I’m using the OWC Helios unit with 4x2GB M.2 modules with the interchangeable tray. Quiet, fast and flexible with the ability to swap storage trays in and out. No problems so far after a year of heavy use.
edit GB s/b TB
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What external storage solutions are you going to use with the Mac Studio
- Thread starter Baja63
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edit GB s/b TB
This is what I do, too, and have been doing for several years. It is easy and reasonably convenient and I still have total control over my drives and the contents on them.
I also have a NAS and it supports 10GbE along with a 10GbE switch. Even so, I also ordered an Acasis NVME enclosure and Samsung 980 Pro 2TB for my Mac Studio. The extra speed of the locally attached thunderbolt storage is noticeable in some of my workflows.
I also use the NAS for Time Machine backups and for longer term storage of projects.
Thanks for the idea, I’m getting the same!I’m using the OWC Helios unit with 4x2GB M.2 modules with the interchangeable tray. Quiet, fast and flexible with the ability to swap storage trays in and out. No problems so far after a year of heavy use.
edit GB s/b TB
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My Crucial P3 4 TB NVMe SSD arrived this week so I put it in an Orico enclosure and it's hanging off one of the USB-C ports in the back. I copied the files from my Crucial 2 TB SATA3 SSD and have been using this for a few days. One oddity is that there are 2 directories that I tried to copy and when I do so, the drive dismounts. So I have those 2 directories on the Samsung T-3. There are about 1.7 TB of files on the new drive and it's noticeably faster than the previous drive, particularly writes. The heatsink on the top of the enclosure does get notably hot with sustained writes.
This is my first external NVMe drive (I do have one in another Windows build), and it seems fine so far.
The Crucial 2 TB SATA3 is now the boot drive for a gaming system.
This is my first external NVMe drive (I do have one in another Windows build), and it seems fine so far.
The Crucial 2 TB SATA3 is now the boot drive for a gaming system.
I have a mere 512GB on my Mac Studio but just started a small business and looking at allowing for 20TB storage. I'm working with hefty file everyday. I need an external to work on, a form of hard back-up and then an offsite backup option (maybe Backblaze could work for that?). Should I do Time Machine also? What can anyone recommend - I'm a storage/backup noob so really in the dark. Thanks!
Do what I did with My Mac Studio. I purchased a HDD Seagate One Touch Hub. I have a 14 TB version running. It mounted without issue. They make the One Touch up to 20TB. SSD's are somewhat more expensive I have a 4TB Samsung mounted, didn't really need it but it was on sale at a price I could not turn down. The One Touch is formatted in X-FAT a universal file system that works with Mac and Windows. The 4TB SSD internal is in a thunderbolt compatible external case with a Thunderbolt cable and I formatted it in APFS, Apple's file system. If you get the One Touch order a USB "C" to Micro B cable to go with it.
If you want to stay with APFS take a look at the external storage cases made by OWC. They have one with I plan on getting which you can use any SSD drive now available in it. If you use the PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives you can go to 90TB in the same case.
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Thanks for the advice!Do what I did with My Mac Studio. I purchased a HDD Seagate One Touch Hub. I have a 14 TB version running. It mounted without issue. They make the One Touch up to 20TB. SSD's are somewhat more expensive I have a 4TB Samsung mounted, didn't really need it but it was on sale at a price I could not turn down. The One Touch is formatted in X-FAT a universal file system that works with Mac and Windows. The 4TB SSD internal is in a thunderbolt compatible external case with a Thunderbolt cable and I formatted it in APFS, Apple's file system. If you get the One Touch order a USB "C" to Micro B cable to go with it.
If you want to stay with APFS take a look at the external storage cases made by OWC. They have one with I plan on getting which you can use any SSD drive now available in it. If you use the PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives you can go to 90TB in the same case.
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Does anyone know the speed benefits of having a thunderbolt connected mechanical hard drive versus a USB connection? For example, the Sandisk GDRIVE is double the price for the exact same model but with thunderbolt port.
The only benefit I know of is the Mac treats an external drive connected via Thunderbolt as an internal drive. Speed wise I remember what a HP Engineer/Physicist told me. It is plenty fast enough if you hit enter and when you look up at the screen it is there.
Ha, Well that's quick enough. What benefit is there to the Mac treating it as internal though?
It connects via the internal PCIe bus. so the speed is the same as the internal SSD.
HDD on TB over USB is usually for stability reasons, since the controllers are external. And the above mentioned the OS treating the drives as internal, one advantage of this is monitoring like SMART is possible where over USB it isn’t.
I think for regular home use there is little reason to use anything but USB though. TB I would say is at least reserved for two bay or above RAID enclosures which are more on the professional side.
I think for regular home use there is little reason to use anything but USB though. TB I would say is at least reserved for two bay or above RAID enclosures which are more on the professional side.
This is for home business. Design work, big files, quite a large scale of work. I just wondered if the extra outlay for a Sandisk with thunderbolt was actually worth it as someone told me it made no difference if the HD was mechanical.
Given the price you cannot beat a HDD. It is still a developing technology Seagate is in development with a 50 TB HDD for release in 2026.
I just got a Studio and realised my Pegasus R4 will not work with it (thanks Promise…), so have moved the 20tbs of data into a generic 4 disk usb enclosure. All seems to work fine.
I use samsung T7 for backup and an Acasis TBU401E thunderbolt enclosure with Samsung 980 Pro for movies and boot drive for a different OS (with some minor issues though).
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So Samsung recently released 8tb 2.5" SSDs, and I picked up 4 and bought an OWC Thunderbay Mini. 32TB in RAID 0 and about 1500/MBS. Whisper quiet compared to 3.5" HDDs.
So far it's easier, but I think I am going to be happy to replace my very aging DROBO.
So far it's easier, but I think I am going to be happy to replace my very aging DROBO.
Started with the 2GB Samsung 980Pro NvME and Acasis enclosure.
My lord it is fast. Will probably get a couple more sets or see if I can find a multiple enclosure for some more Samsung NvME chips.
My lord it is fast. Will probably get a couple more sets or see if I can find a multiple enclosure for some more Samsung NvME chips.