Need help with reliable backup solution for new 14" MBP M3

[Alameda]

I switched to SSD's about two years ago, because I was worried about HDD failure under extreme conditions - for example below zero temperatures in my car when I am away from home, over 100 F in my car on day's like today, potentially humidity in my climate controlled storage unit, and a general fear of the element with a delicate heaad and platters in a HDD.

I thought moving to all SSD backups was a SAFER way to backup and protect my data?!




I'm not willing to put personal and business data on any shared environment regardless of how "safe" people claim it is.





Not claiming to be an expert, but I have just read too many things online with people's Time Machine backup getting corrupt and not being able to recover. (Seems more common if you use encryption, but I don't know.)

Also, in the days when you could create bootable clones with CCC, Time Machine was not a viable option for recovery, because who has time to recover a 2TB backup onto a new drive (or newly formatted drive)?

I thought in the past Time Machine's "incremental" backups involved fragments of actual files, and to me that was a non-starter. However, if it is true that TM works like CCC and is file-based, then maybe it isn't as bad as I thought?

Being a Mac user, I should definitely educate myself more on Time Machine - even if I don't use it.

The plus of Time Machine is that it is incredibly easy to use: When you attach a new external drive, the Mac asks you if you want to use it for Time Machine. Click Yes, and you’re done. There’s nothing else to do.

I haven’t read recent reports of Time Machine corruption; it seems that Apple has fixed what it needs to on their end. It is likely that a lot of the problems reported were storage media related and not a fault of Time Machine.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@steve123,

There are many TB 3/4 SSD enclosures that achieve max TB speed with one NVMe SSD blade. For clarity, max TB speed for an SSD is when the TB controller tunnels 4 lanes of PCIe gen 3 data at 32 Gbps. Sonnet, ACASIS, Setachi, OWC, INDMEM and others all make enclosures that will achieve read/write speeds of at least 2800 MB/s with a single NVMe SSD that has 4 lanes of PCIe gen 3 or better IO. The most recent enclosures are using the ASMedia 2464PD controller that is a bit more efficient than the Intel controllers used in the older models and achieve speeds greater than 3000 MB/s.

Can you recommend a few specific drives that would accomplish this, and that you would trust your data with?

Any links to said drives on B&H's website would be most appreciated since that is where I buy all of my tech stuff.

 

[Andrey84]

I've read this thread only in part, so apologies if this has been discussed:
1. What is the volume of data you need backed up in terabytes?
2. If it's 2TB and under, have you considered the most obvious solution - to pay for iCloud? It's $9.99 per month ($120 per year) for 2TB. I know it's probably more expensive in the long run, but this needs to be weighed against:
A. Time spent fiddling with external drives vs seamless iCloud backup
B. The instant nature the iCloud backup vs delays of day(s)/week(s) using the external drive - how much losing a day's/week's worth of work can cost you?
C. Ability to access your data from anywhere from any Apple device or via a web browser using iCloud.
D. This 2TB is shared with your family.

 

[steve123]

Can you recommend a few specific drives that would accomplish this, and that you would trust your data with?

Any links to said drives on B&H's website would be most appreciated since that is where I buy all of my tech stuff.

Sonnet provides a lot of flexibility but it is more expensive than many of the others. It comes with a built in fan for cooling which is helpful if you are doing a lot of video work:

Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock - SONNETTECH

Thunderbolt docking station with two M.2 NVMe SSD slots, four USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports, and up to 5K display support. For Mac, Windows, and iPad Pro.

www.sonnettech.com

There are a lot of people that have used the ACASIS TBU405. The Maiwo K1719 uses the ASMedia controller and looks interesting and you can attach a fan.

Here is a list of some TB SSD enclosures with some technical info on the controllers:

List of fastest USB4 ASM2464PD & TB3 JHL7440 SSD enclosures (May 2024)

[2024/05/22 – Additional models] IntroductionFastest external M.2 SSD enclosuresThunderbolt 5 JHL9480 enclosuresUSB4 ASM2464PD SSD enclosuresRetail modelsODM modelsThunderbolt 3 JHL7440 enclo…

dancharblog.wordpress.com

When selecting an NVMe SSD to go with the enclosure, pay attention to power and endurance (TBW). Stay away from Samsung, there is a known issue with TRIM on Macs. The Techpowerup website has a good selector guide:

TechPowerUp

Solid-state-drive database with specifications for products launched in recent years. Includes specs, photos, and technical details.

www.techpowerup.com

Have a look at these threads:

Thunderbolt 4 & NVMe M.2 External Storage: Read/Write Speeds?

I plan to supplement Mac Studio/M1 Max storage by connecting one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports to an enclosure containing two 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSDs in RAID 0. The enclosure is an Asus XG Station Pro. This enclosure has an excellent fan and ventilation. I currently use it to run an AMD RX...

forums.macrumors.com

Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

Thunderbolt 3 / 4 / USB 4 NVMe Enclosures The best enclosures for high speed transfers (2.5GB/s+) usually have one of these 2 chipsets: Thunderbolt 3: Intel's JHL7440, e.g. Acasis TBU-401 / 405 Orico TB3-S2 USB 4: Asmedia ADM2464PD Jeyi TB-2464 Maiwo 2464 ( NewEgg / AliExpress) Satechi Pro...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@Alameda,

You - along with several others here at MacRumors - are a WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE!!!

For starters... I have no idea how you can fill a 4TB drive with data that isn't video.

Let me clarify...

Right now I have like 1.9TB (out of 2TB) on my 2015 rMBP.

I do have a lot of video on my laptop, BUT I am not shooting or editing it.

I try to watch at least 1-2 hours of videos off of YouTube every night before bed. When I see a video description that looks interesting, I just download it to my laptop using 4K video downloader. Over just the last year, I have build a massive library of thousands of videos includng How-To tech videos, plus a lot of things from the news.)

But my video library is only maybe 800GB right now.

I have like 700 GB of PDF'ed news articles on my laptop.

And I have like 400GB of unrendered audio files - that I need to get to - on my laptop.

Plus all of my spreadsheets and what-not.

I do a lot of "research" for my startup business, and I save EVERYTHING - screenshots, video capture, video downloads, audio capture, and so on.

I can **easily** fill up another 2TB of storage on a new laptop in the next 2-3 years.

BUT... let's take a look at that Samsung drive. It's rated at about 1 gigabyte per second, which is very fast. I looked up its benchmarks, and found this measurement. About 900 MB/second.
View attachment 2391519

What software are you using to get these speed gauges?

And how much does that cost?

I ran the same benchmark program on my 4 TB SanDisk Pro Thunderbolt SSD (on sale at $399 at B&H): About 2.5 GB/second. That's a full 2.5x faster.
View attachment 2391520

You know, a couple of years ago I thought the people at B&H Photo were "gods" with all of their knowledge.

Now, I regularly find that not only do a lot of B&H employees know less than I do, but they lack "real world" knowledge, and often give bad advice - like the Samsung T7 (USB) drive.

Looks like all of those YouTube videos I download and watch every night are helping me out! (That and the fact that so many people here are MacRumors are DEFINITELY GENIUSES!!!)

Glad that I came here to ask for advice before taking the advice of the B&H employee I was chatting with recently.

(The last thing I want to do is drop $5,000+ on a powerful new MacBook Pro and then not know how to use it, and not know how to push it to it's limits!)

Last, I ran the same benchmark on my 2022 MacBook Pro 14" internal SSD: About 3.8 to 5.1 GB/second.
View attachment 2391523

Conclusion:
1) The external Thunderbolt SSD is very noticeably faster than the USB-based external SSD (Samsung also makes a Thunderbolt version).

Thanks for saving me from making a BIG MISTAKE on purchasing that first drive!!

2) Whether you buy the Thunderbolt SSD or not, I don't think it matters that much, because for your active video editing session, it's always going to be faster to use the internal drive for active editing

Makes sense.

then move (not copy) the finished product to the SSD. Your active video session is only going to be a few gigabytes; it will fit on your internal SSD and then you can move it. The file copy might take 2.5x longer to the USB-based SSD, but that's probably not a big deal.

What about people who claim they filled up 4TB of space editing a video?

Are those ProRes and RAW shooters talking?

How much of a "work space" seems reasonable to you? (I would hope that 1-2 TB of free internal space is more than enough for most video-editors?)

Two other points:
1) I still can't fathom how you absolutely need 4TB of accessible non-video related storage, but that's none of my business.

No secrets here, and I don't mind you asking.

I just have a massive repository of data and knowledge that I like to have at my fingertips for research. (Last year I ran out of space, saved a whole directly to an external drive and stashed it away in storage, and then one day I was in a bind and needed that data, and couldn't access it.

Sure, I am long overdo to do some "Spring cleaning" on my MacBook Pro, but even if I did that, I still use a lot more storage than your average user does.

Either way, as @Ben J. said, "Besides, IMO gear should be used, and even pushed to its limits. What's the point of buying new fancy gear if you're not going to take full advantage of it?"

FWIW, once I launch my business, and things settle down I probably can do a better job of saying, "I may need this data at any given time, so always have it on my laptop. While this data I rarely use, and it will be fine in storage."

Until then, most of what I have on this old MBP I am typing on, I use in fairly regularly.

Shy of having a lot of digital media files (audio/video/photo), that is just an incredible amount of data to have. My Documents folder contains at least ten years of data, without photos, audio and video. It takes up 36 GB. But, again, that's your business.

My startup is built on content. More specifically, based on research and analysis.

To give you a sense, I save about 8,000 - 10,000 new articles a year. Along with that, I do lots of captures using SangIt and as mentioned downloading a lot of video and audio. So that adds up.

(I also take around 10,000 photos a year for my business, and shoot maybe 8TB of video a year - of course that IS stored on external drives.)

2) Cables matter a lot. These new ultra high-speed connections require extremely good cables.

So where do I find those?

Presumably if I buy this drive, SanDisk Professional 4TB PRO-G40 SSD Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD, then the cable it comes with is sufficient, right?

Or do I need to buy a separate "ultra high-speed" cable on my own?

When I bought my iPhone 15 Pro Max last week - I think it comes today - I picke dup this cable from Apple: Thunderbolt 4 (USB‑C) Pro Cable (1m) $69.00

Is that a good cable?

And how would it compare to the cable that comes with the SanDisk Professional 4TB PRO-G40?

Take very good care of your high speed cables, and avoid flexing/twisting them. There's a reason why these devices come with very short cables. If you mistreat your cables, they'll still work but your speeds may fall dramatically.

Good advice!

And not all USB-C to USB-C cables are the same! Don't mix up a USB-C charging cable with a USB-C ultra high speed data cable, or else your 2 GB/s drive will become a 480 mbit/s drive.

On that point, so how do I know that I have the right cables?

Other than looking at the specs - and maybe coming here for advice - it seems like maybe I could use the software you used to post those fancy speedometer looking charts above, to test things out?

Yeah, the last thing I want to do is spend all of this money, and then not be using it properly, and not getting the full benefits!!

Any advice on how to avoid making dumb mistakes like that would be priceless!

 

[Ambrosia7177]

@Alameda,

The plus of Time Machine is that it is incredibly easy to use: When you attach a new external drive, the Mac asks you if you want to use it for Time Machine. Click Yes, and you’re done. There’s nothing else to do.

I haven’t read recent reports of Time Machine corruption; it seems that Apple has fixed what it needs to on their end. It is likely that a lot of the problems reported were storage media related and not a fault of Time Machine.

What are your thoughts on platter-based drives versus SSD when it comes to longevity?

Is it true that an unpowered SSD can potentially start losing data after a year, and that after 2-3 years, you are certain to have lost your data?

If so, then I need to start buying platter-based drives (i.e. HDD's) again for my long-term storage needs.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

I've read this thread only in part, so apologies if this has been discussed:
1. What is the volume of data you need backed up in terabytes?

Depends on context...

I have 2TB on my laptop right now that needs regular backing up.

My new MBP M3 Max will have a 4TB internal drive.

I have 25TB of data already backed up off-site.

Am launching my business this year - which is heavily based on videography (think photo/video journalist) - so my data storage needs are sure to go through the roof. (Can see myself shooting another 10-15TB by year end if I go light.)

Never having done video-editing, I have no clue what I need for editing all of the video I capture in DaVinci Resolve. Fortunately, though, I am not shooting ProRes or RAW for the time being, so that helps a little.)

The main purpose of this thread is to...

1.) Find an external, single-drive solution to back up my 4TB MacBook Pro on a regular basis that is both FAST and RELIABLE.

2.) Find an external, single-drive solution that is FAST ENOUGH to do video-editing in DaVinci Resolve and have that external drive be the working drive. (Of course, I would never mix-and-match a working drive with a backup drive.)

I am okay now with my offsite backups - other than I am curious about platter-based HDD vs SSD longevity. (Maybe I should just start anew thread on this?)

2. If it's 2TB and under, have you considered the most obvious solution - to pay for iCloud? It's $9.99 per month ($120 per year) for 2TB. I know it's probably more expensive in the long run, but this needs to be weighed against:
A. Time spent fiddling with external drives vs seamless iCloud backup
B. The instant nature the iCloud backup vs delays of day(s)/week(s) using the external drive - how much losing a day's/week's worth of work can cost you?
C. Ability to access your data from anywhere from any Apple device or via a web browser using iCloud.
D. This 2TB is shared with your family.

Nope. I will never put my personal life or my business on "the Cloud".

 

[Alameda]

@Alameda,



What are your thoughts on platter-based drives versus SSD when it comes to longevity?

Is it true that an unpowered SSD can potentially start losing data after a year, and that after 2-3 years, you are certain to have lost your data?

If so, then I need to start buying platter-based drives (i.e. HDD's) again for my long-term storage needs.

I don’t think that SSD’s are unreliable and I definitely don’t think they will fail in a year from sitting on a shelf.

Flash memory technology is used in pretty much every single electronic product sold today, from cars to airplanes to computers, smart phones, watches… on and on. It is incredibly reliable and far more immune to failure from vibration. Data centers make extensive use of SSD technology.

All Apple devices use SSD technology. Early technology wasn’t as good, but that was well over ten years ago.

Of course, those who buy the cheapest Chinese made crap are always the first to complain about reliability.

I studied computer backup, and the #1 actual use of restoring from a backup, by far, is theft. If someone breaks into your home or car, they will steal your laptop AND the backup drive. The best solution is an offsite backup, but if that isn’t possible, you get another backup drive and keep it in a well-hidden compartment. Bring it out once or twice a week, make the backup, immediately put it back.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

I don’t think that SSD’s are unreliable and I definitely don’t think they will fail in a year from sitting on a shelf.

Flash memory technology is used in pretty much every single electronic product sold today, from cars to airplanes to computers, smart phones, watches… on and on. It is incredibly reliable and far more immune to failure from vibration. Data centers make extensive use of SSD technology.

All Apple devices use SSD technology. Early technology wasn’t as good, but that was well over ten years ago.

Of course, those who buy the cheapest Chinese made crap are always the first to complain about reliability.

Is there any downside to adding platter-based HDD's into my offsite backup strategy?

I studied computer backup, and the #1 actual use of restoring from a backup, by far, is theft. If someone breaks into your home or car, they will steal your laptop AND the backup drive. The best solution is an offsite backup, but if that isn’t possible, you get another backup drive and keep it in a well-hidden compartment. Bring it out once or twice a week, make the backup, immediately put it back.

Interesting. (I guess the thieves are getting smarter and know to go after the backup too.)

Yeah, knowing that I will likely be away from home for months at a time, I do worry about what you say. (Especially since I refuse to use the Cloud.)

To your point, I guess if I stash an encrypted backup drive in with my (clean) underwear in my duffle bag, or maybe bury it in my trunk, that should be good enough to keep the thieves away?

The better solution is, though, to come back home and leave a backup there, so if my car gets stolen or broken into or a flood carries my car away, at least I have a fairly recent backup offsite.

 

[Alameda]

Is there any downside to adding platter-based HDD's into my offsite backup strategy?

Interesting. (I guess the thieves are getting smarter and know to go after the backup too.)

Yeah, knowing that I will likely be away from home for months at a time, I do worry about what you say. (Especially since I refuse to use the Cloud.)

To your point, I guess if I stash an encrypted backup drive in with my (clean) underwear in my duffle bag, or maybe bury it in my trunk, that should be good enough to keep the thieves away?

The better solution is, though, to come back home and leave a backup there, so if my car gets stolen or broken into or a flood carries my car away, at least I have a fairly recent backup offsite.

No, there’s nothing wrong with using platter-based HDD’s. They are larger, slower, and cheaper per terabyte. A 4TB platter HDD is about $90, while a comparable SSD is around $300 to $400 (and up).

I don’t think that thieves are getting “smarter.” They just see all the electronics stuff and grab it all. I think that if you’re going to live the van life for a year, you can find a very clever place to put an SSD which a thief will not find. When they break in, they try to get out in sixty seconds or less.

Getting your data offsite is always ideal, but it can be difficult to do from the road. I have a Synology platter-based RAID at home. I can access it remotely. But my internet connection with that thing is 100 mb/second, best case. Backups of gigabytes would take hours, if I wanted to backup from a remote location to the Synology at my home. OTOH, that’s exactly my long-term goal: Set up a second Synology at a friend’s home, and my Synology will automatically back itself up to that one. It’s super-slow, but that doesn’t matter at all.

 

[kschendel]

I switched to SSD's about two years ago, because I was worried about HDD failure under extreme conditions - for example below zero temperatures in my car when I am away from home, over 100 F in my car on day's like today, potentially humidity in my climate controlled storage unit, and a general fear of the element with a delicate heaad and platters in a HDD.

I thought moving to all SSD backups was a SAFER way to backup and protect my data?!

You'd have to look into the safe storage temperature range for each. I've seen hard drive specs suggesting that a storage range of -40C to 70C is reasonably safe, although it's best to avoid the extremes, and you have to avoid condensation. It's harder to find a good source for SSD storage temps, and the best I can glean is that they are comparable.

Operating temperature range is entirely different and there I'm pretty sure SSD's have an edge.

 

[Alameda]

@Alameda,

You - along with several others here at MacRumors - are a WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE!!!




Let me clarify...

Right now I have like 1.9TB (out of 2TB) on my 2015 rMBP.

I do have a lot of video on my laptop, BUT I am not shooting or editing it.

I try to watch at least 1-2 hours of videos off of YouTube every night before bed. When I see a video description that looks interesting, I just download it to my laptop using 4K video downloader. Over just the last year, I have build a massive library of thousands of videos includng How-To tech videos, plus a lot of things from the news.)

But my video library is only maybe 800GB right now.

I have like 700 GB of PDF'ed news articles on my laptop.

And I have like 400GB of unrendered audio files - that I need to get to - on my laptop.

Plus all of my spreadsheets and what-not.

I do a lot of "research" for my startup business, and I save EVERYTHING - screenshots, video capture, video downloads, audio capture, and so on.

I can **easily** fill up another 2TB of storage on a new laptop in the next 2-3 years.





What software are you using to get these speed gauges?

And how much does that cost?





You know, a couple of years ago I thought the people at B&H Photo were "gods" with all of their knowledge.

Now, I regularly find that not only do a lot of B&H employees know less than I do, but they lack "real world" knowledge, and often give bad advice - like the Samsung T7 (USB) drive.

Looks like all of those YouTube videos I download and watch every night are helping me out! (That and the fact that so many people here are MacRumors are DEFINITELY GENIUSES!!!)

Glad that I came here to ask for advice before taking the advice of the B&H employee I was chatting with recently.

(The last thing I want to do is drop $5,000+ on a powerful new MacBook Pro and then not know how to use it, and not know how to push it to it's limits!)





Thanks for saving me from making a BIG MISTAKE on purchasing that first drive!!




Makes sense.





What about people who claim they filled up 4TB of space editing a video?

Are those ProRes and RAW shooters talking?

How much of a "work space" seems reasonable to you? (I would hope that 1-2 TB of free internal space is more than enough for most video-editors?)





No secrets here, and I don't mind you asking.

I just have a massive repository of data and knowledge that I like to have at my fingertips for research. (Last year I ran out of space, saved a whole directly to an external drive and stashed it away in storage, and then one day I was in a bind and needed that data, and couldn't access it.

Sure, I am long overdo to do some "Spring cleaning" on my MacBook Pro, but even if I did that, I still use a lot more storage than your average user does.

Either way, as @Ben J. said, "Besides, IMO gear should be used, and even pushed to its limits. What's the point of buying new fancy gear if you're not going to take full advantage of it?"

FWIW, once I launch my business, and things settle down I probably can do a better job of saying, "I may need this data at any given time, so always have it on my laptop. While this data I rarely use, and it will be fine in storage."

Until then, most of what I have on this old MBP I am typing on, I use in fairly regularly.





My startup is built on content. More specifically, based on research and analysis.

To give you a sense, I save about 8,000 - 10,000 new articles a year. Along with that, I do lots of captures using SangIt and as mentioned downloading a lot of video and audio. So that adds up.

(I also take around 10,000 photos a year for my business, and shoot maybe 8TB of video a year - of course that IS stored on external drives.)





So where do I find those?

Presumably if I buy this drive, SanDisk Professional 4TB PRO-G40 SSD Thunderbolt 3 Portable SSD, then the cable it comes with is sufficient, right?

Or do I need to buy a separate "ultra high-speed" cable on my own?

When I bought my iPhone 15 Pro Max last week - I think it comes today - I picke dup this cable from Apple: Thunderbolt 4 (USB‑C) Pro Cable (1m) $69.00

Is that a good cable?

And how would it compare to the cable that comes with the SanDisk Professional 4TB PRO-G40?





Good advice!




On that point, so how do I know that I have the right cables?

Other than looking at the specs - and maybe coming here for advice - it seems like maybe I could use the software you used to post those fancy speedometer looking charts above, to test things out?

Yeah, the last thing I want to do is spend all of this money, and then not be using it properly, and not getting the full benefits!!

Any advice on how to avoid making dumb mistakes like that would be priceless!

Just noticed all these questions…
1) The hard disk benchmark software I use is made by BlackMagic, and it is free from the Mac App Store. It’s a decent way to compare the relative speeds of different devices, but realworld file copy performance is usually a little slower.

2) I don’t think B&H gave you bad advice. In fact, he didn’t recommend the most expensive drive. My own feeling is that there is the 10 Gbps USB or the 40 Gbps Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt drive will be faster, as we measured, but it won’t be full 40 Gbps. So you need to assess whether you will benefit from the speed. Maybe yes, maybe no.

3) If you buy the SanDisk drive, it will include a short USB-C to USB-C Thunderbolt cable and that will work. I know because I’ve done it.

4) The Apple Thunderbolt cable is very expensive because it is an active cable which supports the full 40 Gbps speed of Thunderbolt. Do you need that for attaching your phone to the computer to copy video off of the phone? I don’t think so. As I understand it, the iPhone 15 Pro supports file copy speeds of up to 10 Gbps. So, you can use a 40 Gbps cable, but you won’t need to spend so much. I use one of those 40 Gbps cables between my MacBook Pro and my OWC Thunderbolt Dock. In that case, 20 Gbps of the connection is used to drive my monitor and the rest is for my external SSD drive, Thunderbolt card reader, Ethernet, and so forth. The 40 Gbps link speed of Thunderbolt is rarely saturated by any single task. The Apple cable is going to be the same as the SanDisk cable, except it is longer (3 feet instead of 10 inches) and it probably supports 100 Watts of power, which you don’t need in this application.

5) You are not confused. The Thunderbolt and USB-C cable naming situation is pretty bad. You need to carefully read the capabilities of the cable you’re using:
* USB-C is the CONNECTOR. Hard stop right there. All that USB-C tells you is “It is this kind of physical connector.”
* USB is a connection method, or protocol.
* USB 3.2 can be 5, 10 or 20 Gbps. (so the version number alone doesn’t tell you)
* USB 4.0 can be 20 or 40 Gbps. (The version number alone doesn’t tell you).
* Thunderbolt 3 and 4 are 40 Gbps. Speed-wise, they are the same.
* USB-C supports pretty much every kind of connection… direct USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, and Power Delivery.

The Macs have several Thunderbolt 40 Gbps USB-C connectors. Each connector is its own 40 Gbps. The Mac supports pretty much everything that Thunderbolt and USB support — DisplayPort video, very fast USB-C, and Mac charging at up to 80 Watts (depends on the Mac model; some have a lower maximum current draw).

So the Mac is the easy part, because it does everything. You just need to know how many Watts you need to charge it, or just use the charger that comes with the Mac. But your peripheral devices/accessories will support certain speeds and you’ll need a cable that’s speed-rated for that device. There are USB-C to USB-C cables that only support charging, and USB-C to USB-C that support 40 Gbps but only low current charging.

Last: These ultra high speed 10 and 40 Gbps cables are fragile. Some have active electronics inside and all of them have very fine cable construction quality to deliver all that performance, so you want to treat them with care, always attach/remove by holding the connector not the cable, don’t twist or mistreat them, etc.