I did this today. Installed a 2 TB drive supposedly M4 ready. Took 5 minutes. That was the easy part. Downloaded the latest.firmware. Connected via a TB c4 cable from my middle port to MacBook with M2 chip. DFU never popped out. Yes, I held the power button down before plugging in the power and I saw the blinking orange lights Nothing. Gave up. Installed iTunes on mt Windows laptop. Connected to the TB port. Device manager sees the mini. iTunes sees it. Pressed enter as I clicked upgrade. Navigated to the firmware. Failed. Did the 10 times. All failures. Big waste of time for me. Returning everything and sticking with all Windows, as I have done my entire life.
I did this today. Installed a 2 TB drive supposedly M4 ready. Took 5 minutes. That was the easy part. Downloaded the latest.firmware. Connected via a TB c4 cable from my middle port to MacBook with M2 chip. DFU never popped out. Yes, I held the power button down before plugging in the power and I saw the blinking orange lights Nothing. Gave up. Installed iTunes on mt Windows laptop. Connected to the TB port. Device manager sees the mini. iTunes sees it. Pressed enter as I clicked upgrade. Navigated to the firmware. Failed. Did the 10 times. All failures. Big waste of time for me. Returning everything and sticking with all Windows, as I have done my entire life.
I did this today. Installed a 2 TB drive supposedly M4 ready. Took 5 minutes. That was the easy part. Downloaded the latest.firmware. Connected via a TB c4 cable from my middle port to MacBook with M2 chip. DFU never popped out. Yes, I held the power button down before plugging in the power and I saw the blinking orange lights Nothing. Gave up. Installed iTunes on mt Windows laptop. Connected to the TB port. Device manager sees the mini. iTunes sees it. Pressed enter as I clicked upgrade. Navigated to the firmware. Failed. Did the 10 times. All failures. Big waste of time for me. Returning everything and sticking with all Windows, as I have done my entire life.
I did this today. Installed a 2 TB drive supposedly M4 ready. Took 5 minutes. That was the easy part. Downloaded the latest.firmware. Connected via a TB c4 cable from my middle port to MacBook with M2 chip. DFU never popped out. Yes, I held the power button down before plugging in the power and I saw the blinking orange lights Nothing. Gave up. Installed iTunes on mt Windows laptop. Connected to the TB port. Device manager sees the mini. iTunes sees it. Pressed enter as I clicked upgrade. Navigated to the firmware. Failed. Did the 10 times. All failures. Big waste of time for me. Returning everything and sticking with all Windows, as I have done my entire life.
First, the reason why for M4 mac mini, 2TB is the max is because apple doesnt support more than 2TB on the base config. I also upgraded my M1 Studio Max to 2TB. COuld have chosen 4TB or 8TB, but didnt want to risk the $, In retrospect. I would have best gotten the 4TB, Straightforward install. DFU reset is always the tricky part. Speed is about the same as my original module, and rock solid so far. Been running it for 6 months. Best part is that I have gotten rid of several of my SSD enclosures, so it is now a cleaner configuration.
Can I use an older i5 or i7 Intel based Mac mini to do the DFI connection? The M4 would be an update to my existing machines; or can I use a M1 Mac mini?
According to Apple, you need to connect the Macs with a USB-C cable (the mac you are restoring will have one specific port needed for DFU mode, the other can use any port). The non-restoring Mac must be running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
So I would assume that you should be able to use any Mac running macOS 14+ and has a USB-C port. A quick skm through MacTracker seems to indicate that any Mac with USB-C (including Thunderbolt 3/4/5) is capable of running macOS 14 and later, although some early models (like the M1 MacBook Air) are capable of running older releases and might need to be upgraded first.
But since I haven't tried it, you should
consider this no more than the result of some web research, not an
actual recommendation.
I remember, in the past, that you could run Apple's Configurator 2 app instead of the Finder to do this. But the current version of Configurator requires macOS 14 or later, and older versions might not be able to initialize new flash storage on an M4 mini.
I’m wondering if my 2014 iMac would be able to complete the final process.
According to MacTracker, the maximum macOS for a 2014 iMac is macOS 11 (Big Sur), which (according to Apple) isn't sufficient. It also doesn't have USB-C or Thunderbolt 3/4/5 ports. So I would assume the answer to that question is "no".
There’s another way to expand the base operating storage on the Mac Mini M4, using a stock SSD card and an external enclosure and moving the Mac’s Home folder to that drive.
I'm glad to read you got it working. I've read many articles strongly implying that moving a home directory off of the boot volume is not something that always works reliably and should generally be avoided. The recommendation is to either move your documents (possibly replacing key folders, other than Library, with symlinks) to the external location or to boot from the external volume (as Mike Wuerthele recommended).
... Though the warranty may be in s but if trouble. But most m4 minis are pretty inexpensive.
Historically, Apple won't void your warranty if the work you did didn't break anything.
You might have to put the original SSD back in order to get warranty service, though. Does anyone know if initializing the replacement SSD blows away the keys needed for the old one (which would be needed if you put it back) or if you will be able to reinstall the original SSD, should it be necessary?
2. What cable to use? USB C cables have large variations. All this means is there is a USB C connector on the end. So you need to read in more detail. Apple says: "A USB-C to USB-C cable that supports data and charging, such as the Apple USB-C Charge Cable included with some Apple products. It works with ports on Mac that accept a type USB-C connector. Don't use a Thunderbolt 3 cable". See https://support.apple.com/en-us/108900. ; My experience is that TB4 also doesnt work, so just avoid any thunderbolt cables. Note that thunderbolt cables are USB C cables, so just saying use a USB C cable is wrong. I know Apple says this early in the documentation, but in the fine print later on, it says thunderbolt 3 cables dont work.
I can tell you from experience that you must use a USB C 2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1r2 cable plugged into the middle port. If you dont, you will find that it may start restoring and then fail with a cryptic error message.
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Typo. TB4