STOP trying to UPGRADE your MacBook... PLEASE! 

Summary of this Video : External drive cannot be used as swap/page file and cannot be used as RAM. Creator recommends 16GB, 512+ models of Macs.

I just like to imagine how none of this would be a problem if Apple didn't start soldering their SSDs to the motherboard

This is the only reason why i'm never going to buy a mac, no upgradability, im fine with unified ram it makes a difference but soldering the SSD's is just stupid and 400$? for 1 TB? thats just insane. And believe me i would love to buy a mac, the screen, the sound and build quality is just 👌

My solution: Use internal SSD for apps and OS ONLY. Use a thunderbolt 3/4 enclosure + heatsink with a large gen 4 SSD for downloads and data.

Keep the internal hard drive for software and OS. Off load everything else to external SSD. Use only the current files you are working on in your internal drive ! That should give you the best results !

Having a backup is more important than worrying about your drive failing . Most people will never have their SSD fail . I can’t recommend anyone get an external drive to always be connected . People forget and are lazy, so try to get more storage then what you think you need . Always backup your data on site and remote .

Excellent analogy with pencil and paper! Great video :)

I agree with the overall recommendations for minimums in the newer macbooks, I just helped my sister spec out a new M2 Macbook Air and am building her a Personal NAS to have actual capacity for the multiple TBs of "storage" she'll need between: Time Machine backups, tens of thousands of photos, and hundreds of videos annually. 1TB is way more than she'll actually need in everyday use, realistically 256GB would have been fine if not for the lack of repairability. My solution is Tiered Storage and Network storage for most things at home/Office. Perhaps a thunderbolt dock with 10gig networking for the more serious work at a desk. Then use external NVME or Thunderbolt drives for things to be carried or worked with on the go. It was the best solution for me to more affordably have 64TB+ of hard drive capacity, 8TB Sata SSD, and 1TB NVME, along with some PCIe cache cards all in the NAS and everything else is just running from a Single M.2 except my main PC which has 4 additional SSDs. I've been running my old mac pro, 2 Ryzen PCs, and My NAS on 10gig SFP+ for the better part of a decade now, between some old Enterprise SFP+ PCIe Cards and newer MikroTik Switches, I have a few other computers and a dozen or so raspberry Pis connected over standard gigabit, and My macbook air and ryzen laptop both can connect to the NAS over WiFI or with Type C to Ethernet adapters for higher speed and consistent hardline transfers.

When getting a computer I prefer to get one with at least 1TB of storage. Doesn’t matter what kind of computer it is whether it’s windows or Mac

Have been dealing with SSDs in enterprise VDI environments for over 12 years. It’s almost impossible to wear these things out in real life. These are usually measured in writes per day and wear levelling helps the wear levels. Some of the early devices still have only used a few % of the write/wear rating. Take away. Don’t worry about it. You won’t wear it out in real life.

Expecting the external SSD to take over as swap for the almost full internal (main) SSD shows a lack of understanding how MacOS and similar OS’s work. Unless you change the mapping. This experience made me lose respect for the value of this video.

Got my first SSD on a desktop build in 2012, 240GB SSD with a 500GB HDD. SSD did most of the work. I retired the desktop in January of 2021, the SSD was still working fine. I did backup any data to the HDD as a precaution. My new rig now has 2 1TB NVME and a 2TB 2.5"HDD, and everything backs up to a Synology NAS. Admittedly I don't currently have a cloud backup (e.g. house fire), but for the average user I don't anticipate SSD degradation to be an issue. If you're on a tight budget and cannot fork the extra difference for the apple upgrade vs the external SSD, then fine. Otherwise go with the apple upgrade and do their payment plan to spread out the cost of the laptop and upgrade. The one RU-vid video I never see are all tech RU-vidrs complaining that their MacBook SSDs are constantly prematurely failing. Once those videos start rolling in time to be worried.

"Stop trying to upgrade your MacBook" but specifically recommends upgrading it in the video? Pretty misleading

This is why I think that in 2022 Apple charging more for base models and keeping the 8 gig 256 storage is ridiculous. For a modern computer base models should be 16 gig and 512 storage.

I just bought a MacBook Pro M1 2020 with a 13-inch screen and 8 GB memory because my MacBook Air with similar specs (except for the CPU) of age 2 years and 2 months had hardware problems - bad battery, fan turning on randomly, and random flashes of pixel blotches.

You can use this exact SSD as primary drive by installing mac os on it, it's very convenient because you need to have it plugged in every time the computer is on, but I did it for several month because xCode had not enough space and I could no install it on an external drive.

I had a base M1 MacBook Air for a year (256GB storage, 8GB memory) and then upgraded to a 16" MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, 1TB storage & 32GB memory. To be honest the only difference is the far more practical display size for what I do (web developer) and not stressing about storage space. Even with just 8GB, I never noticed any issues with performance.

My ssd works great since 2010. And I am using it alot. I did a benchmark and the speed is still where samsung says it should be.

I think I’m not alone in this, in that the most I use my external hard drive for is to store dozens of movies or TV shows, or video clips, whatever large files that I want to go back and use one at a time, not as a swap file necessarily. I want to go back and watch the Sopranos this winter boom there it is on my external. That should not be a big deal! Mainly that’s what I wanna use my external for.

Golden rule is to keep 10% of the ssd capacity empty. If you don't you will just slow it down and make it wear out faster.

I think if you boot Mac OS from the external ssd, the Mac will use the external ssd has a swap because the swap is a separate partition setup when apple installed Mac OS. So I think with the terminal you can setup a swap partition to your Samsung ssd.

For yoink, please use CMD + X and CMD + V to cut and paste. Installing useless apps surely won't help any computer.

I think very few people are skimping and specc'ing small SSD's with the intent on buying an external for swap/page to make up for it. We buy small SSD because of budget and/or we may have to avoid the BTO lead time, or we're gonna use a RAID setup, or in my case it's because my employer only gives out base models. So what we do is buy an external and when we don't need the file as much we transfer it over to the external and all working existing files stay on the internal SSD. One thing I noticed is the super fast expensive external SSD's don't really benefit most workflows because most pro photo/video editing apps are only writing at speeds of 100-300mb/s and reading at 200-500mb/s anyway.

Always love what you do with channel, short and to the point. I’m currently running old intel Mac and wanting to upgrade… Do you think “Apple M1 Pro with 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine” is overkill for gaming emulation, watching movies on it… I’m always travelling and I need something that do it all while on the road… or is there anything els you recommend…?

I bought a thunderbolt 3 ssd with nvme inside. Same speed as internal storage. Install Mac os on the external and boot from it. It will use the swap on the hard drive that boots Mac os. It is possible to run swap on the external ssd

I have an internal 512 SSD used mostly for system application and workspace and an external 4TB divided into 2TB allocated for Time Machine and 2TB for immediate storage as I keep the icon on my desktop for easy access of files to work on my desktop. When work is done at the end of the day I do a last back up (on top of the automatic Time Machine back ups through out the day) before moving the work back to the external drive. I hardly remember that the drive is actually sitting on my desk instead of inside my machine. It Works Great for me. I have a MacBookPro M2 8GB/512 SSD and I work mainly with Photo/Images editing (Pixelmator Pro/iMovie) and the native Mac Office applications. Clean & Simple.

Apple makes the best and the worst computer on the same device. It’s unbelievable how they manage the storage thing. I would love having a M.2 or another format to place an internal ssd. This 💩 makes it more expensive and disposable than it should.

Im not sure if I missed it but aren't there specific swap partitions that need to be created in order for the system to utilize it? Like a swap doesn't just happen. I'm assuming the stock ssd was already formatted with a swap, no? So, the external, you would need to set up a separate partition in order to utilize a swap. Even if it's slow, it still would be there to use. It doesnt have to be ssd's, even mechanical drives work. I think the main thing here is to not use storage as swap memory and load up on ram.

Arthur, your videos are good! Thank you for your work 🥂

As a normal after the Apple March 2022 even seeing no direct replacement for my now no longer supported iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) with 2TB SSD storage I needed to look for a replacement. Thing is with these old eyes not going back from a 27 inch 5K display. After thinking about it for a few days, and speaking with my best friend this normal decided to purchase a MacBook Air M1 chip with 8‑core CPU, 7‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine, 16GB unified memory, 2TB SSD storage. Why did I not purchase the Mac mini? Almost came down to flip of a coin Mac mini, or MacBook Air. Thing is with the MacBook Air, and an external monitor like the 27 inch Studio Monitor I can set these up in a two screen configuration if I want to. Also the MacBook Air gives me the option to take it with me, and use remotely if I have the need. Thing is since I am going to being using this M1 MacBook Air until it either dies, or is no longer supported by Apple I purchased the 16GM unified memory as swap will cause the life of the SOC to be shorter. My swap memory stats show that most of the time it is not being used. Live long and prosper. Purchased 2TB storage again to extend the life of the wear leveling SSD so it will never become an issue. Person who I use to work with use to stay about memory, and storage on a host device that "Crap will always expand to the space available".

So basically what you're saying is to get the base model 14" MacBook Pro rather than the M1 Air or M2 Air if you are concerned with product longevity? As the M1 Pro machine is the only one of the three that has the minimum specifications you recommend.

Awesome content!! Can't wait for more :)

It really depends. True, editing on the internal SSD is much smoother because of the read/write speed advantage of it over the external ones, but it may not matter so much if one's footages are some low-bitrate 1080p h264 MP4s. Besides, most people don't edit MULTIPLE projects at the same time, so only ONE project needs to go into the internal SSD most of the time, the size of which, depending on the video format, varies. For some people, having ~30GB for a project is more than enough, but for some, this number could go all the way up to ~20TB (which definitely requires external storage).

Lol. A heavily used Macbook ssd is 3% worn after a year. So it will have a life of 30 years at that rate. How many people are still using their Mac IIci from 1992?!

This was very informative and well said. Thanks!

You've been nailing it Arthur lately. Really love the content. Good luck with growing your channel. Cheers.

I don't think any system is architected to use external storage off USB etc as swap, the transfers speeds would probably be too slow for what the system needs to access, regardless of how fast USB and Thunderbolt can get nowadays. As someone else said, it also depends on the swap implementation. If it's a swapfile like on Windows, then sure it could be on the external, but if it's a partition, there's no way the system would swap from a hotswappable device. What would the system do if the connection is broken (i.e. external drive removed) and now its swap is no longer accessible? That's not very efficient.

What if you install a macOS on an external SSD and use this a the regular system. Does the mac still use the internal SSD as swap?

The only solution to all these choices is to work hard and make more money so you won't worry about these problems 🤷🏾‍♂😅

using 2x 4tb ssd external in raid0 on my Mac mini, did cost me 700 euro, speeds over 4Gb read and write on my base model M2 Mac mini (have my 5Tb Photolibrary on it), for backup I have an external 4 hdd enclosure with 32 Tb (runs at 1Gb per sec), I use that for temp storing large video files, etc. Next to that I am using several external HDD as backup for backups. I use a small part of the ssd raid for installing apps as they open quicker from the ssd raid (fcp for instance). I come from a past where there were only expensive SLC SSD - I have an old IBM laptop that has one (16 Gb)- it still works, no wear visible. I did never wear out any of my SSD's, I can not say that of for several HDD that got mechanical failure over time. True I bought some SSD that arrived DOA in the past.

Been using a 2.5inch internal hard drive externally with usb for my windows profile. No slowdown in boot at all.

In my previous 2012 intel MBP, once internal HDD was super slow, I formatted my internal HDD, I connected my external ssd, installed macOS on external ssd, and wola, worked great. Haven’t tried that on my M1 MBP.

project files to internal and completed projects to external. the internal will only fill if you neglect to complete projects in which case if your internal drive is filled, it's time to get rid of projects with no intent of completion. Clean house and archive externally.

Is this still an ongoing issue? The macOS 11.4 update was supposed to fix this but there wasn’t much info on how exactly they fixed it 🤷🏻‍♂️

Thanks for this video, I really needed to learn this information.

you could boot from the external SSD and use the swap on it

Honestly, I was given a 2012 MacBook Pro, and installed windows 10, natively on it. Works perfectly after I got the drivers from bootcamp etc. still updates itself and everything. Gave the old thing brand new life, for free.

It used to be possible to have /var/vm be a symlink to an external drive (Use swap/page files on an external drive). I bought a tiny SSD when 32GB was a large SSD had set up my Mac running this way for years. (This was before macs were available with SSDs.) The security features now make this difficult to impossible; I haven't tried, but it would require downgrading security at a minimum, and even then I'm not sure it's doable. If it is do-able, I can say that when I did it, years ago, the machine was fast AND stable.

boot from external SSD. In Mac mini M1, it didn't wear out internal SSD (according to smartctl).

how about boot from external ssd, and put all the os in external ssd ? they said, it will automatically running in external (os, process, swap)... while internal work as external

My 2013 MacBook Pro was my first SSD computer. I maxed out the RAM to 16gb and 1TB SSD. Its been a great computer and still works flawlessly today 10 years later.

SSD CAN be used for Dropbox storage however, but you need to leave it plugged in all the time.

I would like you test that with the OWC Envoy Pro FX. The biggest issue is the speed of the SSD that you are getting.

I thought Steve Gibson of GRC had said when cells on an SSD fail, they are left in a read-only state, not in a corrupted state.

Видео попало в рекомендации потому что я смотрю контент по макбуку. Но также я смотрел и твой канал о монтаже. Очень круто! Великолепный английский, ты учил его сам? Классное видео, спасибо большое.

Hey, so i am looking for an laptop for school. And i think the 250 gig and 8 gig is a good combo. Or am i false on that? I really don't have the money to upgrade it from apples side too much. but im going to buy an external ssd. Will this be ok? Or should i look elsewhere?

it would be interessting to see installing macos on the external ssd & using the mac like that & see if the internal ssd cells get used after time

Thanks for the video really helpful and looks great!

Thought you could format external hard drives to work as internal storage devices. Maybe allocating swap to them would be possible after that.

I've always said that 16 / 512 should be the baseline specs for any laptop 😎

Am I the only one who would rather pay the Apple Tax to upgrade my internal storage than carry around an external drive? I don't know about you but the reason I but laptops is because they're portable.

I'm not a Mac user but am waiting to most certainly buy the MBA M2. I'm a windows user still and recently bought my current laptop and an 1TB external SSD. I have no issues with it. I'm using it to run my editing software and store everything. I don't want anything stored in my computer/laptop. My issues come from the OS itself. And I've been thinking of buying new external drive for the Mac and do the same thing. I'm capable of buying an MBA m2 with 16 gb if it's going to be better. I'm not an IT expert or anything but it works for me. I'm an apple user for almost a decade and haven't been disappointed in a way. I hope it won't happen now.

Make video on best external SSD And its price to performance ratio you said you will make video on ssd do fast because i wanna purachase it

This was good information, well-presented. One niggle: It's not that the computer can't use an external SSD for swap files. It's that the computer uses whatever is the boot volume for swap files. It's a bit of an annoyance to set up an Apple SOC Mac to boot from an external drive but once done it works just as well as the internal drive (assuming a very fast SSD using a very fast interface such as Thunderbolt-3). Note, however, that if the internal drive of an Apple SOC Mac is completely dead, the Mac will not boot even with an external drive set up as the boot volume. With a laptop, you generally got it instead of a desktop because you think there is a premium on the portability. Adding an external drive reduces the portability by at least a little. So it can be a good idea to get the larger internal drive - even given the outrageous prices Apple charges for larger internal SSDs. However, for a desktop Mac (or a laptop which is never moved from a single workstation), an external drive can be used for nearly everything. It can still be better to use the internal drive for booting but you can keep your entire user folder and every large application on an external drive. Doing so allows the Mac plenty of room for the OS and swap files and certain applications (which insist for some foolish reason on residing on the boot volume) even with the base 256gb SSDs on the base model of the consumer SOC Macs. This can save a great deal of money, +2.00tb from a good external SSD can run under $200 compared to $800 for +1.75tb. USB 3.1 gen2 connections and SSDs with a theoretical transfer rate in the 500mb/s range are fast enough for nearly any task, for the majority of users there isn't a need to go with a faster/more expensive SSD with a Thunderbolt interface.

What about iCloud? If you keep your personal data (other than apps) clouded, wouldn't that help keeping available space on your SSD?

I bought a orico thunderbolt nvme enclosure, and popped in a 2tb samsung 980 pro. accessing of large libraries of photos is instantanous. Waiting to upgrade to 4tb solution when they fall in price, and get another enclosure that supports 4tb. Only draw back is the nvme offers far faster speeds that my mac can't tap into. For my needs it fast enough.

Always buy twice the storage and Ram of what you think you need. Or if your on a budget, save money until you can get at least double than what your old machine had.

I have a m1 macbook air 2020 8/256gb. I am a developer and the only thing I need is more storage. So I bought an external SSD with 1TB and leave it conected to the macbook 24/7. I stick some velcro to it, so the ssd just stay "glued" behind the screen hahaha

So question. I assume to overbuy the storage? I’m getting close to ordering 16” MBP. I’m thinking 4 tb

Apparently there is still a procedure (while still working) to allow running directly off the external. That would also be swap.

Dude I like your videos keep it up. No fluff, no hype, practical advice. Well done.

I have my mid 2017 iMac running the iOS from a 1tb external SSD. I couldn't follow most of what was being discussed in this video, but I haven't had any issues and it's certainly faster than the internal HDD.

Even having only 16GB ram and 256 GB of SSD would be enough if you have an external SSD so the internal one can last longer

True. External SSDs are unreliable. The files/folders in the multiple SSDs I bought collapsed overtime and even became unable to format them again. Just use internal one.

macOS on apple silicon is not anything different than any x86-64 OS, they all use swap and how quick swap is depends on how fast the SSD it's stored is. Swap is usually stored on the system SSD and macOS doesn't change when it's stored based on space available, this is why it said there was no memory available. OSes like Linux do let you pick where you want to store your swap, and you could store it in a external drive that is faster than apple's internal SSDs (magic of thunderbolt + nvme)

What about booting from the external drive bypassing the internal one completely?

Hate to clog up your comments with unrelated questions, but I'm super curious about that laptop riser over your left shoulder? Thanks

Hello I need help with taking a decision. I want to buy a mac but I can't choose - should I get 64ram and 1/2T ssd or 128ram and 1T ssd?

Use a Synology NAS and you are golden!

great video man! new suscriber!

If you buy an external SSD and you want to use it as swap-memory: Boot from it (So just install Mac OS on it and forget about the internal SSD). Of course this is only really comfortable on a stationary mac (like Mac Mini or Studio) If you want to buy an external SSD for everyday usage: The mentioned external Samsung T7 SSD doesn't have DRAM and Mac OS doesn't support HMB. So I would not recommend this specific SSD because of speed and wear out reasons. Better buy an high class NVMe (for example WD 850x, Samsung Pro 980, Crucial P5, ...) with DRAM. Then buy a 10 GBit/s USB-C (or better but more expensive: Thunderbolt 40 GBit/s) enclosure for the SSD. The external SSD will be approx. as fast as the internal basic SSD (or even faster when using Thunderbolt)…

Is it a bad practice to use the iCloud Drive for Documents when u regularly use it? This wears out the write-lifespan of the SSD right? e.G. I have about 500Gb of Documents and most of them are not downloaded to my MacBook.

What if someone use an external thunerbolt drive paired with the internal SSD by using fusion drive technology. The system is going to use the internal faster drive for swap and the external for the other storage and we will see it as one drive. I do not have a M1 mac but on intel one I tested it and works fine. Is the fusion technology working on M1s??

The creator didn’t even attempt to change the systemctl variable that changes the swap location. The system simply isn’t smart enough to do this automatically. You can use terminal on some versions of OSX to change the variable that controls the swap location. Another method is to use an NVMe SSD in an external thunderbolt enclosure as your boot drive. If you boot the external SSD over a thunderbolt link - it will be functionally identical in terms of speed to an internal drive. The OS will also automatically treat this as internal storage if it’s installed to the drive and use it as swap.

So should I get the 512GB ssd or the 1TB ssd, I don’t really upload things from my computer such as videos or photos to edit on Lightroom or anything I mainly use the computer for school including Xcode, dualboot, etc I have 2 years and I’m hoping It last way longer than that

There is no real reason that you wouldn't be able to swap on an external drive. You just need to create a partition on the drive and swap on it. Edit: Now when I come to think about it. Apple has probably made it really hard to do that because they hate their customers. But you can do it on Linux at least ;)

As another commenter said, a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 NMVE gets around this much better than USB3.x drives. About 8 times the (theatrical) ability of USB 3. It’s at least as far as my internal drive

Always buy the 16GB Ram version and minimal 512SSD bigger SSD means more cells! That will maximize SSD lifespan big time! More RAM = less SWAP! But for most people the SSD wil not be a problem. For archiving, writing on de old HD maybe a smart thing 🤔

Install your OS to the external SSD, boot from it and your Mac will use the external SSD for SWAP. Right?

so why did you filled your macbook ssd in the firest place tho ? You can edit or work with files on SSD or M2 SSD just fine, outside some crazy files. But if you edit crazy files, why are you using cheapest macbook there is ? also important thing if you are using many tabs open, use extension to put other tabs to sleep. Those others tabs even when not in use writing and reading files onto SSD

Can I get the storage changed by Apple ? If yes how much does it cost ?

TL;DR Take the 16 Go Unified Memory (RAM) version with an external SSD you uses for videos, photos, games and downloads (you won't need those at all times and you can still have them in the cloud)

I'd like to get back the opportunity of adding a second drive to my MacBook. I definitely go for a slow but long lively HDD drive.

Why not get as much ram as you can so your system will use a swap file less, or not at all, which decreases ssd wear.

Just be smart. Get a Mac with 1TB and get an external SSD with 2-3TB, if u work on a project u just put all the Project Files on your internals SSD and after ur ready get it back to your external SSD. So it accesses the Files while editing fast and after it u don’t have to delete everything to have enough space. I do it like this on my Windows PC since 5 years 🤔

Wait… so if I use an external ssd then I will wear down the internal ssd on my mac?

Although true….. I use an SSD to store audio to be read. If you are not writing to it all the time it works so well.

There is no internal SSD large enough to store a photo and/or video collection. The real solution for wear and tear replacement and upgrading to a larger Internal SSD is simple: Apple! To bring several external SSD’s is not really a problem, cameras and lenses are not only much more heavy but also taking much more space. Transferring content later to a traditional HDD is still the only way for large files and thousands of high resolution photo files.

Even if you have a 2016 Macbook Air, it still works for what MOST people do outside of gaming and MOST people have work computers. Upgrade only if it stops working, most stores are carrying what you NEED.

Wearing out the ssd is practically impossible in daily or even pro workloads. Your second argument, swap, is also pointless because as you say in the beginning, people shrink their ssd to buy more ram. 16 gb models (or more in newer chips) wont make you out of memory in moderate usage.