Sandisk Extreme Pro vs G40 vs Other Options?

[GooseInTheCaboose]

I’d like to hook up a fast external SSD to a Mac Mini and keep my Apple Photos Library (over 750GB) on the external SSD.

I want to be able to quickly move the scroll bar through my library and have the movement and refreshing of the thumbnails be BUTTERY smooth. I want zero perceptible lag of loading previews, or when scrolling through a 5k video from my gopro or drone. And I want to be able to edit that 5k video in real time with zero lag/stuttering.

Which external storage option do I need for this experience? Is the Sandisk Extreme Pro fast enough for this? Should I get the g40 instead? Do I even need either of these? Is the Sandisk Extreme adequate?

I think my real question is, which read/write speeds to I require for the experience I seek?

The Sandisk Extreme Pro gets 2000mbps, the regular extreme gets 1000, and the g40 approaches 3000+

 

[kenoh]

It isn't just about the SSD speed I am afraid, you need to consider the connection to the computer and the computer's ability to consume the data at sufficient speed. You need a USB 3 or USB-C (4) connection to get the throughput but none of this would be faster than an internal drive connected directly to the system bus.

The next piece of the puzzle is whether the Mac Mini has sufficient grunt and RAM to render the images and movies quickly enough to give that buttery smooth experience. Have you increased the cache settings in your editing software so it maintains a bigger chunk in memory while editing? Anything in memory is accessible much more quickly than even off of the internal drives. Also, if you are running with limited RAM, then it will be paging the memory out to disk more which slows it down.

For 5K movies I fear the mac Mini is not up to the task of rendering them fast enough.

I doubt the SSD is the choke point in this flow TBH so choice of SSD is somewhat unimportant however having said this, personally I typically prefer Sandisk or Samsung externals.

 

[Ray2]

Above. You’re looking in the wrong place to meet your criteria. You don’t mention what mini you have. Is the internal replaceable?

 

[Clix Pix]

I have both the Sandisk Extreme and the Extreme Pro; they're each very fast, especially the Pro, and they work well for my purposes, which is primarily for transferring data and image files back-and-forth and also for backup/archving of older files. In addition, I also have a few Samsung T5s and T7s and they are pretty speedy, too. Something else to consider: the Samsung X5 is very, very fast, as it is NVME/Thunderbolt 3 based. Unfortunately that has been discontinued, so might not be readily available anywhere now.

 

[GooseInTheCaboose]

Does this include the m2pro mini even if configured with 32gb ram? (Struggling with 5k video?)

 

[kenoh]

Does this include the m2pro mini even if configured with 32gb ram? (Struggling with 5k video?)

While the M2pro throttles faster than the M1 pro resulting in it not being as much of a jump in performance, if not any at all. Neither of them are a slouch but I would certainly read up on it a bit because of the way the throttling works it seems that getting the M1 Max or Pro seems better for bang for buck.

I am pretty much just a stills photographer so what i deem good enough when editing video is a world away from yourself so this commentary is coming from the IT system architecture angle as opposed to a video editor.

The M2pro certainly with FCP should be fine - which has been updated to exploit the Apple silicon. I am not sure about other tools that are still written to "cover all the bases" i.e. Windows, Intel Macs etc. 32GB of RAM on the apple silicon should make it capable of holding sufficient in memory to help with smoothing out things like scrubbing. I think 5k needs a steady bitrate in excess of 105Mbps so by the time you have a couple of pieces of footage to stitch together, then other apps running in the background, then 32GB *may* seem a little cramped at times.

Now, the spec you stated should not have a problem with 1 or 2 5K video clips at a time and the ports are USB 4 (40gbps max throughput) and so the SSD will fly for sure. Again though, I am not sure that you are going to go wrong with either of the options.

I would recommend taking a piece of footage into the Apple store and trying it out on a few different machines for sure - don't take what I am peddling as 100% accurate.

I will add my usual caveat - "I am an idiot, feel free to ignore me". If I had a device capable of 5k video I could try it for you as I am writing this on an M2Pro 16GB MBP.

 

[Mr. Bear]

Don‘t get the Sandisk Pro drives. They’re no faster on Macs than non-Pro drives and cost more (and are physically larger)