Is this the USB C 3.1 Gen 2 SSD drive enclosure I'm looking for? Only $15

[d4]

Yes. I'm completely following you. But there are some things that are unique to my situation. Mainly, what drives I have on hand. I agree, the 2TB SSD is overkill for backups. But it's what I have. The sale price was too good to pass up, IMO.

jdc wrote:
Your internal 1 TB flash drive is already really really fast -- i think it benchmarks at near 2500 MB/s. So if its already slow with the photos database... moving to an external SSD (500 MB/s) or even NVMe flash (1500 MB/s) drive may not help?

The 500GB Photos library is not slowing down the 2020 MacMini internal SSD. In fact it's really snappy fast, and I'm loving it. I'm only moving it in the near future for future space issues. The internal 1TB SSD is currently 70% full. I will have to move the Photos App library in the next 1-2 years.

jdc wrote: the 4 TB platter is perfect for hours TM backups... but you could *easily* also use it for the monthly bootable clone. Either as is, or dedicate a 1 TB partition to it. Sure, the first clone might take a while, but incremental bootable clones later should take a fraction of that. Using a SSD here seems overkill.

Yes. But then I'll have all my eggs in one basket, an older HDD spinning basket. More peace of mind having it on separate drives. The 4TB HDD will Time Machine backup the 1TB internal bootdrive. And the future 2TB NVME drive with the Photos library. Hopefully the combination of these three techs (HDD, SSD, NVME) will be ok. Fingers crossed.

jdc wrote: The NVME I guess would make the most sense for an external photos only drive, since its the fastest.

This will be a future purchase. Maybe after I see how those pre-order OWC TB3 NVME cases perform.

At this point, I own the 2 external drives. Neither of which is the high-speed NVME TB3 for the Photos Library. So with that future purchase,,, that's how I'll end up with 3 externals and the internal SSD in the MacMini. Pheww! LOL