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FOR A PHOTOGRAPHER : MBP 14 inch M3max 1TB with external ssd or M3pro 2TB?
- Thread starter 50L
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MBP 14" with external is what I would recommend.
Get a 4k ProArt monitor and you will be in happy land:
-- Something like: ASUS ProArt PA32UCRK 32" 4K HDR Monitor ( we have a couple, they are amazing! ).
What is your work flow?
I doubt the external will be a bottle neck, especially a T9.
Get a 4k ProArt monitor and you will be in happy land:
-- Something like: ASUS ProArt PA32UCRK 32" 4K HDR Monitor ( we have a couple, they are amazing! ).
What is your work flow?
I doubt the external will be a bottle neck, especially a T9.
For me both options seem ok. They have their certain pros depending on your need.
- Go for the M3max with an external SSD if you need more processing power and are okay with slightly slower (but still fast) external storage.
- Choose the M3pro with 2TB if you prefer everything internal, with slightly less power but more straightforward storage management.
I elected to go with the M3 Max 1TB for exactly the reason you are considering. Since it is a stock configuration, I was able to find it for $200 off on Black Friday here in the US. I had been considering a BTO model with 2 TB of storage. But I decided it wasn’t worth it since I am rarely working on more than ~100 GB of photos at any one time and always archive to external storage anyway once I’m done with a project.
Only you can decide if it’s worth dealing with external storage at the end of the day. I will caution that the Samsung T9, is a USB 3.2 2x2 device, which I don’t think the thunderbolt ports on the MBP fully support (at least they didn’t on the M1 generation). Those ports support 3.2 at 10 Mbps but not 3.2 2x2 at 20 Mbps. So you won’t be able to use the T9 at full speed.
Only you can decide if it’s worth dealing with external storage at the end of the day. I will caution that the Samsung T9, is a USB 3.2 2x2 device, which I don’t think the thunderbolt ports on the MBP fully support (at least they didn’t on the M1 generation). Those ports support 3.2 at 10 Mbps but not 3.2 2x2 at 20 Mbps. So you won’t be able to use the T9 at full speed.
help me out please. The pricing is about the same ( on the M3max I get a 150 euro discount)
MBP 14 inch M3max 1TB with external ssd ( probably T9samsung 2TB )
or M3pro 2TB?
In other words, will the external ssd be a bottle neck?
Get the Max. If you already know you need an external if your internal is 1 tb, odds are at some point you will need an external even if your internal is 2 tb, so your bottle neck concern becomes moot as both will have externals. It really does come down to how large your file sizes are and workflow. A common workflow is current work on the internal, past work on externals.
If you’re like me at all, 2TB is nowhere close enough to store your LR catalog anyway so might as well do 1TB with a faster machine that can crank through massive exports when needed.
Don’t bother with the T9, it uses USB 3.2 2x2 which from my research these Macs doesn’t support at 20Gbps. But strangely enough these Macs supports USB 4 40Gbps, as well as Thunderbolt. It’s weird, but for some reason they are not backwards compatible? Only 10Gbps. USB is so confusing nowadays.
I got the 4TB T7 Shield which supports USB 10Gbps for $199 Black Friday and it’s great. Runs way cooler than my old Sandisk of the same capacity (which is now my backup instead of a spinning HDD) and is built like a tank. At about 1000MB/s read and write it’s plenty fast for RAW photos IMO and the value per TB is great. Though I’m only shooting 42MP from the Sony a7R3 which is getting to be a little old. Although if you think <2TB with the apps and OS installed is enough space for your catalog I doubt you’re shooting medium format or some kind of higher resolution full frame. Guess it depends on your use case. Some photographers only shoot like it’s the film days so they don’t have hundreds of photos from each shoot.
Don’t bother with the T9, it uses USB 3.2 2x2 which from my research these Macs doesn’t support at 20Gbps. But strangely enough these Macs supports USB 4 40Gbps, as well as Thunderbolt. It’s weird, but for some reason they are not backwards compatible? Only 10Gbps. USB is so confusing nowadays.
I got the 4TB T7 Shield which supports USB 10Gbps for $199 Black Friday and it’s great. Runs way cooler than my old Sandisk of the same capacity (which is now my backup instead of a spinning HDD) and is built like a tank. At about 1000MB/s read and write it’s plenty fast for RAW photos IMO and the value per TB is great. Though I’m only shooting 42MP from the Sony a7R3 which is getting to be a little old. Although if you think <2TB with the apps and OS installed is enough space for your catalog I doubt you’re shooting medium format or some kind of higher resolution full frame. Guess it depends on your use case. Some photographers only shoot like it’s the film days so they don’t have hundreds of photos from each shoot.
Yes, if you make a living with photography, I can't believe you have shot only a couple TB of data.
You need a much larger centralized data store and then you sync some subset of that to the local SSD.
What is a good, long-term storage? Likey a NAS with RAID that has the abilty to keep selected files sync'd. Also you need a few redundant ways to backup the NAS.
I know you're talking to OP but quoted me, but some people shoot like it's the film days are are really intentional with each shot and take their time. Different strokes for different folks. For me, I'm somewhere in between. I try not to just hammer the shutter down even though I can shoot 42MP RAWs at 10fps, but I'm no lightweight.
Also sometimes people say they're a photographer but they're a hobbyist. Or it's only a part of their job. I know that my catalog isn't massive, but a lot of my older stuff is shot on some pretty old DSLRs that were 8, 10, 18MP and some of the early stuff was I think only 10-bit and 12-bit RAW, and when I was shooting after college and had a 5D MkIII and then my current a7R III, photography was only a small part (20% or so) of my professional job doing design and web work. Nowadays it's mostly personal projects and lower resolution drone photos so my catalog isn't huge, and I've taken the time to massively cut down the repeats and slightly out of focus or blurry photos or just plain uninteresting or bad shots with poor composition from my catalog.
So today my entire catalog is about 2.5TB and I store it on two 4TB SSDs that I backup to each other now. I had hit the 2TB limit on my old Samsung T5, which I loved, many times and Samsung hadn't come out with a bigger drive so kept clearing storage on there hoping they would come out with something bigger. They didn't so I bit the bullet and got the Sandisk Extreme 4TB SSD last year and backed up to some old spinning drives, and then got the Samsung T7 Shield for only $199 recently since it came out this autumn, which is a great deal for a fast little rugged drive, and made it my primary since it runs cooler and is more efficient and it backs up to the SanDisk.
So if you're not a hardcore photographer, just a couple of these relatively inexpensive SSDs and Carbon Copy Cloner is all you need to do periodic backups. I've looked at NAS but it just seems like too much hassle and it's so slow and more prone to failure unless you get one that can do RAID 1 or RAID 5 or something. Eventually I would like to get another one to store in my security deposit box, and rotate it out quarterly. Or maybe I should get a small fireproof box to store it in my metal desk drawers.
People are shooting video now. and 4K is the new minimum. Yes I know the back catalog is mostly film and smaller files but the file sizes are expanding. While 1TB helds many years of old work, I can see 1TB filling up in a year now with video.
As for the network storage being slow. Yes it is but you keep the stuff you are currently working on i the fast local storage
Yes of course the NAS uses RAID, With ennough redundency that if a disk fails the system still works
I saw this system used in a mobile setup. A wedding had about three people working with video and still cameras. They were good and stayed in the background wearing black. Someone managed a central storage and did realtime edits to a screen people could see and continously printed give-a-way stills. Today this kind of high-end work would be the only way to make enough money to buy a car and house and put kid through school. This is actualy the second time I saw a shoot like this in the last year.
Yep that's why I never went all the way into photography. Sounds like a cool setup. When I would shoot sideline at some SEC football games, back in like 2014-15, there were already some people with WiFi grips for their cameras sending video back to the pit where all the photographers hung during games and kept their gear and computers, and they had partners editing photos as they were flowing back in on their MacBook Pros and sending them off to be published in real time and to go on social media.
When I switched from photography major to design major in 2009 (still got a minor in photography) I recognized this field was going to get way too competitive. That and phone cameras and computational photography are getting really good and people thought I was crazy when I said reporters would start replacing field photographers and we've already seen that happen at many places. Not that I agree with it but I understood the economics and how undervalued photography was as a career, unfortunately. Nowadays I'm a senior web developer leading a team so go figure, you never know where life will take you. Fun times. Trying to work my way into becoming an enterprise architect so I can be in charge of AI deployments and get ahead of those coming mass layoffs later this decade.
Never shot much video, just occasionally in a pinch if our videographer couldn't make it. Never really got into it. I'm better at editing it than shooting it, lol. But yeah, I agree with how undervalued photographers are, most photographers today probably wear both hats way more compared to even a few years ago to remain competitive, especially since mirrorless cameras today are so freaking good at it. Can do a fairly compact setup on a gimbal with decent audio for a relatively low price nowadays. Hell, even an iPhone 15 Pro using BlackMagic and rigging with an SSD plugged into it.
I would not forget:
- If you need fast Transfer aka TB3 or TB4 with up to 2800MB/Sec you need a fast Enclosure for NVME each 120$ Acasis TB405
- If you have many Peripherals you may also need more TB Ports and use a Dock so 300$ Plus
- Then you also need the NVME´s 2TB 100$ for a Compatible one like the WD SN770 or the WD SN850X
If my experience using Capture One Pro on an external SSD is any indication, I don't think the external SSD will be a bottleneck. I was in between laptops one month and I had to do all of my editing and management directly on a USB 3.1 speed 1TB SanDisk Extreme. That old drive runs at 500MB/s. The T9 is 4x as fast at 2000MB/s.
Most of my files are shot at 24.5MP RAW format. It wasn't bad. It was definitely a touch slower, but I only experienced occasional minor lag.
Most of my files are shot at 24.5MP RAW format. It wasn't bad. It was definitely a touch slower, but I only experienced occasional minor lag.
You will never get a 2000MB/s from the T9 @ AS m1-3 because the USB 3.2 2x2 20Gbit/sec Protokoll is not supported on any TB AS M1-3 Mac at all.
There is only USB 3 10Gbit/sec
TB 40Gbit/sec
USB4 40Gbit/sec
discussions.apple.com
There is only USB 3 10Gbit/sec
TB 40Gbit/sec
USB4 40Gbit/sec
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 on Thunderbolt 4 - Apple Community
Didn't know that.
That's a bummer. So spending the extra money to get a Samsung T9 would be pointless then? In this case the T9 wouldn't have any significant advantage over a T7?
Yes.
But i would anyway buy a 2TB WD SN770 and the Inateck FE2025 Case.
You can then later upgrade the Case to Acasis TB405 maybe and make it a TB4 Drive.