SAVE Your Mac And Your MONEY! External SSDs For Mac Explained

Going over why you should use Portable SSDs for your MacBook or Desktop Mac.
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If you're buying a new Mac, whether that's a Mac Studio, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air — they all have one thing in common, soldered internal storage. In this video, we're going to go over external SSDs for Mac and why using a Solid State drive can save or extend the life of your machine, all while saving you some money.

EXTERNAL SSDs & ENCLOSURES IN THIS VIDEO:

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00:00 | Intro
01:02 | The Problem With Mac Storage
02:13 | External SSDs To The Rescue
02:48 | Budget-Friendly Portable SSDs
05:06 | Premium External SSDs (USB4/TB3)
09:02 | Formatting SSDs On Mac
10:28 | Performance
11:40 | Drive Health
12:01 | Wrapping Up

[antwilk]

New Mac user here. Gotta say your content has been a massive help in choosing and getting my Mac up and running

[dontbreaktheshadowofmylove]

this cleared up a whole lot of confusion on the topic for me, thank you SO MUCH for concentrating so much useful information in one video!

[ScrapyardDiecastRacing]

My 4 month old SanDisk 4Tb SSD just crashed! I wish I would’ve found this video before then as it would’ve saved me a lot of heartache and lost files!!

[TheandonlyBYack]

I use a Sabrent external enclosure with a Crucial SSD. It’s INSANELY fast and has been very reliable. Less than $200 to build too which is a perk!

[clintmallon]

You are the best Tech reviewer on YouTube. Period. I do what you do in a different niche, so I understand what it takes to create content like this. I subscribed about two weeks ago and you nail it with every video I’ve seen of yours. Keep going!!

[PromotingTheBeat]

Never thought to get an enclosure and a drive that way. Looks simple enough to put together, Thank you for this breakdown.

[johnscotlinksl]

I don't see a lot of people talking about the fact that if you have an SD card reader on your mac, you can get a half sized sd card and leave it in the mac permenately, Its very slow, but good for mass storage

[max-mkl]

That was super helpful! I'm currently using a Mac book air M1 (256GB). Especially with University I need a bigger storage for our video files

[qgipemg]

Hyper shop had a sale a couple weeks ago so I purchased a HyperDrive Next USB4 SSD Enclosure for $89, paired it with a Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB for another $99.99. Using Mac Studio M2 Max speeds reaching over 3000 mbps read/write speeds. Gets a little warm as you would expect but really happy with it.

[Thedimka]

I use the ACASIS enclosure with Crucial P3 Plus 4TB ssd with my Mac Mini M2 Pro, it works great, very very fast. It heats up a lot, and I end up adding Thermalright TR-M.2 heatsink. I get about the same specs you show.
Over all it works very very well and I am very happy. The main issue is that Apple Time Machine does not back it up. Apple's support said that Time Machine is not supported on external drives, even though I was able to do it on other drives in the past.

[SteveGerrardPhotography]

Just that little "initialize" comment saved me from throwing away a 1TB drive that's now working fine. Thanks so much :)

[Jendkr]

Just switched order from ACASIS TBU405 to HyperDrive after watching your video. Thank you so much for an extensive overview! Right in time when I was considering how to enhance storage on my Mac Mini.

[bryans]

Thanks for the reviews Kyle. I've used external drives for years to store and protect data, and they saved me a bucket of money when I moved to Macs with the M series chips. I do use exFat because I still have a Windows PC for some legacy software, and I sometimes need to swap data between the two platforms.

[PontiacS.]

I have a 2012 Mac Mini. Fully Upgradeable. Upgraded the RAM. Will upgrade the Hard Drive to SSD drive eventually. At the Moment I'm only looking for an external SSD storage for "Projects". Finding a reasonably priced adequate SSD is a Pain.

[bobapatt]

As a newbie in the Apple world you're video's are extremly helpfull. So big thanks Kyle and keep up the good work.

[tomcollins]

You are my go to trusted and well researched apple reviewer. So much so I would love it if you included a section or part of your videos that says… this is my recco….. I’d be happy with that and would literally just buy that. I’m still interested in your research and option it’s just I trust it so much I just need your recco. Done simple.
Keep up the great work.

[ItsRichardShank]

How is this guy have only 50k subscribers!? Crazy, those videos are awesome and super good-looking

[bogdansfaru]

This guy is for real the best tech reviewer! Idk how he is not much bigger yet because this content is sooo good!!

[thenext]

I have a 2014 MBP, 16GB ram and i7 2.8 ghz with 512GB. I only use Logic Pro + plugins. I just install everything on internal ssd, libraries, etc. then my external drive which is a 1TB ssd which has insane write speeds of 6000MB does all the read writing. That’s been that way since 2016 when I got it used off eBay.

[meh-hair-Vaughn]

Great video Kyle! Very informative. Never really thought of external SSDs in so much detail. I'd usually just buy the first sandisk drive that popped up on Amazon search results page.

And I 'paid the price' for doing so (both in the literal and metaphorical sense), since my Sandisk Extreme SSD failed soon after purchase. Thankfully, it was still under warranty so I could get a free replacement...

Keep up the great videos (which are both entertaining AND, crucially, informative)