as 96TB of storage — sure, that is terabytes — and is tremendous simple to arrange and improve. By no means run out of storage once more.
- Tremendous high-speed Thunderbolt connectivity
- Strong steel development
- Easy setup
