Managing a new iMac M1 questions

If you have that much data, you're much better off purchasing the 1TB model or more. Yes, it will cost more, but you're saving yourself a lot of future headaches down the road due to space considerations. A good example is future MacOS upgrades. They require 30-40GB+ of free space to upgrade and you'll have issues.

It will certainly be easier to upgrade from your old Mac to the new one with double the storage space. External drives are fine too, but the price of an external drive to do just this will cost as much, in addition to time spent than just buying a 1TB model iMac. Keep things simple.

My 2-cents at today's market rates.

Just to chime in one more time, consider going to a 2TB model if your budget allows for that much more of a safety net. Also recommend that you go no less than 16GB of RAM. I'd recommend a 16GB RAM/1TB SSD model over an 8GB RAM/2TB SSD model if it came down to the budget.

I concur with rkaufmann87, order the one with the 1T drive.

Why, because a decent drive for your media plus a decent drive to back it up, will actually cost you more and be more trouble.

I would get a good external SSD and create a Time Machine backup of your Mac.

When the new iMac arrives, you can choose what data gets restored onto the new iMac.

If you get a smaller drive iMac, you can choose to only restore items you deem important.

I ordered a 256GB base iMac and will be transferring from a 512GB Macbook Pro but I only want certain apps to transfer.

My docs, photos, videos and music are already backed up on a cloud NAS server.

It would be VERY VERY wise to buy the 1tb version of the new Mac . Don’t scrimp you will regret it!!!

I will just tell you my experience.I purchased a new iMac 27 inch four weeks ago.With Big Sur and the new security measures none of these externals from G-Drive and Seagate will show up in the start up utility program.I will say they are not SSD so maybe that will make a difference.No one seems to have a clear answer and the symptoms seem to change from machine to machine.I guess my advice is research the external(s) you intend to get.Hard to believe $1700.00 machine and three externals will not work.I have erased, reformatted,first aided etc still no luck! If anyone out there have any suggestions I am all ears!Thanks.

With every major release of macOS, the operating system continues to require more storage on your Mac. If you under configure your M1 iMac (e.g. < 1TB), you will find that you will be dealing with a storage crunch based on your current usage pattern.