I'm about to purchase my first MacBook with 8 TB SSD and 128 GB RAM. As a music producer, I wanted to know if importing all my sample data from my external hard drive to the MacBook drive was safe. I will write lots of data that would be transferred from the external drive to the MacBook to lower its lifespan (I'm transferring all of the data in one go, by the way). Should I just get an external hard drive?
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Durabilty of MacBook Pro SSD
- Thread starter BabyEinsteinSlayy
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I think it will be more convenient for you to put everything on the internal SSD. You bought it for portability, right? Worrying about lifespan is pointless. You simply won’t wear it out before you purchase a new machine, even if that’s ten years from now. However, you still need a backup plan, because hardware can fail.
If you're prepared to buy a laptop upgraded to the 8TB internal SSD, ideally you would not also need an external SSD.
The issue of wearing out an SSD is real but relatively narrow. A typical high-quality SSD such as the kind Apple uses lasts 600-1200 TBW/TB (TBW=Total Bytes Written) so an 8TB configuration should handle 5-10000 TBW. When I tracked my usage on the laptop I use for productivity/office/minor data processing/etc type work, writes totaled 3-6 GB/day. At that rate the drive would last 500 years (no it won't -- something else will die first). On the other hand, if I was running some sort of continuous write application 24x7 at max I/O, we could be talking about weeks. Such use cases are however very uncommon.
A one-time import of 8 TBs of music/etc wouldn't be significant at all relative to 5-10000 TBW Then ongoing I doubt your usage would wear out the drive before something else. If you rewrote your entire 8 TB library every day, it might only last 3 years. That seems both unlikely and not even terrible. However, you know your likely usage of this laptop better than I do.
I realize that music production can consume disk space, but do you REALLY need 8tb?
Wouldn't it be more practical to "off-load" completed projects to an external drive?
Just sayin'...
Wouldn't it be more practical to "off-load" completed projects to an external drive?
Just sayin'...
Compressed music doesn't take up much room. Music production does not work in compressed audio and uses significantly more storage.
Exceedingly narrow. Take a look at this thread.
And this one:
No one can accurately answer the question as Apple doesn't share endurance ratings for their internal SSDs. All SSDs have a finite write lifespan so you'd typically see that expressed as writes and Drive Writes per Day. The bigger the SSD the more endurance as the SSD can do a better job of wear leveling.
It is unlikely that you'll run out of SSD endurance within the expected lifespan of a MacBook Pro, but that will vary based on your usage and there is also issues of drives failing before their intended lifespans run out.
Focus mostly on having proper backups in place and less on the SSD endurance directly.
It is unlikely that you'll run out of SSD endurance within the expected lifespan of a MacBook Pro, but that will vary based on your usage and there is also issues of drives failing before their intended lifespans run out.
Focus mostly on having proper backups in place and less on the SSD endurance directly.
Even non-compressed music does not take much room. A 5 minute audio, 16 bit, uncompressed, sampled at 384 kHz, stereo, consumes about 460 megabytes. Two of those is almost a gigabyte. 1TB would store 2,000 of those files. Relative to video files that amount is almost trivial. A 2 TB external drive will store over 4K of those audio files. Take the bit rate down to 192 kHz and the number of files that can be stored doubles.
This is about music production. If one records 16 tracks in hi-res for one song that is 16 uncompressed hi-res tracks + a DAW with virtual instruments with (likely) huge sample libraries (lots of Gigabytes), project files, lots of other VST's etc.
The files you are talking about are the finished songs. We are not talking about the average 5 minute MP3s/FLACs/WAVs here.
I have likely more than 8 Terabytes of virtual instruments with sample libraries at home on external drives for music production.
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The durability of a Macbook pro SSD is the same as any good quality internal SSD on any computer. No difference there. The only difference is that you can not replace the SSD yourself in a Macbook (or any modern Mac computer) if it fails. As with any good quality internal SSD, under normal circumstances, it will last for a long time (at least 5 years but probably longer). With exceptions of course.. you can always have a dud, but that goes for all parts in any computer.
But why do you worry about the durability of the internal SSD? As a music producer I assume you have a regular backup plan in place? So if the internal SSD fails you have your backups right?
Never rely on an internal system disk only, because your OS is also on it. What if something goes wrong with an OS update and your computer is bricked? What if your computer needs repair? Apple does not guarantee that your data will be kept after a repair.
To answer your last question: Yes (regardless of the quality of the internal SSD) you should always have at least one (but preferably more) external hard drive(s) for backups. Preferably also one outside your home (in case of burglary, fire etc.). And (depending on how much you produce) backup your projects regularly.
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