Internal or external? Hard disk or SSD? USB or Thunderbolt? Cooled or compact? Branded or separates? An external boot disk? Do you have a return and refund option?
SSD
It’s limited to 5 Gb/s, giving read rates of about 400 MB/s and writes at about 430 MB/s. Fine for Time Machine backups, but bad with NVMe drives.
M1 Macs don’t support SMART monitoring over USB-C, forcing us to choose between Full Security without SMART, or Reduced Security with SMART support.
Signs of an SSD going down may be confusing, but when random apps seem to freeze, be suspicious. Diagnosis and recovery are also covered.
With no possibility of memory expansion, and no upgrading of internal storage, you need to specify your M1 Mac correctly. Here’s how.
If your SSD suddenly loses power, what is there to prevent it from incurring serious errors as a result? Practical solutions.
It’s a simple and popular request: how is my Mac’s SSD ageing? How long is it likely to last? But macOS has no tool to offer, and 3rd party tools aren’t really ideal for M1 Macs still.
Passing your Mac on to a new owner has got much easier and more reliable in Monterey – so long as it has got a T2 or M1 series chip.
Not long ago, many of us paid for software which tied our Macs up for hours every month or so, defragmenting their hard disks. Why, and why not now?
Want to create a bootable external disk for your M1 Mac? Here’s how to do it in full detail, from erasing the volumes through to how to remove it safely.
The Eclectic Light Company 