Cheaper Internal SSD Upgrade for M4 Mac Mini
Key Points
- The base M4 Mac Mini’s 256 GB storage is insufficient for video work, and Apple’s official 2 TB upgrade costs around $800, a steep premium over standard NVMe drives.
- An alternative, cost‑effective upgrade exists: a 2 TB SSD expansion module from Expand Mac Mini (F Innovations) that can be installed internally for roughly $260.
- Installing this module is far simpler than soldering Apple’s proprietary NAND chips, as the design has been reverse‑engineered and provided as a plug‑in kit.
- The reviewer received the kit for free, installed it, and measured performance comparable to the factory‑installed drive, achieving read/write speeds of 2–3 GB/s.
Full Transcript
# Cheaper Internal SSD Upgrade for M4 Mac Mini **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLtE2kMTVOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLtE2kMTVOQ) **Duration:** 00:15:26 ## Summary - The base M4 Mac Mini’s 256 GB storage is insufficient for video work, and Apple’s official 2 TB upgrade costs around $800, a steep premium over standard NVMe drives. - An alternative, cost‑effective upgrade exists: a 2 TB SSD expansion module from Expand Mac Mini (F Innovations) that can be installed internally for roughly $260. - Installing this module is far simpler than soldering Apple’s proprietary NAND chips, as the design has been reverse‑engineered and provided as a plug‑in kit. - The reviewer received the kit for free, installed it, and measured performance comparable to the factory‑installed drive, achieving read/write speeds of 2–3 GB/s. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLtE2kMTVOQ&t=0s) **Apple Tax: Mac Mini Storage Costs** - The speaker laments the high price of Apple’s internal storage upgrades for the M4 Mac Mini—finding the base 256 GB insufficient, a 2 TB factory option overpriced at $800, and noting a cheaper 2 TB expansion module from Expand Mac as a better alternative. ## Full Transcript
when I bought this M4 Mac Mini I paid
the Apple tax I mean I do video work and
the measley 256 gigs of storage in the
base model is just way too small for
that Apple finally upgraded their Max to
at least 16 gigs of RAM which is great
but their base storage is still tiny I
mean there are individual games now that
would fill up your entire disc if you
buy the base model and forget iCloud
just loading up a few modern apps on the
Mac will also eat up all your storage
and speaking from experience with a 256
gig MacBook Air it's painful managing
external discs if your internal drive is
just that small so Apple's answer is a
storage upgrade you can go up to 2 terab
of storage which is great but what's not
great is the insane price gouging for
that privilege Apple's saying 2
terabytes costs 800 bucks even
accounting for maybe Apple using the
fastest best naned flash chips on the
planet which they don't that's a $600
premium the price of an entire extra Mac
Mini over a standard 2 TB m .2 nvme
drive that's just ridiculous but I'm an
idiot I paid the Apple tax I upgraded my
machine to one terabyte only because I'm
not quite gullible enough to pay the
full price for two but had I known about
this I would have stuck to the 256 gig
base model because this is a 2 tbte
upgrade for the M4 Mac Mini completely
internal and it costs 260 bucks that's
still more than a normal 2 TB nvme drive
but not by too much this is the 2 TB SSD
expansion module for the Mac Mini M4 and
it comes from expand Mac Mini a project
from F Innovations the first time I
found out this was possible was watching
this video from dosdude 1 in it he went
through the process of delicately
replacing the little nand flash chips on
the drive Apple pre-installs at the
factory but here's the problem dos dude
1 is an artist he's like a Picasso of
soldering and if you don't have a ton of
experience hacking on modern computer
chips an operation like that just not
going to end well luckily and despite
what Tim Apple might tell you Macs
aren't made of magic and pixie dust they
have the same kind of circuit boards and
chips as any other computer at least
when it comes to storage and that means
it's not that hard to reverse engineer
Apple's proprietary storage card design
and that's exactly what expand Mac Mini
did and this thing isn't the only
upgrade option I also found this m4- SSD
one for a little more and there might be
other options too by the time you're
seeing this video but the expand Mac
mini kit was the first one that I found
out about
when FES founder emailed me and asked if
he could send me one to test I was all
over it so yes I didn't pay for this
upgrade kit it was sent to me for review
and I want to be fully upfront about
that so my goal today is to see if I can
upgrade this thing from my painfully
expensive 1 tab module to a much cheaper
two but before I take this thing under
the knife I wanted to run a few tests
for comparison using a morphus dis Mark
I got speeds from 2 to 3 GB per second
when doing sequential reads and wres and
between 30 to 60 megabytes per second
for 4K random IO testing with black
Magic's dis speed test it showed just
under 3 GB per second and to be complete
I also monitored the drive temperatures
using Smart Control and that showed an
idle temperature around 27° C and it
warmed up to a high of 47° under load
that's not a bad showing will the new
Drive be any faster I'm not sure and one
more note before you attempt something
like this make sure you have a full
backup like with time machine or if
you're like me at least make sure you
can rebuild your Mac from scratch with
your anable automation Playbook so the
kit comes in a box here with the chip
visible through this little window it's
a nice little
touch and uh like I said before make
sure you have a backup before you
attempt any of this cuz it could be
highly destructive the way this is
designed it looks like there's a a nand
flash chip on both sides each one I
guess is one terabyte and then the other
terabyte and the connector is so similar
to an m.2 drive but it's not quite of
course Apple always has to be a little
proprietary a few different sized heads
here for uh getting into the Mac I'm
going to set those aside because I have
my little trusty uh Precision
screwdriver here it's a little higher
quality and I'm not sure what these are
for little pads uh but I need to get
into the Mac so I'm going to flip it
over it says to put the
Jimmy into the Gap here this is the
first time I've tried doing this on an
M4 mini that's not too bad I guess and
it's coming up so that's good
says to get this under
first and then get a get one of these
picks
underneath well it's proving harder than
I thought at first glance so it says
there's Clips on each Corner come back
here oh no what a strange way to open a
Mac why don't they just use screws on
these things why is this so difficult
this is
insane okay well that finally came up
these clips are holding in pretty darn
well oh
man okay
wow that
was that was not too
fun but it's open and I hope I didn't
break anything
inside and if I want to remove the power
switch button supposedly I can just pull
up on that but that's kind of tight in
there I'm going to leave it and just let
that hang out so let's see if these are
T5 yep T5
now there are much much much better
guides out there for taking apart the M4
Mac Mini so I am not going to show you
the whole process on here this is just
yeah and that's still stuck on the
what Apple seriously come
on what is it with all these wires wow
that's uh it's only been running for a
few months and I'm already getting some
dust in
there look at that
I'm glad Apple makes it so easy to uh
clean these things take out the fan okay
fan lift
out and it looks like we have access to
the drive at this point that's a chunky
one why don't they use the same same
screw heads on these things come on
Apple to keep switching tips out in here
so I guess that's why they
include they include all these different
tips because you do need three different
Siz tips that's
crazy uh how does this come
out oh wow okay so according to iix it
you have to pull it out this way like
apple seriously why don't you just use
an m.2 socket this would be so much
easier you could do upgrades people
could buy standard
drives why
why why I I do not understand so pull it
out
gently don't break anything else inside
of here while you're doing it
okay I think that's loose enough that I
might be able to
okay wow there's my $400 of silicon I
can't believe it that's 400 bucks or 269
and you get double the storage and I
didn't even look which side it looks
like there's a little key an index on
here again the m.2 socket you don't need
a little marker like that because it's
very obvious where the indent is this
socket design why why does Apple feel
like they need to do this
H okay and I guess it is fitting I have
the MacBook Air here with Apple's old
proprietary uh standard for ssds I
upgraded it using an OWC drive so here I
am upgrading again many years
later okay I will crank it down a little
bit because Apple did at the factory
apparently I will say that the
engineering of these things is wonderful
but it doesn't need to be as wonderful
if you just use standard parts when
you're doing the fan screws here they do
have uh rubber grommets so when you're
tightening it I wouldn't tighten it too
much just
snug hopefully at the factor they
actually have like a a standard for that
it's kind of amazing Apple has designed
this to be completely black all the way
through once you put these screws
on the little design touches that Apple
does it's crazy because they don't
design them to be opened Dr but they
designed them to be very nice looking on
the inside like why don't you do both
make it so that people can open these
things and enjoy them I am glad that
they're not like gluing it down
completely so it looks like these these
sticky parts are for here they didn't
rip off on mine so I'm just going to
leave it like that that wasn't as bad as
I was
expecting let's get this
uh let's get these clips back
in maybe ah
okay I don't like the clip system I wish
they just used
screws all right well now we have a dead
Mac on our hands let's see if I can
bring this over to my desk and get it
booted up so I'm back at the desk I have
the M4 mini under the desk which is down
here you can't see it as my Mac Studio
and I'm going to plug in the Mac Mini to
the Mac Studio using a thunderbolt cable
I think you might be able to do USBC I
don't think you have to have a
thunderbolt cable but I have this set my
desk for this very purpose and uh
getting good Thunderbolt cables is nice
because you don't have to worry about
the fact that you're only getting like
USB 2 speeds or whatever the one thing
that's very important is plug it into
the middle Thunderbolt Port so the one
with the little Thunderbolt icon I don't
know why Apple has it that way but that
is the port for restoring you using dfu
mode and then I'll plug in HDMI and I'll
go ahead and plug in my keyboard for now
even though it won't be useful yet and
I'll plug in Ethernet while I'm here why
not and before I plug in the power cord
I have to hold down the power button
which I always
forget of course it's the last the last
Corner that I'm not even looking at it's
back here so I'm going to hold down the
power button and then plug it
in and then after a second or
two hopefully that light lights up Amber
there we go so now this is in dfu
restore mode and over here on the
computer I see this little menu so it
says a software updates
required uh uh sure I
guess it's not an iOS device though
that's kind of
funny so it says the Mac is in dfu mode
it just popped this window up and I'm
going to click restore Mac are you sure
you want to restore it to its factory
settings all data will be erased well
considering there's no data on that
drive yes I think I will do it and it's
downloading a 16 GB file and uh this
whole time the little Amber or orangish
light has been flashing and now it says
it's extracting so I'm I'm guessing it
must have downloaded the image to this
Mac and now it's now it's sending it
over Thunderbolt or USBC to the
connected Mac I mean I guess we could be
thankful that Apple at least allows this
to happen it's you know instead of uh
instead of allowing us to not have to
have a Mac to restore a Mac at least you
can restore a Mac with a Mac but seems
like a hack well now now the Mac has a
white LED but there's no no display
output yet at this point so in my in
finder oh hey look it just came up with
this there's output okay we're verifying
the Mac software looks like the restore
is
completing and hopefully we'll get to
the end here soon well I should say it
was verifying the Mac software now it's
verifying the Mac restore this operation
is much slower than the uh software
verification whatever that that was well
it's doing another verify Macer store
this is the third time it's gone through
this little bar I don't know how many
times we're going to do a verifying maer
store but hopefully it's not forever
that bar has filled up all the way and
uh this one still keeps going over and
over
again oh here we go something's going on
it has been restored to factory settings
please disconnect the restored Mac from
this Mac okay I'll do that
yeah there we go and
okay oh the light just went out on it
and the lights's back on there we
go there we go we're booting
up I think it's a success okay so now
I'm going to restore this Mac and then
we'll run some more benchmarks and uh
see how the new Drive compares to the
old one I took my mini home and let it
do a time machine restore once that was
done and once things like the photo
library and mail database restore were
complete I reran the benchmarks first I
made sure the SSD was in fact showing up
as 2 terab it even still identified
itself as an apple part because the
controller the heart of the drive
actually lives inside the M4 chip the
chips on the storage card are just dumb
Nan flash chips the controller is what
makes these chips operate as an nvme
drive but I ran disc Mark and dis speed
test again and both of them showed
consistently faster speeds than the
stock 1 tab Drive I paid 400 bucks for
and the temperatures were pretty close
too maybe a few degrees hotter because
Spotlight was still indexing but it was
perfectly normal now I don't know about
you but I think the upgrade is a great
deal might I remind you this solution
saves $500 over Apple's own upgrade is
the hour or so of time it took me to do
the upgrade in dfu restore worth over
500 bucks you bet the most annoying
thing is you need another Apple silicon
Mac to do this upgrade and not everyone
has that it' be amazing if Apple started
using real m.2 slots and ditched the
whole dfu dance failing that I'm at
least happy third parties can offer
these upgrades now because if nothing
else it'll at least give New Life to
hundreds of thousands of these base
model M4 minis out in the world once
they get dumped in a few years and if
Apple ever decides to try blocking this
kind of upgrade we revolt before I wrap
up the upgrade does have limitations
first you have to go through the
uncomfortable process of popping the
m4's bottom off second this upgrade only
works on the base M4 not on the M4 pro
at least not yet and third because
companies like fi are making these
things in China if you're watching this
video in January or February at least
you might run into shipping delays for
the Chinese New Year and like I said
earlier I've spent time wrangling
external ssds before and it gets
expensive if you want an option that's
as fast as internal storage a fast
Thunderbolt drive like this costs about
the same as the upgrade does when you
account for the case plus a quality SSD
not to mention a cable if the case
doesn't come with one this other Drive
is a little cheaper and works fine too
but it's USBC and only about a quarter
as fast even if you take this fancy
drive and plug it into the wrong Port it
can go from 40 gbits to like 10 or even
worse that's all Annoying to manage
having enough built-in storage with a
good backup of course takes away so much
hassle when you're using a Mac until
next time I'm Jeff Kling