Got my 2019 i9 iMac with 2TB SSD - what's the best solution for further video storage?

[rossgrant]

Hi guys - sorry if this has been asked before.

I just got my new i9 with a 2TB SSD in it.

I edit lots of video, so want to get a decent solution for video storage if possible.

I shoot about 125GB of video a week - but don't need to keep it past a month or so.

What do you reckon is the best way to go?

An external SSD with TB3 - like this Sandisk:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-...sd&qid=1554054582&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&th=1

Or something else? I know Samsung do very fast drives don't they?

I have absolutely no experience of external storage, as I have come from a mid 2010 Mac Pro, which I stuffed with 4 x 1TB drives.

Another 2TB would therefore be useful for me - just don't know which way to go.

Thanks in advance!

 

[MacRS4]

The Samsung X5 is an absolute flier. It'll come down to price/performance obviously. This one will be similar to the performance on your internal drive. It's more than 4 times quicker than the one you list, but then it's also a lot more expensive.

I have that Samsung X5 and a Sandisk 960 Extreme - I use the Extreme as my scratch area. The performance is a lot different however:

Sandisk 960: http://www.markc.me.uk/WebSiteDownloads/SandiskExtreme.png
Samsung X5: http://www.markc.me.uk/WebSiteDownloads/SamsungX5.png
[doublepost=1554060559][/doublepost]

The Samsung X5 is an absolute flier. It'll come down to price/performance obviously. This one will be similar to the performance on your internal drive. It's more than 4 times quicker than the one you list, but then it's also a lot more expensive.

I have that Samsung X5 and a Sandisk 960 Extreme - I use the Extreme as my scratch area. The performance is a lot different however:

Sandisk 960: http://www.markc.me.uk/WebSiteDownloads/SandiskExtreme.png
Samsung X5: http://www.markc.me.uk/WebSiteDownloads/SamsungX5.png

The one you're linking to would be slower than the Sandisk 960, but then it's also cheaper. It would be more similar in performance to the Samsung T5.

 

[propower]

2TB TB3 X5 is $1100. (2500MB/s)
2TB 860 EVO is $330 (450MB/s in USB3 case $25)
2TB Samsung T5 is $330 (550 MB/s USB 3.1 (TB3 port)
Akitio 4 bay TB3 to SATA3 box (~$300 - 550MB/s) stuff with drives of choice

For backup and general archive the T5 would be my choice today. X5 is amazing if you need the speed but very expensive. FWIW - I needed another 2TB on my 2017 imac and added a 860EVO to my Akitio cage. Todays price on the T5 looks new to me and is (IMO) a great deal at $330.

 

[rossgrant]

2TB TB3 X5 is $1100. (2500MB/s)
2TB 860 EVO is $330 (450MB/s in USB3 case $25)
2TB Samsung T5 is $330 (550 MB/s USB 3.1 (TB3 port)
Akitio 4 bay TB3 to SATA3 box (~$300 - 550MB/s) stuff with drives of choice

For backup and general archive the T5 would be my choice today. X5 is amazing if you need the speed but very expensive. FWIW - I needed another 2TB on my 2017 imac and added a 860EVO to my Akitio cage. Todays price on the T5 looks new to me and is (IMO) a great deal at $330.

Wow - thanks so much for the info guys! The video and price points are really helpful.

The 2TB T5 is SO much cheaper on Amazon.com - at $329.

It’s £440 on Amazon.co.uk

There’s no difference right?

If I get it from .com - it’s the same drive?

No difference between US and UK.

Amazon will deliver and take care of duty for me for $5 it says.

I think it will be perfect for my needs. The X5 is probably overkill.

 

[propower]

Wow - thanks so much for the info guys! The video and price points are really helpful.

The 2TB T5 is SO much cheaper on Amazon.com - at $329.

It’s £440 on Amazon.co.uk

There’s no difference right?

If I get it from .com - it’s the same drive?

No difference between US and UK.

Amazon will deliver and take care of duty for me for $5 it says.

I think it will be perfect for my needs. The X5 is probably overkill.

I can almost swear the T5 was $440 last week (when I bought the 860). No idea how US to UK pricing works out... good luck

 

[Crash Davis]

The pricing on some of these SSD external drives jumps all over the place. The 2TB Sandisk Extreme is on Amazon today for $349. It was $360ish a few days ago and one day last week it was $299.

 

[Kurri]

https://www.promise.com/us/Products/Pegasus

I use pegasus products. works great, never had one fail on me yet.

 

[sergiobaschi]

For long term storage, I would have considered an Icy Box chassis with 4+ 3.5” drives, maybe in Raid 0. You will not get fast transfer speeds, but storaged files aren’t supposed to be transfered a lot...

 

[Kfamily]

The pricing on some of these SSD external drives jumps all over the place. The 2TB Sandisk Extreme is on Amazon today for $349. It was $360ish a few days ago and one day last week it was $299.

Consider adding it to your amazon wish list. They will send you alerts for lightning deals and other big price cuts and you can buy it then.

 

[MacRS4]

It really does depend on whether that data is to be 'stored' or 'worked on' doesn't it. I use that X5 and the SanDisk for my operational stuff, but have a large Synology NAS for my general storage. Works well - but I'd never try operating directly from the NAS, it's just not fast enough.

 

[tomscott1988]

Ye its not great for archive tho. I understand after a project is done get rid of the excess assets but for me I tend to get asked to revisit or make amends down the line so archive is important.

Depends what you need, fast storage is all well and good but its expensive and not necessary. For a 4k workflow 550mb/s is more than adequate and you can get that from bays in a raid. Main issue for me is back up, so I run 2 of these solutions one as main storage another a direct back up then I use another fast storage option for caches etc

Prefer to keep my internal drive clean.

I would suggest you should look at something like the Terramaster TB D5, Caldigit T4 or OWC Thunderbay 6

All have 4-6 bay capacity, all perform up to 650mb/s with raid 5 spinning HDDs, you can also use SSDs in raid up to about 1200mb/s depending on how you set them up. Best of both worlds. You can determine what you need by your drive selection and raid type.

The nice thing about the OWC is it has an NVME storage space too so you can add a super quick NVME - use that as a scratch or as a bootable volume because trim is available over TB3 with the mac. The owc has 7 storage bays in total. Pretty impressive and the unit with no drives is only $650.

Most importantly they are daisy chainable with 2 TB3 ports on the rear so it means you can add another drive like a Samsung X5 for faster storage or even daisy chain a TB 3 dock. They all also have a secondary display port so again you dont use up the TB3 ports on the machine for basic needs, those TB3 ports run at 40gb/s so a secondary display is a bit of a waste of the bandwidth.

For example for me I have an external Apple 27" Cinema Display and it would need a Mini display to USBC to work with the iMac and waste that port. I dont need 2 5k neither a secondary as 4k so the 27 is fine for non critical work like email, web, itunes etc and I use the 5k as the production display.

Main downside of the iMac is it only has 2 TB3 ports and both are on the same bus, whereas the iMac pro and mac mini have 4 each set of 2 is on a different bus.

 

[joema2]

...
I edit lots of video, so want to get a decent solution for video storage if possible.

I shoot about 125GB of video a week - but don't need to keep it past a month or so.

What do you reckon is the best way to go?

An external SSD with TB3 - like this Sandisk...Or something else? I know Samsung do very fast drives don't they?...

My documentary team shoots up to 1 TB per day, so we use lots of storage. For offloading on site the Samsung T5 and Sandisk Extreme Portable SSDs work fine. They both have about the same performance -- roughly 500 MB/sec.

Any drive -- even SSD -- should be backed up. In the field we usually offload duplicate data to two Samsung T5s.

For editing back at home, we use several 4-drive 32 TB OWC spinning arrays in RAID-0. Each one has a redundant pair which is backed up nightly and kept off line. We don't see the need for higher RAID versions since media doesn't change much and even RAID-5 or -6 must be backed up.

Re higher speed external SSDs, unless you are editing multiple streams of 4k RAW video, the data rate isn't that high. For 4k/29.97 8-bit 4:2:0 H264 it is about 12.5 MB/sec. Some cameras like the GH5 can do 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 at 18.75 MB/sec. 4k/24 ProRes 422 is about 58 MB/sec. The GH5 4k All-I codec is about 50 MB/sec, roughly the same as 4k ProRes 422.

So editing four layers or 4-camera multicam using 4k/24 ProRes 422 would be about 232 MB/sec -- at 1x playback. For scrubbing through the timeline, the NLE normally doesn't show every frame or uses other optimizations. When fast forwarding at 10x speed on 2-camera multicam using 4k/24 ProRes 422, I see about 200 MB/sec max -- that's FCPX 10.4.5.

My iMac Pro 2TB internal SSD does about 2950 MB/sec read, 2480 MB/sec write -- but when editing video I can't tell much difference between that vs having the media on the external T5 or Samsung SSDs.

So you want your storage to be fast, but beyond a certain point it doesn't help much for a real-world editing workflow.

If you are editing H264 or any similar "Long GOP" variant, I/O matters even less since the compression keeps the data rate low. In that case it is more a CPU/GPU limit for decode, encode and effects.