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How is the SSD installed – M4 Mac Mini (2024)
- tiffanyh 2y agoAs someone who bought a 2TB Mac mini - this is frustrating to see. Because it is in fact upgradeable, but only to Apple since this is a custom module.
- scosman 2y agolooks like a standard M2 ssd, no?
- bongobingo1 2y agoIt has a different pinout in my experience. The exact spec changes between models, I think one or two models of macbook have a standard M2, some (most?) have what looks like an M2 but has extra pins when not actually soldered on. My experience is only around trying to help a friend get the data off a fried board in a macbook, the desktops might be more standard.
- cogman10 2y agoYup. Looks like a 2230. Edit: not a 2230. Different pins.
- tiffanyh 2y agoI don't believe so. I don't think the "U" notch and pins are the same. But happy to be wrong :)
- cogman10 2y agoYou aren't wrong, you can count the pins on the small nub. Standard has 4 this one has 11(?)
- sofixa 2y agoNope, I'll try to find the source, but it's a very custom thing since the controller is actually on the chip, so the thing you connect via M.2-ish is just the storage module. Therefore no non-Apple specific SSD will work on it, even if you can physically connect it because the connector is the same.
- WithinReason 2y agoI would have expected to see chinese copies flooding the market
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoApple's invested heavily in component security though, especially for e.g. the iPhone. For good reason of course, a stolen iphone in itself has little value as it can be bricked by the owner, but there is / was a huge market in parts, so Apple built in security in the parts or the main board/OS to make that a problem as well.
- NikkiA 2y agoTBF even golden era macs had standard SCSI drives but with custom firmware so you couldn't just use any old drive.
- tambourine_man 2y agoI don’t remember that. I upgraded several SCSI drives back then.
- snakeyjake 2y agoThe custom firmware (really just a magic string) was required for "Apple HD SC Setup" or the later "Drive Setup" to recognize, partition, and format the drive. In order to upgrade the hard drive in a classic 68k or PPC Mac you had to either buy an Apple drive, or buy a third party disk utility capable of setting up a non-Apple drive. Many Apple-specific retailers would bundle in the software needed to use a new hard drive with the purchase of one but you'd better believe they baked the cost in to the price of the drive. If all you had was a Mac, your System disks, and a new non-Apple hard drive you 100% could not use it. I used FWB Hard Disk Toolkit, but it was >$100. Both Apple HD SC Setup and Drive Setup have been patched by the retro community to work with any drive, but in the 80s and 90s this was not the case.
- detourdog 2y agoI definitely used FWB but never experienced the need for magic strings or thought FWB was required. Third party disk utilities could often recover files Apples tools could not.
- snakeyjake 2y agoThe user doesn't need the string the Apple software scanned the ROM of the hard drive and looked for specific vendor IDs before proceeding. For the most part (there were EXTREMELY rare exceptions) the only strings that would pass were specific custom models of widely-available drives that were only sold to apple. FWB did not check. You could use ResEdit to haxxor the list: http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/drvsetup.html http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/drvsetup.html I cannot believe that page is still online. I first referenced it ON a PPC Mac running netscape. My flabbers are gasted.
- jsheard 2y agoThis isn't new, the Mac Studios and Mac Pros use similar proprietary modules. Apple even sells the Mac Pro modules separately so you can technically upgrade the primary storage in an officially supported way - for a ludicrous mark-up of course. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MR393AM/A/apple-2tb-ssd-upgrade-kit-for-mac-pro https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MR393AM/A/apple-2tb-ssd-u... In practice if you have a Mac Pro you're better off just getting a PCIe SSD instead for a fraction of the price. Retail for a very fast 2TB SSD is ~$150 while Apple wants $1000.
- mikae1 2y agoHahaha, this is too obvious. $1000!
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI am not frustrated to see it, because I would not expect Apple products to have upgrade-able parts. I still buy Apple anyway, since the amortized cost over the life of owning the produce is lower in my experience. Plus it runs a lot cooler and quieter.
- talldayo 2y ago"They can do all of the work required to add a feature and then stop short in software because we never expected them to do any better in the first place." Words are not enough to eulogize how far Apple has fallen. Woz couldn't leave that dumpster fire fast enough.
- yapyap 2y agothats the “garden” for you
- vanilla_nut 2y agoTL;DR it looks like the M4 Mac Mini redesign is _not_ soldered onto the logic board. So instead of paying 6x street prices of similar SSDs, you can just upgrade it yourself with an SSD of your choice! This is absolutely huge news. I wonder if Apple will do something similar for the Studio, Pro, or -- dare I hope? -- even the Macbook Pros in the future? I can't imagine allowing this 'trapdoor' of money savings is a huge problem for profits since most businesses would never bother messing around with warranties for a spec upgrade. But this is absolutely MASSIVE for consumers. Just put in a little extra work and you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars compared to Apple's upgrade pricing, for a good enough end result. Not to mention the fact that this must also save _Apple itself_ an insane amount of money for repairs! Instead of throwing away the entire logic board, the CPU, the soldered-on RAM, and the soldered-on SSD whenever any of those components fail, you can just replace the malfunctioning part. Who'd have thunk (other than, y'know, every single computer company from 1980-2015)? I would also of course love to see this upgradeability return to RAM. I'm curious if anyone more knowledgable than myself might know if the SoC/Apple Silicon Unified Memory system makes that more difficult, or if we've just accepted it because Apple Says So. And while I'm on the subject of non-upgradeable RAM: does anyone know why no SBCs, from Raspberry Pi to Orange Pearl Jam Cake to Milk, allow for upgradeable RAM? Surely it's possible in the SBC form factor?
- tiffanyh 2y agoUnless I'm mistaken, this appears to be a custom storage module, not available for sale. So Apple gets the best of both worlds. They can keep charging their high storage costs, but they themselves gets the flexibility of easily upgrading storage due to having this as a module.
- spacedcowboy 2y agoIt’s probably for warranty repair. Means you can walk into an Apple Store with a faulty SSD and walk out 30 mins later with a fixed one.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- newsclues 2y agoSoldered SSDs don’t make sense from a logistics point, having separate logic boards instead of a single standard with multiple drives sizes to fulfill customers needs makes so much more sense.
- mschuster91 2y agoYeah but Apple doesn't care about logistics, they care about performance first and foremost.
- melvyn2 2y agoObtaining a custom storage module seems to involving reverse engineering the PCB, printing it and sourcing the NAND modules, and then BGA soldering that all together: https://youtu.be/HDFCurB3-0Q https://youtu.be/HDFCurB3-0Q Not a user-friendly process, I think.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoNo, but it is possible and so if it does break, you can repair / replace it. Whether that's affordable is another matter of course, but that's the flaw in the "right to repair" laws popping up now, as unless I'm mistaken it does not mandate reasonably priced replacement parts.
- politelemon 2y ago> Whether that's affordable is another matter of course, They are the same course, imo. That it's been done in this way is typical behaviour we see from them, but expected/unsurprising behaviour does not necessarily make it a justification.
- wildzzz 2y agoAssuming that the SSD module doesn't have any sort of DRM that prevents anyone but Apple from making them.
- alsetmusic 2y agoAs I understand it, you also have to trick the OS into recognizing it in software. I don't know what's involved, but just getting the new NAND modules soldered isn't the whole of the job.
- SloopJon 2y agoThe picture shows a 2230-ish drive. I would be somewhat surprised if the 8TB option in the M4 Pro is on that module. The different chips may do storage differently.
- haswell 2y agoIt’s visually similar to a 2230, but does not appear to actually be a 2230 if you look closely at the pins.
- jsheard 2y agoCorrect, it's not a 2230. Standard NVMe drives combine the NAND and controller onto a single module, but Apple Silicon machines have the SSD controller built into the main SOC, and the SSD module is just the raw NAND chips.
- SloopJon 2y agoI searched for Mac Studio SSD upgrades, and I do indeed see modules that look just like the one in the picture. Not cheap.
- solarkraft 2y agoHow feasible is it to replicate this board? Can’t be that hard, right, people have even built breakouts for the soldered storage, after all.
- oneplane 2y agoIt's already been done. There is nothing really proprietary about it, it's just NAND on a carrier.
- vtodekl 2y ago[dead]
- a012 2y agoI guess the SSD module is good? I’m still frustrated that Apple has 2 weeks lead time for any custom Mac models (more RAM? More SSD?) in my region, no matter it’s a MBP or Mac Mini.
- ch1kkenm4ss4 2y agoBetter give me an Arm-based Thinkpad.
- k4rli 2y agoExactly. I'm not sure what's the worth of this post as such awful walled-garden hardware is expected with 100% of Apple products.
- alwayslikethis 2y agoYou can already buy one of those, the X13s. But the performance isn't like Apple's.
- bhouston 2y agoLooks like there is a lot of empty space there. Couldn't they have made the M4 Mac Mini even smaller?
- zie 2y agoprobably heat issues prevented them from doing that.
- alwayslikethis 2y agoI'm surprised it doesn't overheat already. My 4TB on an M.2 2280 form factor runs at 60+ C. Compressing that down would make it much harder to dissipate the heat.
- wtallis 2y ago60˚C isn't a temperature worth worrying about. And if that's what your SSD is at when idle, then it's entirely due to having a bad SSD controller—the part that is absent from Apple's storage modules.
- wtallis 2y agoThe only significant empty PCB space I'm seeing is directly under the SSD slot, about a square inch that may have been necessary to keep empty to provide clearance for components hanging down from the SSD module. Most of the rest of the board appears occupied by heatsink or various shield cans with a black covering.
- rderewianko 2y agoThere is a kickstarter trying to make 3rd party modules, its unknown if they'll work aswell. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/polysoftservices/studio-drive https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/polysoftservices/studio... Their install guide is interesting http://www.polysoft.fr/StudioDrive/MacStudio_SSD_test_note.pdf http://www.polysoft.fr/StudioDrive/MacStudio_SSD_test_note.p...
- flounder3 2y agoI’m a backer and can’t wait to receive the 8TB upgrade! I had to buy an off the shelf M1 Studio due to a hardware failure, so I couldn’t wait for the lead time for one with more RAM and storage. It has been borderline unusable due to so many things requiring local storage — can’t even symlink to an external NVMe. (Many apps, but also Backblaze metadata and iMessage attachments)
- coolspot 2y agoYou can’t symlink, but you can hardlink. I do that for iPhone backups.
- jagged-chisel 2y agoDoes APFS support hard links across volumes? I don’t think I’ve heard of any other file system doing that.
- coolspot 2y agoI am referring to “mount -bind” which may not be exactly a hardlink. I don’t think FS support is needed for bind mounts.
- seec 2y agoVery cool ! I'm happy this comes from fellow french men. Of course, this comes still at a pretty high cost and you need to have the tools to do it but it's pretty usual for the "hackers" to have those things around anyway. In any case even with all the added complexity/cost from different providers you still come out 2 times cheaper than Apple, which is completely crazy considering they definitely don't pay the NAND modules as high and don't need to pay for a special reverse engineered board. This is what leaves a very bad taste in mouth with Apple stuff. Even with all the absurd amounts of money they are making on base devices they still can't help themselves and price basic stuff in a predatory way. Everyone would be completely fine with a little bit of markup, but it currently is at an insane level.
- oneplane 2y agoThis is a set of NAND chips on a PCB, nothing special. They directly attach to the NAND controller on the SoC, which means as long as you stay within the capabilities of the controller, you could use other chips. Third party boards have already been designed and made, and they work. The main issue is that people don't really know much about NAND, so they assume it's like an SSD (it's not) or eMMC (it's not) where you plug it in and some hardware magic turns it into a disk (it doesn't). What happens here is that the secure enclave, cryptographic accelerator and flash controllers are all packaged together. This gives you sick speeds and performance while also making it more secure than your average OPAL TCG trash that often isn't even implemented at all. To make the embedded flash controller work with the NAND, you need two things: - NAND chips that actually work with the controller. Not all chips do, especially low-end crappy bulk NAND chips won't do. People keep track of the NAND chips that apple uses and you can buy those and it will be fine - The data in the NAND needs to make sense (so either have it empty or populate it ahead of time) - Using USB-C you tell the embedded controller to revive and it will setup the NAND for you, this is available to anyone (so not locked behind some secret sauce). In a way, this is similar to having a classic SSD, replacing the NAND chips on that SSD, and then telling the SSD controller that it has new NAND chips. Or to having a really old MFM/RLL hard drive before IDE and SCSI existed. The storage device really is just dumb storage and the smarts are all in the controller. While we have moved this around back and forth a few times over the years, there is no conclusive benefit to one or the other. Having more smarts on the device means there is also more problems/variability on the now 'smarter' device. This is especially problematic during data recovery, or when you want your data storage to be trustworthy. A lot of the hardware work has been done by dosdude1, and a table of NAND chips like this one: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-silicon-soldered-ssd-upgrade-thread.2417822/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-silicon-soldered-... can show you some options. The reason Apple does this is the same reason as ever: if they feel like this is the best way to make some sort of experience work, they will do it. And if they make fat stacks of cash in the process, they aren't going to be sad about it. This is something that isn't exclusive to Apple, but most manufacturers don't have to luxury to design their own hardware, they have to integrate with a lot of partners, use reference designs or maybe even outsource their hardware to some white label manufacturer. This is also why you see more glue, foam pads, smaller components etc all over the industry: it gets the manufactured devices to do the thing they want it to do. If PCs became modular in the process, that was a side-effect, not much of a goal. (The goal was to upsell crap later down the line so your market is bigger) As for pricing, that is just whatever the market will bear and not all that much related to the cost of raw material. This is of course not new and is default practice in most commercial businesses. So cheap components does not equal cheap products. (but cheap components might equal low quality products in some cases)
- jeffbee 2y agoThis is the way PC architecture should be. There's no sense in the flash controller in an SSD. The operating system should be in charge. The only thing that makes people mad about these is the price.
- rasz 2y agoNot the price, its proprietary locked nature of the thing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]