MacRumors Colleagues,
I would like to know the general consensus regarding external storage options for Silicon-based Mac Minis and/or laptops. I am putting together a system that will mostly be used for audio recording/engineering and might potentially include the prospect of using extensive sample libraries (drums, orchestral). Here are the criteria I am considering:
I've been running an old MacPro3,1 forever (running OSX 10.15 via DosDude1's Catalina patch), but now it's time to migrate to the world of Apple Silicon. This also means I am still a newbie with regard to i/o modern Macs use (i.e., Thunderbolt, v2, v3, v4; USB3,4, DisplayPort, etc.).
I look forward to your comments.
I would like to know the general consensus regarding external storage options for Silicon-based Mac Minis and/or laptops. I am putting together a system that will mostly be used for audio recording/engineering and might potentially include the prospect of using extensive sample libraries (drums, orchestral). Here are the criteria I am considering:
- I'd like to stick to only PCIe4.0-based enclosures to get the maximum potential out of NVMe SSDs (for speed and future-proofing).
- Since I'm a bit paranoid about heat-induced damage to NVMe SSDs, enclosures that feature active cooling would be preferred, unless someone here can make a very strong case for passive cooling being sufficient.
- Trusted manufacturers and products with reputations for durability and reliability would be important.
- Portability isn't a priority, so my search isn't limited to only bus-powered enclosures. Power bricks are okay.
- All that said, I am still hoping to find economical solutions, by which I mean each 1TB drive + enclosure topping out around the $350-400 mark. At some point in the future I might want to put a few in a soft RAID configuration, but, to be honest, the ridiculous read/write speeds I've seen reported for NVMe SSDs makes me think I'll never need i/o faster than what single modules can do right now.
I look forward to your comments.
