I copied the files out of my home folder. I did not change my home folder to be the external SSD. I moved most the large folders from inside my Users folder onto my external SSD. So my internal SSD drive looks like this: I kept OSX and my applications on my internal boot drive, as well as my users home folder. I used to recommend using your new SSD as the boot drive, but given that the internal SSD drive is now faster, you are better off booting off your internal drive and just putting some files on the external drive.

Now that you’ve connected your drive you need to choose which data to store on it. I’ve had no problems with the Seagate Fast SSD. I’ve already filled it up so end hindsight I publish should have gone for the 1 TB version but I was trying to save soem money. The drive I ended up using was the Seagate Fast SSD. The Samsung T5 is fast but has compatibility problems with Apple. Apparently, this is a common problem nnd Apple support were unable to help me resolve it. But it caused a 30-second delay each time my mac booted up. It’s fast, it’s USB-C Gen 2, and it’s cheap. The external SSD drive on my new mac mini is faster than the internal non-PCIe SSD drive on my previous mac mini. An external SSD drive plugged in via USB-C will only be 1/5 the speed of the new internal PCIe drives, but it’s still fast. So unless you want a very high-end solution, you’ll be fine using an external SSD over USB. USB-C Gen 2 can handle the speeds of most (but not all) SSD drives. I chose to buy the smaller (and cheaper) 250GB Mac Mini and supplement it with a 500GB external SSD drive. But thanks to the USB-C interface on the new Mac Mini, an external SSD drive is now a good option.

Unlike previous models, you cannot upgrade the internal hard drive. The hard drives in the new 2018 Mac mini are PCIe which means they are very fast, but also expensive.

Mac mini external hdd