When I purchased my M4 Mac Mini I chose 512GB of SSD thinking that would be more than enough. (I'm old enough to remember running on a 200MB disk). Developer tools and video editing eats a lot of space and I ran out. I had already paid an extra A$300 to get 512GB, to go from the default of 256GB up to 1TB Apple charges A$750, so I decided to attempt a cheaper option, and puchased a new 1TB SSD from AliExpress for A$375.
There are plenty of videos showing how to pop the bottom off the computer and get to the SSD.
The board came with a spludger and a screw driver with the required bits. I was careful with the cable to the power button and fan. Unlike some upgraders I did not remove the power button and all was well.
Once the new, blank, drive is installed you need to put the machine in to DFU mode by holding the power button while plugging in the mains power. The power light blinks orange.
Next step is to plug the middle USB-C socket to another mac which detects DFU and offers to repair or restore the "faulty" mac. As this is a new drive choose Restore.
This is where I had problems. For some reason my internet has occasional ping fails and the downloading of the software image would fail.
The error message isn't terribly helpful as you can see here.
In the end I located the restore image and downloaded it manually. The trick is to Option-Click the Restore button which lets you choose the restore image. This worked.
The disk seems fast and I have enough space. For now, I would say, 1TB seems to be needed for developers. AI models are also huge and I expect will be eating many people's hard disks in the next few years.
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