I just bought a reconditioned M1 Mac Mini from Amazon for $440. It’s the entry level, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB internal SSD. The internal SSD is blazingly fast – I’m getting write speeds of 2,300 MB/s and read speeds of 2,950 MB/s. As I type this in 2023, that’s very, very fast. And that’s good, because when the M1 runs out of RAM, it uses the internal SSD. So speed matters.
The downside is that I really need to keep the internal drive free. I can’t fill it up with Logic Pro projects, because there isn’t room. This means I need external drives. Not only that, but I need a backup drive. So really, I need two external drives.
The backup drive could be slow – it doesn’t matter a ton. But the “data” drive is where all of my music will live. I’m thinking about getting a 1 TB SSD drive that’s fast. But that means defining what “fast” means. Technically, any SSD is probably fast enough for music stuff. So do I really need to spend extra money on something super fast? I don’t know.
I’m going to dive deep into the waters of… um, figuring this shit out. And once I have, I’ll come back and do a “part 2” post.