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.

• bob1029

  today at 8:03 PM

  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

    today at 9:25 PM

    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

      today at 9:38 PM

      But they've retired it??

    • teaearlgraycold

      today at 9:43 PM

      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.

• jorvi

  today at 6:26 PM

  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

    today at 8:21 PM

    > 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.

  • dylan604

    today at 7:10 PM

    [flagged]

    • redman25

      today at 7:24 PM

      It can be good to know that SSDs are fast until you exhaust the cache by copying gigs of files around.

      It doesn’t hurt to be aware of the limitations even if for the common case things are much better.

      • dylan604

        today at 9:05 PM

        We're talking about devices capable of >2GB/s throughput, and acquiring footage <.5GB/s. No caching issues, but I'm not buying el cheapo SSDs either. These are all rated and approved by camera makers. It wasn't brought up because it's not an issue. For people that are wondering why camera makers approve or not particular recording media, this is part of the answer. But nobody was asking that particular question and instead the reply tried to rain on my parade.

    • jorvi

      today at 7:28 PM

      Not sure what warranted such an aggressive response.

      I grew up in the 90s, on 56kb modems and PCs that rumbled and whined when you booted them up. I was at the tail end of using floppies.

      I never said I didn't love the speed of SSDs, and when they just started to become mainstream it was an upgrade I did for everyone around me. I made my comment in part because you mentioned dumping 4K into the SSD and/or editing it. It can be a nasty surprise if you're doing something live, and suddenly your throughout plummets, everything starts to stutter and you have no idea why.

• geerlingguy

  today at 6:07 PM

  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.

  • thecosas

    today at 8:18 PM

    > 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

      today at 9:06 PM

      Thank the gawds we no longer have to worry about the click of death

      • deafpolygon

        today at 9:33 PM

        Now it's just a silent glitch of death.

  • SpecialistK

    today at 9:20 PM

    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...

  • dylan604

    today at 7:00 PM

    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

      today at 7:35 PM

      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

        today at 7:54 PM

        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

          today at 9:22 PM

          I posted how I did it on my blog: https://www.jeffgeerling.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!

  • brailsafe

    today at 6:23 PM

    > 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

      today at 6:53 PM

      You are limited at first by the IDE/SCSI interface, so below SATA speeds.

• lvl155

  today at 4:52 PM

  You should try now-discontinued Intel Optane especially p5800x. I got my OS running on them and they are incredible.

  • MrDrMcCoy

    today at 8:37 PM

    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.

  • the8472

    today at 6:11 PM

    Just a few more years until we get MRAM as viable storage technology. And affordable fusion, and hovercars.

  • OptionOfT

    today at 6:13 PM

    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).

• gchamonlive

  today at 4:00 PM

  > 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?

  • nordsieck

    today at 4:28 PM

    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

      today at 4:55 PM

      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

        today at 5:41 PM

        Many years ago I felt like I dodged a bullet splurging for the 4TB Seagates instead of the 3TB Seagates I needed.

        • HansHamster

          today at 5:59 PM

          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...

  • dylan604

    today at 4:11 PM

    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

      today at 8:15 PM

      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

        today at 8:51 PM

        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.

• wslh

  today at 8:29 PM

  So, now someone can strip several SSDs to gain more performance as well for other purposes than video editing, right?

  • AStonesThrow

    today at 8:42 PM

    [dead]

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...

• throw0101c

  today at 4:14 PM

  > 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

    today at 4:34 PM

    > 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.

    • protimewaster

      today at 4:52 PM

      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

        today at 5:07 PM

        There is nothing preventing you from running OpenZFS on external storage if you are worried that the hardware you purchased is less reliable.

        • protimewaster

          today at 5:28 PM

          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

            today at 5:45 PM

            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

              today at 7:34 PM

              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.

              • p_ing

                today at 10:04 PM

                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-...

              • GeekyBear

                today at 8:58 PM

                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

                  today at 9:56 PM

                  > 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 limited 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."

      • creddit

        today at 6:48 PM

        No one requires you to use APFS for your external storage!

        • amethyst

          today at 6:57 PM

          And yet it's the default when formatting a device on macOS.

          • dylan604

            today at 7:25 PM

            Being afraid to not use the default is evidence of not being a power user!

      • slt2021

        today at 5:42 PM

        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

          today at 7:27 PM

          Externally connected devices are not sexy, and Apple is concerned about image and looking sexy.

    • throw0101c

      today at 5:21 PM

      > 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

        today at 5:35 PM

        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

          today at 6:29 PM

          Good point.

    • sitkack

      today at 4:43 PM

      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

        today at 4:55 PM

        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.

  • brookst

    today at 7:17 PM

    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

      today at 7:28 PM

      Even still, those people report to people that report to people until you eventually get to the person in charge of the full product.

  • bell-cot

    today at 7:09 PM

    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).

• wpm

  today at 4:01 PM

  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.

  • throw0101c

    today at 4:23 PM

    > 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/zfs...

    * https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mail.opensolaris.org/pi...

    • dylan604

      today at 7:29 PM

      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

        today at 8:03 PM

        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.opensolaris...

        https://web.archive.org/web/20091028/http://mail.opensolaris...

  • GeekyBear

    today at 4:11 PM

    When Apple announced the creation of APFS they mentioned that their intent was to handle data integrity at the hardware level.

    • throw0101c

      today at 4:34 PM

      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_integri...

  • kjkjadksj

    today at 4:17 PM

    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.

• vlovich123

  today at 5:36 PM

  Not just durability. Performance too. Apple has a much better SSD controller that is vertically integrated into the stack.

• pkaye

  today at 6:09 PM

  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

    today at 7:12 PM

    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.

• jeffbee

  today at 4:00 PM

  > 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

    today at 4:06 PM

    Presumably Apple want to be able to guarantee the quality of such logic.

    Still sucks that you can’t use standard parts.

    • daneel_w

      today at 4:22 PM

      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-mac...

      • riobard

        today at 9:46 PM

        Not all Intel Macs. Only those without T2 chip, as T2 acts as the storage controller.

    • jeffbee

      today at 4:17 PM

      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

        today at 4:30 PM

        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

          today at 4:43 PM

          > 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

        today at 4:32 PM

        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

          today at 6:23 PM

          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.

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

  today at 7:07 PM

  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.

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.

700$ for 4TB! Getting robbed in broad daylight and writing a happy blogpost about it

• tuananh

  today at 4:20 PM

  > 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

  today at 4:54 PM

  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

• kevincox

  today at 3:44 PM

  Getting robbed less is better than getting robbed more.

  • master_crab

    today at 3:49 PM

    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

      today at 4:07 PM

      Also surely voids AppleCare, if you have it.

    • flkenosad

      today at 6:37 PM

      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

        today at 7:14 PM

        Oh brother

• teaearlgraycold

  today at 9:45 PM

  Custom low volume hardware is going to be more expensive.

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.

• Dylan16807

  today at 9:39 PM

  > 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?

• radley

  today at 6:58 PM

  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.

• hollerith

  today at 5:17 PM

  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

  today at 6:45 PM

  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

    today at 7:26 PM

    I'd rather start with replaceable batteries in smartphones.

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.

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.

• daneel_w

  today at 3:29 PM

  But Jeff doesn't live in China.

• jayd16

  today at 4:01 PM

  Could such a place exist in the US or would Apple shut it down?

  • kjkjadksj

    today at 4:20 PM

    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.

• ttul

  today at 3:24 PM

  And when the machine arrives back in the States, it even has a fresh CPC ROM soldered onto the back of the SOC!

  • hollerith

    today at 3:38 PM

    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

      today at 4:40 PM

      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

      today at 7:36 PM

      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

        today at 8:24 PM

        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!

  • chvid

    today at 3:34 PM

    Do you actually believe this?

  • bigyabai

    today at 3:30 PM

    Don't be rude, your NSA ROM gets lonely sometimes.

    • mmh0000

      today at 5:24 PM

      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_disc...

      • daneel_w

        today at 8:49 PM

        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.

      • bigyabai

        today at 6:52 PM

        They know, they just wish it weren't true.

        "You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am"

  • mattl

    today at 3:29 PM

    CPC?

    • Doctor_Fegg

      today at 3:50 PM

      Possibly ParaDOS?

      • mattl

        today at 4:18 PM

        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?

    • msh

      today at 3:29 PM

      Communist party of china aka ccp

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...

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.

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 Apple 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

  today at 4:59 PM

  M as in Mac

  • bee_rider

    today at 5:08 PM

    Oh. I’m an M as in dummy, haha.

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]

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.

• joshvm

  today at 6:31 PM

  > 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...

• afandian

  today at 4:17 PM

  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

    today at 4:20 PM

    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.

• beanjuice

  today at 4:05 PM

  What is the benefit over a macbook in this case?

  • wpm

    today at 4:10 PM

    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

      today at 9:49 PM

      Well, some of those are reasonable. It's pretty hard to look at a 16 inch model and complain about "shrinking laptops".

  • contingencies

    today at 4:11 PM

    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

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.

• gmanley

  today at 4:19 PM

  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.

• dylan604

  today at 3:52 PM

  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

    today at 4:06 PM

    >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

      today at 4:27 PM

      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

• skeezyboy

  today at 3:50 PM

  cant you just install macOs on your own hardware or are they typically Apple in that department as well?

  • dylan604

    today at 3:53 PM

    Are you familiar with Hackintosh? That's what people did with Intel based platforms. Apple Silicon put an end to the Hackintosh.

    • MYEUHD

      today at 4:01 PM

      Source? Last year I installed macOS 14 on a Thinkpad X230

      • dylan604

        today at 4:04 PM

        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

          today at 4:29 PM

          Can’t emulate or spoof m series chip?

          • dylan604

            today at 4:38 PM

            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?

    • delfinom

      today at 3:58 PM

      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.

      • jmb99

        today at 7:39 PM

        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.

      • sokoloff

        today at 6:08 PM

        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

          today at 7:16 PM

          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.

      • dylan604

        today at 4:19 PM

        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.

• nordsieck

  today at 3:55 PM

  > 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

    today at 4:26 PM

    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.

    • nordsieck

      today at 4:56 PM

      > 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.

    • kjkjadksj

      today at 4:28 PM

      The idea is to then also funnel them into icloud drive plans

I’m surprised and happy that this is possible.

> It's still more expensive than a normal nvme, but not by too much.

It's double the price, double is too much.

$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.

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

  today at 4:43 PM

  Apple solves carbon footprint by making devices that you will want to use for at least 10 years.

  • isoprophlex

    today at 4:58 PM

    Being relatively greener than a trash-tier dell laptop doesnt make you a green supplier in absolute terms...

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

  today at 3:27 PM

  What might those steps be?

  • daneel_w

    today at 3:41 PM

    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.

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

  today at 4:25 PM

  > 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

    today at 6:12 PM

    Apple even provides a support page with details on the process, for example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/121508

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?