I bought an M1 Max with a 2TB SSD, but I’m running up against the capacity and I want more storage. The computer is still plenty fast. Normally, I’d upgrade my computer and continue using it, but now I need to sell it and get a new one to get more storage. Not to mention the carbon cost of doing that, these things are $4000!
Further, when I buy a new one, I’m now incentivized to over-provision it based on my current needs by that same logic.
I used OWC parts to make a 16 TB m2 SSD array that connects over Thunderbolt. It's fast enough to edit 8K footage, just like the internal disk. Look for the 4-bay Thunderbolt enclosure on Amazon. I did add extra cooling (heatsinks on the modules, and a bigger fan).
I have one of those suckers, but the read/write performance is nowhere near the multi GB/s speeds of the NAND. Could be useful for archival, but it wasn’t great for blockchain indexing or running VMs.
USB4 can hit those speeds, but then you’re in dongle town.
Further, when I buy a new one, I’m now incentivized to over-provision it based on my current needs by that same logic.
OWC has an entire business around this (for older Macs): https://www.owc.com/
Photos and videos get larger each year with larger sensors, so it can be hard to predict future usage if you take a lot of those.