Internal SSD or External RAID Storage

[jday7757]

I’m getting ready to upgrade my late 2014 Retina iMac with a new 2019 iMac and am trying to decide between the 512GB SSD and the 1TB SSD. My current iMac has a 512GB SSD and I store basically everything on a 6TB RAID array. I use the internal SSD only for MacOS, applications and basic settings and that only takes up 50% of the SSD. This is probably a “personal opinion” question but should I be using the internal SSD for more things (i.e., photos,etc)? I’ve been happy with speed of the RAID although it isn’t nearly as fast as the internal SSD. I do quite a it of video editing with Premiere Pro with all footage stored on the RAID, but use an external SSD for scratch and cache. The Premiere timeline runs smoothly with this setup.

So, my question is whether or not I should be storing more stuff on the internal SSD? If so, I could go with the 1TB SSD on my new iMac. If not, I’ll save some money and stick with the 512GB one. Thanks for any suggestions/opinions.

 

[leondurupt]

Hey jday7757, I haven't seen a reply to your question, I may be able to give my opinion but I'd need to know more, or have you already solved this?

 

[cynics]

Ever run Blackmagic Disk Speed Test? Its specifically designed for this. If it checks ALL the boxes I would just go with 512gb if you feel 1tb is out of your price range. If it doesn't then I would ask yourself if there will ever be a time you are editing the types of videos that won't work well in the future.

Apple was one of the first OEM's to offer high end nvme SSD in their systems specifically for video editing.

Like you I store most things externally. This is the Blackmagic though...

External

Internal

Look at the read write on the right hand side....lol

 

[jday7757]

Hey jday7757, I haven't seen a reply to your question, I may be able to give my opinion but I'd need to know more, or have you already solved this?

I simply decided that the 512GB ssd was sufficient for me (not necessarily a money issue) and went ahead and purchased my 2019 iMac with it.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'd get the 512gb internal SSD to serve as the boot drive (OS, apps, accounts).
Use an external drive (SSD or HDD) if you need "more" -- it becomes your "primary external storage" drive.

And something else...
You'll need at least one more external drive to serve as the backup for both of the above.