Does upgrading the internal ssd in the M4 Mac Mini void apple care

Blaque37 wrote:

I’ve read on the internet that upgrading the internal SSD on the M4 Mac MIni with a third party SSD doesn’t necessarily void your warrantee or apple care plus if the repair is done by an authorized repair facility. Can anyone let me know if this is accurate information? Thanks in advance!

That sounds familiar: https://youtu.be/3DZbSlkFoSU

If you open the Mini's case you'l void the warranty.

What size SSD did you get in the Mini?

You can do what I did:

1 - get a 1 TB or 2 TB external SSD from OWC (MacSales.com).

2 - make sure it's formatted APFS.

3 - copy your Documents, Photos, Music and Movies folder to the external SSD.

4 - verify that the files in those 4 folders on the EHD are OK, i.e. open the Photos, Movies and Music libraries and make sure they operate correctly. Also open a variety of files in the Documents folder to verify they are good.

5 - after verification of the files on the EHD you can delete just the contents of those four folders on your boot drive.

6 - remove those folder from the Finder's sidebar.

7 - drag the four folders on the EHD into the Finder's sidebar so they are convenient to access.

8 - never ever install and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac. They are not needed and can compromise system performance.

9 - always keep a minimum of 80-100 GB of free space on your boot drive to facilitate optimal system and application performance.

The flash chips in the M4 and M4 Mac minis are reportedly on a separate board – but that does not mean that the SSD is a standard SSD. This is a raw flash module. Part of the job that a SSD controller would normally perform is handled directly by circuitry on the M4 or M4 Pro chip.

Even if you could find a compatible flash module, and swap it in without breaking anything, doing so would almost certainly render the Mini inoperable. All Apple Silicon Macs encrypt data on their internal SSDs in real time – and the contents of the flash chips must be kept cryptographically "in sync" with the keys currently held by the Apple Silicon chip. Otherwise the contents of the flash will look like gibberish.

On the M2 Ultra Mac Pros – for which Apple does sell flash modules – if you swap out the flash modules, you must have a second Mac running Apple Configurator 2 on hand to reset the first one and get it working again, so that you can begin the process of reinstalling an OS and restoring your data from backups. I would not expect that to be any different in the case of the M4 and M4 Mac minis. Swap in a new flash module with no second Mac on hand to help revive the Mini, and you will have turned your Mini into a doorstop.

+1 ask Apple however in my experience it would absolutely void the warranty!!!

Don't take a verbal answer, get it in writing and the best way to do that is to actually carefully read the warranty's Terms and Conditions.

My recommendation. is if you are considering buying a Mac mini and need more storage then buy it directly from Apple. Yes we know it is more expensive than third party solution however that makes the computer eligible for its 1 year warranty and also eligible to buy AppleCare.

If you have already bought the computer and it's older than 14 days old (assuming you bought it from Apple) then keep it at least 1 year until the warranty runs out and then do what you want.

You’d need to ask Apple that, or the authorized third-party provider if they’re willing to discuss it.

You might be required to return the Mac to its original condition before any diagnostics or repairs are performed.

An external NVMe will cost much less, avoid the risk of wrecking your computer and will not void your warranty.

2TB will cost around £100 and you simply plug it in to a USB-C socket . . . it's a no-brainer!

If short on space I would suggest getting an external TB drive and off load some of your files like Photos, Music, Movies, etc. ilo trying to change the internal drive.

Blaque37 wrote:

I’ve read on the internet that upgrading the internal SSD on the M4 Mac MIni with a third party SSD doesn’t necessarily void your warrantee or apple care plus if the repair is done by an authorized repair facility.

And you believe what you "read on the internet" ???

Based on teardowns, you could physically replace the SSD with one with more capacity. But where are you going to get an actual Apple SSD for that M4 mini? If it's a third party SSD, don't expect Apple to honor the warranty (original or AppleCarePlus). There are a number of provisions in the Apple warranty under which replacing the SSD would void the warranty:

I was reading about this for the M4 mini and Apple does eventually get you to the point where they say you need a second Mac to set up the one on which you were replacing the drive. So Apple does take you all the way through the process. The question then is, can you even find an Apple Authorized Service Provider who will do this? I strongly suspect if you do it yourself (even with Apple's quasi-blessing in the form of DIY instructions from Apple), will Apple even look at your computer again for even out of warranty service if they see you have been working inside it? As for that last question, I would modify the 'okay to do this yourself after 1 year' in an earlier post to, 'wait until the machine is officially vintage after 5 years' and then Apple wouldn't want to see it in their facilities ever again and you really are at a DIY for any repairs needed.

Old Toad wrote:

3 - copy your Documents, Photos, Music and Movies folder to the external SSD.

4 - verify that the files in those 4 folders on the EHD are OK, i.e. open the Photos, Movies and Music libraries and make sure they operate correctly. Also open a variety of files in the Documents folder to verify they are good.

I think steps 3 & 4 are a bit more involved than as outlined. Those applications probably won't automatically know the new location of the folders, and in particular their critical library files. For example, with Music you may need to hold down the option key when you next start the application and guide it to the Music library file in the Music folder in its new location. I think any Apple application using a library file (Music, Photos, Movies) may need similar treatment.

You can open the files in your Documents folder but either the files copied over correctly or they got corrupted in copying, in which case any of your files for anything got corrupted in copying. I guess what I am saying is unless you suspect there was bad copying, you don't need to test all your Documents files.

Note that if for any reason your external drive is not connected when you start an application using a library file, it may default to your internal drive. I haven't let that happen but if it does you may need to use the above method to reset it to the external drive.

I personally added a tag to the name of my Apple application folders on my external drive. E.g., Music_DD, Documents_DD, etc. Should some application try to default to creating one of those folders on the main drive, I can see in the folder name that it isn't using my external drive. This isn't critical but I find is a way to quickly check a file is going to the correct Music folder.

I have done this on my computer so been-there-done-that.

+1 what Old Toad suggested. I have done the same but I do not use OWC drives as I get my own drive and TB NVME enclosure which works fine.