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iMac Pro iMac Pro - external storage

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Sahib7

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 19, 2010
50
3
I'm thinking about replacing my Mac Pro 5,1 with an iMac Pro (base configuration).
With leaving the tower behind a new question arises - that of external storage.

I'm currently using internal HDDs (as Archive Storage and for TimeMachine) and SSDs (for OS, Apps and as Cache) together with a NAS (Synology DS918+).

When changing to the iMac Pro I would use the internal SSD (1TB) for OS, Apps and for my current projects (Lightroom-Imports and Video Files I'm working on) - all in all I can live with 1TB of Storage.
But I have a Lightroom catalogue of about 2TB as well as a media catalogue of about 2TB.

So I'm thinking about using the TimeMachine Backup via the NAS (instead of the internal HDDs on the Mac Pro) and buying an external HDD (USB3 or Thunderbolt) for my Lightroom catalogue as well as my media files. This external HDD should be reasonably fast as I sometimes export or re-develope a RAW file from my Lightroom catalogue. Due to its size an external SSD is not a viable alternative...

What would be your recommendations?

Thank you!!!
 
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I went from my original Mac Pro to an iMac when TB first came out and went with a Pegasus R6 12GB. Then I moved to a 2013 MP with only 256 and the Pegasus became my primary storage. Later I bought a QNAP TVS-1282T to replace the Pegasus that was getting full, but I found the thunderbolt bridge network to be flakey at best so I upgraded the drives in the Pegasus and put it back to work.

I bought an Akito 10GBe TB2 adapter but have never been thrilled with it. The R6 is working great with the new iMP and I am going to try a straight Cat6e to the QNAP and see how it goes. I will be running TM to it and using all the other awesome features QNAP brings, but keeping my primary storage on the Pegasus.

I highly recommend th3 big QNAP, but if I was doing it again, I would get the smaller unit and bigger drives to reduce noise and forgo the TB interface in favor of 10GBe. Be aware that the QNAPs do not sit on th3 bus as a TB device, but as a PC networked via a bridge(as it is).

Now off to get a Belkin Express Dock to move most of the connections from the back of the iMac and off the desk. I saved $3000 by buying the base model amp very what I originally was planning to get, so I’ve got some room to accessorize since I’ve got a ton of fast storage already in place and I am finding it pretty hard to really stress the 8c until.
 
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Not what you want but I just got a 1.92TB Sandisk Extreme 900 SSD today (so fast it's crazy). £600, but thinking of keeping backups of all working FCP X projects on it and then moving onto my Drobo 5D when I'm done. Will backup my Drobo onto a portable HD overnight. Not particularly elegant but putting stuff onto portable HDs as a second backup means I can grab them on the way out if neccessary. Seemed a much cheaper 'upgrade' than maxing out the internal.

Decided to moved my iTunes library to my MBP as it seems such a waste of disk space on the iMac Pro!
 
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kingjames1970 said:
Decided to moved my iTunes library to my MBP as it seems such a waste of disk space on the iMac Pro!
Click to expand...

If your iTunes music will fit, you might be able to put it on a large SD memory card and leave it in the back panel SD card slot. It will be slower than your SSD, but plenty fast for music files. I never use the rear slot as I prefer using a small card reader sitting on my desk under the iMac for camera cards.
 
kingjames1970 said:
Not what you want but I just got a 1.92TB Sandisk Extreme 900 SSD today (so fast it's crazy). £600, but thinking of keeping backups of all working FCP X projects on it and then moving onto my Drobo 5D when I'm done. Will backup my Drobo onto a portable HD overnight. Not particularly elegant but putting stuff onto portable HDs as a second backup means I can grab them on the way out if neccessary. Seemed a much cheaper 'upgrade' than maxing out the internal.

Decided to moved my iTunes library to my MBP as it seems such a waste of disk space on the iMac Pro!
Click to expand...

I agree, the 1.92TB Sandisk Extreme 900 SSD is a great choice. It's amazingly fast. Expensive, but you gets what you pay for with this gem.

For me with my MP6,1 6-core that will be replaced by my new iMac Pro in next few weeks, I have a number of externals that will easily move over to be used with the iMac Pro. I also use Thunderbolt 3 docks to avoid cable clutter behind the iMac Pro.

For the OP I do recommend the 1.92TB Sandisk Extreme 900 SSD.
 
hfg said:
If your iTunes music will fit, you might be able to put it on a large SD memory card and leave it in the back panel SD card slot. It will be slower than your SSD, but plenty fast for music files. I never use the rear slot as I prefer using a small card reader sitting on my desk under the iMac for camera cards.
Click to expand...
That's a clever idea! I've got more card readers than sense, but my library is too big. Quite ingenious though :)
My only bug bear with the iMP is the ports all still being at the back.
 
kingjames1970 said:
That's a clever idea! I've got more card readers than sense, but my library is too big. Quite ingenious though :)
My only bug bear with the iMP is the ports all still being at the back.
Click to expand...

Maybe run a single TB3 6' cable to a TB3 dock to cure cable clutter. This is my solution. :)
 
bxs said:
Maybe run a single TB3 6' cable to a TB3 dock to cure cable clutter. This is my solution. :)
Click to expand...
Was just about to ask! What dock would you recommend? I get confused looking at them all! I'd like a card reader, couple of standard USB 3, couple of USB C - everything else can get plugged in the back.
 
Sahib7 said:
I'm thinking about replacing my Mac Pro 5,1 with an iMac Pro (base configuration)...With leaving the tower behind a new question arises - that of external storage....I'm currently using internal HDDs (as Archive Storage and for TimeMachine) and SSDs (for OS, Apps and as Cache) together with a NAS (Synology DS918+)...
Click to expand...

I have several OWC Thunderbay 4 arrays and they work great. You can get the chassis only, or populated with various capacities up to 48 TB, and with or without SoftRAID bundled. I formerly used hardware-based RAID but I found SoftRAID was just as fast and didn't lock me into a proprietary low-level RAID format: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2IVKIT0GB/

Even though a fast USB 3 drive or even a JBOD USB 3 chassis might seem less expensive, you usually end up need more storage over time. With Thunderbolt it's just a lot easier to add and configure.

The Promise Pegasus series is also very good and I have one of them, also several G-Tech G-RAID Thunderbolt arrays: http://a.co/2wItNZS
 
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I was - honestly - thinking about buying an 8TB innov8 or an 8TB LaCie Porsche Design USB-C or a LaCie d2 USB3 6TB external HDD to keep costs down.
Speed is not that crucial for this use case, although having all my Lightroom RAWs on a speedy disc would be nice (although not crucial as I’m going to have my Lightroom catalogue, my cache, the app as well as current projects on the internal SSD)....

So my plan was to buy one of these external HDDs to put my data there while working on my projects on the internal 1TB SSD (workflow: import RAWs into a local TEMP folder, import into Lightroom, devolope, tag, etc. and then move the files onto the external HDD via Lightroom; same with video projects).

I'm currently using my Synology NAS 918+ with 2x10TB Ironwolf HDDs. I'm thinking about adding another one, which increases storage on the NAS from currently 10TB (Synology Hybrid RAID 2x10TB) to 20TB (with 3x10TB). That way I can activate the TimeMachine Service on the NAS for backup purposes (I still have a few HDDs here with a USB3 dock for additional backups using backupList+, by the way a fantastic piece of software).
But for storage purposes (Lighromm catalogue), I guess a local USB3 disc is faster than the NAS....
 
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Sahib7, I know LaCie Porsche products are great to look at but LaCie make some really horrid unreliable hardware IMO. G-Technology G-Drive tend to be more reliable.
 
I have used LaCie Porsche designed products for archival and TM storage for many years without a problem. I also have their Bolt2 and 250GB SSD Porsche slim design. The trouble with all of them is that they don't offer enough storage for what I am currently doing. My thought going forward is to get a 2 drive 20 - 24TB drive for TM back-ups, like this one when it because available with TB3 https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB2U3MED24T/ a second drive for archival back-ups and this drive https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4-mini-RAID5 configured at 4TB SSD when it is available with TB3 for current projects. All of my drives are DAS.
 
I don't have much experience with OWC gear Driftless but that Mercury Elite Pro Dual looks like a beast!

As a matter of interest, any reason you prefer DAS?
 
It is less of a preference, I have never had the need for NAS. I work only on my iMac and my few drives are on a bookshelf near me.

OWC gear is new to me as well. I was considering the G-Tech and LaCie recent offerings of TB3 2 drive arrays. My main interest in OWC is the ThuderBay Mini and Mercury Elite Pro Dual looked like an attractive offering. It is also slightly less deep than the LaCie and G-Techs which fits my needs a little better.
 
A few months back I was able to get a 24TB Lacie 6big from someone on eBay for $1300. It currently configured in RAID-0 and it's giving me ~1200MB read and ~1000 MB write, almost SSD speeds.
 
On my ntbmbp I use my synology for my music, movies and time machine backup. Since I brought the 128gb version, I got a Samsung 500gb T5 usb type c external for my boot camp and vm’s and getting nearly 500mbs through my owc tb3 Dock.

Just waiting for my egpu to arrive now.
 
Hmm, what about a Terramaster D2-310 2 bay RAID. Together with my 2x3TB WD REDs in RAID0 this should be pretty speedy. Reviews look promising (for example https://www.anandtech.com/show/1159...535-sata-to-usb-31-gen-2-type-c-mini-review/4 ) an the case is said to be pretty silent and does surely look nice beside an iMac Pro ;)
With about 180€ it looks to be a pretty good value...

Or do you have another recommendation for an external RAID0 solution?
 
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Sahib7 said:
Hmm, what about a Terramaster D2-310 2 bay RAID. Together with my 2x3TB WD REDs in RAID0 this should be pretty speedy. Reviews look promising (for example https://www.anandtech.com/show/1159...535-sata-to-usb-31-gen-2-type-c-mini-review/4 ) an the case is said to be pretty silent and does surely look nice beside an iMac Pro ;)
With about 180€ it looks to be a pretty good value...

Or do you have another recommendation for an external RAID0 solution?
Click to expand...

I was actually thinking of my a Terramaster NAS myself! Reviews on amazon.com (which are normally a good bell weather) are stellar. And as you point out Anandtech give it a good review also.

Personally, I think Synology are a bit overrated.
 
komatsu said:
I was actually thinking of my a Terramaster NAS myself! Reviews on amazon.com (which are normally a good bell weather) are stellar. And as you point out Anandtech give it a good review also.
Click to expand...

For a NAS I would always recommend Synology (because of their excellent OS and support) but we are talking about a DAS and in that case the Terramaster D2-310 looks pretty nice, indeed!
 
You can keep the Mac Pro 5,1 running, but stuff it with HDDs and the set it up as a file server, so it is like a NAS. With gigiabit networking you will get about 100MB/s which isn’t that worse than single USB externals.

If you want speedier DAS then I would invest in a TB3 RAID enclosure, or get a G-RAID which has HGST Helium drives included.
 
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