What external storage solutions are you going to use with the Mac Studio

[aurora_sect]

Just got two of these enclosures and put two of the below 1tb SSD into them. instead of paying Apple £600 to replace the base 512gb with 2tb, I’ve saved £140 and will now have a total of 2.5tb. I know the speed on the external ports is less than internal, but just ran the speed test on one of the drives using my M1 13” MBP and i think this will be fine for my use.

USB4.0 Mobile M.2 Nvme Enclosure... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08X9YTWJC?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
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Samsung (MZ-V8V1T0B/AM) 980 SSD... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08V83JZH4?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
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This looks like the most appealing option for me so far. I've got a 2TB Sabrent in an older USB 3.2 enclosure and it is testing at around 400 MB/s on my new Studio, no faster than on my late 2012 iMac. Even that is ok for most stuff, I can keep active A/V projects on the blazing fast internal drive, but if I open a bunch of photos at once on the NVMe the lag is noticeable.

 

[CodeSpyder]

I'm just going to use my LaCie 10TB hard drive for time machine backups. I loaded up with 8TB in my Mac Studio. That should last for a while as I currently have < 1TB of data in my MacBook Pro.

 

[RamGuy]

The availability of decent external enclosures in my country is abysmal. The best option would be the Samsung X5 external Thunderbolt 3 drive, but it costs the same per GB/TB as upgrading the internal storage so I just bit the bullet and changed my Mac Studio into 8TB. Makes much more sense compared to paying the same to have 4x Samsung X5 2TB connected via Thunerbolt 3 with lower performance. It gives me the added benefit of having 6x Thunderbolt 4 ports free to use down the line so if 8TB ends up not being enough for my server I can add additional NVMe drives via Thunderbolt if needed. The sad thing is with current availability on build-to-order configurations it won't arrive until mid-June.

 

[Boomish69]

@Boomish69 I have a similar setup as you with the Mac Pro 5.1 and also ordered the ultra MS and looked at some YouTube for external hd options. @Adult80HD mentioned about Acacias and I might also do that and did spot a vid on it also. However, not sure on the types of NVME to go with to get the best speed max speed. I have 5-6 tb of data I like to host on something moving out of the Mac Pro 5.1 and just have the ultra 1tb for applications and day to day files.

Appreciate the reply, looks like the Acacias or the Orico then, I saw a YouTube video of an another enclosure but it’s speed wasn’t half that of the Orico.
What I’ve surmised for my needs is based on how I’ve working with my existing old Mac Pro, working on many music projects over the years & many hard drive purchases I realise I need a fast OS drive up to 1TB & a fast working drive 1tb, that is enough for most projects unless it’s a large surround job but that normally means I’m only working on that 1 job and can shift the rest to storage. I went with 2Tb in the Ultra based on this, still not sure if I might partition it, I’d like to for neatness, anyone else?

Once a job is complete it goes to back-up where I don’t need the speed.
However I read that the Mac M1 storage might not have the greatest data redundancy protection in case of power loss, also I wonder what the life term use of the internal drive is, so 1 fast working external drive, that has to be NVMe, would be a nice alternative option. It’s not going to be as fast as internal but for audio I barely ever move the data HD meter in my audio apps.

The rest is storage so doesn’t need the fastest connection, if thunderbolt 4 is that expensive aim thinking why buy a fast enclosure if even my SSD’s are only doing 600mb/s tops. It would be nice to use a bay containing all the drives but the OWC’s ain’t cheap & I noticed their max speed isnt that fast , plus any thing that has a fan in is a no good for me.
I don’t need SSD for Timemachine, I have an inexpensive 8TB drive , it makes no noise, probably cos it’s slow and it works fine, it’s all incremental so no need for speed at all, I don’t have massive video files though.
I‘m thinking I’ll get a Thunderbolt dock & connect up all my old drives in a below desk solution, if anyone knows of a good? There seems to be lots of those, it‘ll need some tidy cabling but I’m used to that already.

One last thought was the power the Ultra will draw , as far as I’ve seen from reviews it’s 11w when idle! I can’t quite take that seriously, especially as my 2010 currently heats my studio Given the crazy energy price rises in the UK this couldn’t come at a better time, but also now thinking of how to work out the power usage of all my devices. one of my alternative thoughts was a NAS of sorts, someone mentioned Unraid which looks very good, but how much power will a small PC draw & will it readily accept all my existing myriad of Mac drives .

Sorry long post

 

[albertjs]

Hi everyone! I’ll be receiving my Mac Studio Ultra on Monday! Finally!!
Let’s see if someone has an answer to my question. I have two 8TB OWC ThunderBlade V4 in Raid0 striped using SoftRaid Pro (yes, you have to pay the Pro version in order to create a volume using multiple Thunderblades). Each Thunderblade is connected to one Thunderbolt3 port on my MacBook Pro M1 Max. Using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test I get around 5,800 mb/s read and 3,600 mb/s write. The speeds are awesome but I’m wondering if I could get even more speed on the Mac Studio. If I buy a third Thunderblade unit and connect it to another Thunderbolt3 port (The Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt3 buses), will SoftRaid Pro let me create a new Raid0 volume using all 3 Thunderblades? Or the limit are just 2 units? If that is possible, I should get better speed results in Blackmagic test, right? The only review tests I’ve seen on Youtube regarding speeds chaising two OWC thunderblades said the max speeds they could get via Thunderbolt3 and using 2 different Thunderbolt3 buses were 3,800 mb/s. On those videos and reviews they used an iMac Pro, that only had 2 Thunderbolt3 buses (although 4 Thunderbolt3 ports). The new Mac Studio has more buses and more ports, so if SoftRaid Pro lets me connect 3 Thunderblade units in Raid0, each unit in a different Thunderbolt3 bus, the read/write speeds should increase.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

 

[Pressure]

Hi everyone! I’ll be receiving my Mac Studio Ultra on Monday! Finally!!
Let’s see if someone has an answer to my question. I have two 8TB OWC ThunderBlade V4 in Raid0 striped using SoftRaid Pro (yes, you have to pay the Pro version in order to create a volume using multiple Thunderblades). Each Thunderblade is connected to one Thunderbolt3 port on my MacBook Pro M1 Max. Using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test I get around 5,800 mb/s read and 3,600 mb/s write. The speeds are awesome but I’m wondering if I could get even more speed on the Mac Studio. If I buy a third Thunderblade unit and connect it to another Thunderbolt3 port (The Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt3 buses), will SoftRaid Pro let me create a new Raid0 volume using all 3 Thunderblades? Or the limit are just 2 units? If that is possible, I should get better speed results in Blackmagic test, right? The only review tests I’ve seen on Youtube regarding speeds chaising two OWC thunderblades said the max speeds they could get via Thunderbolt3 and using 2 different Thunderbolt3 buses were 3,800 mb/s. On those videos and reviews they used an iMac Pro, that only had 2 Thunderbolt3 buses (although 4 Thunderbolt3 ports). The new Mac Studio has more buses and more ports, so if SoftRaid Pro lets me connect 3 Thunderblade units in Raid0, each unit in a different Thunderbolt3 bus, the read/write speeds should increase.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

Yes, several in fact.

Why do you need faster speeds?
Is it critical data?
And are there any reason why you would want more points of failure?

 

[albertjs]

Yes, several in fact.

Why do you need faster speeds?
Is it critical data?
And are there any reason why you would want more points of failure?

I only use that drive to work with FCPX and After Effects. Once I finish a project I delete it. The faster, the better. No critical data, it’s all in backup drives!

 

[Ifti]

Hi everyone! I’ll be receiving my Mac Studio Ultra on Monday! Finally!!
Let’s see if someone has an answer to my question. I have two 8TB OWC ThunderBlade V4 in Raid0 striped using SoftRaid Pro (yes, you have to pay the Pro version in order to create a volume using multiple Thunderblades). Each Thunderblade is connected to one Thunderbolt3 port on my MacBook Pro M1 Max. Using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test I get around 5,800 mb/s read and 3,600 mb/s write. The speeds are awesome but I’m wondering if I could get even more speed on the Mac Studio. If I buy a third Thunderblade unit and connect it to another Thunderbolt3 port (The Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt3 buses), will SoftRaid Pro let me create a new Raid0 volume using all 3 Thunderblades? Or the limit are just 2 units? If that is possible, I should get better speed results in Blackmagic test, right? The only review tests I’ve seen on Youtube regarding speeds chaising two OWC thunderblades said the max speeds they could get via Thunderbolt3 and using 2 different Thunderbolt3 buses were 3,800 mb/s. On those videos and reviews they used an iMac Pro, that only had 2 Thunderbolt3 buses (although 4 Thunderbolt3 ports). The new Mac Studio has more buses and more ports, so if SoftRaid Pro lets me connect 3 Thunderblade units in Raid0, each unit in a different Thunderbolt3 bus, the read/write speeds should increase.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

Yes should be fine.
I have 3 ThunderBlade drives (16TB, 8TB, 8TB) although I do not use them in the way you do. I do use them all with FCPX, but I have them all connected to a OWC TB4 dock, and then use a single TB4 cable to my laptop. For FCPX I don't see why you need any faster, considering all my projects (mix of 1080p and 4k) all run perfectly - no proxy files etc needed - its buttery smooth already.......
Would be interested to see how you get on though!

 

[Ifti]

Anyone looking for a deal on an external enclosure?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/uk-orico-m-2-enclosure-for-nvme-ssd-usb4-0-40gbps-type-c-thunderbolt.2334180/

 

[albertjs]

Yes should be fine.
I have 3 ThunderBlade drives (16TB, 8TB, 8TB) although I do not use them in the way you do. I do use them all with FCPX, but I have them all connected to a OWC TB4 dock, and then use a single TB4 cable to my laptop. For FCPX I don't see why you need any faster, considering all my projects (mix of 1080p and 4k) all run perfectly - no proxy files etc needed - its buttery smooth already.......
Would be interested to see how you get on though!

For 8k footage I wouldn’t mind having even more speed! Maybe I buy a 3rd thunderblade and try what I said, hopefully It will work!!

Thanks

 

[lcubed]

Hi everyone! I’ll be receiving my Mac Studio Ultra on Monday! Finally!!
Let’s see if someone has an answer to my question. I have two 8TB OWC ThunderBlade V4 in Raid0 striped using SoftRaid Pro (yes, you have to pay the Pro version in order to create a volume using multiple Thunderblades). Each Thunderblade is connected to one Thunderbolt3 port on my MacBook Pro M1 Max. Using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test I get around 5,800 mb/s read and 3,600 mb/s write. The speeds are awesome but I’m wondering if I could get even more speed on the Mac Studio. If I buy a third Thunderblade unit and connect it to another Thunderbolt3 port (The Ultra has 6 Thunderbolt3 buses), will SoftRaid Pro let me create a new Raid0 volume using all 3 Thunderblades? Or the limit are just 2 units? If that is possible, I should get better speed results in Blackmagic test, right? The only review tests I’ve seen on Youtube regarding speeds chaising two OWC thunderblades said the max speeds they could get via Thunderbolt3 and using 2 different Thunderbolt3 buses were 3,800 mb/s. On those videos and reviews they used an iMac Pro, that only had 2 Thunderbolt3 buses (although 4 Thunderbolt3 ports). The new Mac Studio has more buses and more ports, so if SoftRaid Pro lets me connect 3 Thunderblade units in Raid0, each unit in a different Thunderbolt3 bus, the read/write speeds should increase.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

i'd check with OWC, but i suspect that using 4 Thunderblades using 4 TB ports would be the fastest possible RAID 0 configuration.

 

[albertjs]

i'd check with OWC, but i suspect that using 4 Thunderblades using 4 TB ports would be the fastest possible RAID 0 configuration.

I just purchased online 2 more thunderblades 8tb. Once I get them home I’ll try to stripe all 4 units in Raid0 to get a total of 32tb and let you know the read/write speeds I get! 😎💪🏻

 

[MRxROBOT]

For 8k footage I wouldn’t mind having even more speed! Maybe I buy a 3rd thunderblade and try what I said, hopefully It will work!!

Thanks

Are you sure that SSD speed is what’s holding you back? Last I checked nearly any higher tier NVME SSD will provide what FCPX requires, the bottleneck will lie in the GPU. Even the Sandisk Extreme USB 3.2 was providing 99% of the internal SSD performance with the MAX SOC. Thunderbolt should pick up the slack for the ULTRA. I don’t have an ULTRA, so would be interested in real world experience.

 

[albertjs]

Are you sure that SSD speed is what’s holding you back? Last I checked nearly any higher tier NVME SSD will provide what FCPX requires, the bottleneck will lie in the GPU. Even the Sandisk Extreme USB 3.2 was providing 99% of the internal SSD performance with the MAX SOC. Thunderbolt should pick up the slack for the ULTRA. I don’t have an ULTRA, so would be interested in real world experience.

I’ll test it out when I get my maxed out ULTRA next week. If it’s a GPU bottleneck, the 64-core GPU should make it mostly disappear!

I’ll keep you updated with the tests!

 

[brsilb]

A 2TB SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD and a Sabrent 2TB Rocket SSD in a disk utility Raid 0 array. Super fast.

 

[edanuff]

Question configuring external storage - for Time Machine backups, I'm assuming that write throughput isn't as important and going out to a Sata drive over USB 3.1 Gen 2 is fine rather than putting it on an NVMe drive over TB4?

 

[topcat001]

With external SSDs enabling TRIM is a consideration for long term health and performance of the drive. Something to keep in mind while purchasing.

 

[Traverse]

Actually, my setup just arrived today. I’m using the OWC Thunderbay mini coupled with two Samsung 8TB SSDs and a 4TB Western Digital SSD that I already had.

My storage setup will be:

1. 2TB built into Mac Studio for files, music, photos, projects, etc.
2. 4TB SSD - no specific use yet will use for Carbon Copy Cloner folder backups and maybe photos if the library grows too large.
3. 8TB SSD - Media drive for TV Shows, Movies, and Plex
4. 8TB SSD - back up all other drives. Currently my data footprint (excluding backups) is about 4TB so I only need one Time Machine drive. The OWC will have one empty bay in case I ever need to add another 8TB and RAID-0 for a large backup drive.

I’m really excited about this setup and to have all the drives in a single enclosure rather than juggling multiple devices. I’ve toyed with the idea of a NAS, but I think I prefer the simplicity of just attaching a large bucket of storage to my system rather than managing an entirely different system.

As a follow up to this post, my setup is working really well. I did disconnect the fan from the OWC Thunderbay 4 mini; it ran constantly and very loudly. This enclosure is designed for 2.5” HDDs or SSDs. I monitored the SSD temps and they hang around 35C so I’m leaving it disconnected.

Now I have 20 TB of silent SSD storage.

 

[utente__mac]

Given the low price for most of the USB 3.1 10 Gbps enclosures and the availability of good performing 1 TB NVME drives, has anyone tried to attach multiple of those enclosures directly on multiple Thunderbolt ports or to a single thunderbolt dock and configure them as a single RAID 0 Volume?

I know all the risks with RAID 0 (I use mine as a first tier backup volume and scratch disk), but it may perform just like a 20Gbps 2TB or 4TB Volume (depending on the size of the NVME drives) at a much lower cost.

 

[geepster]

I've tested out several difference external enclosures and right now the absolute fastest you can get is the Acasis USB4.0/TB3 NVMe enclosure. On my 16" M1 Max MBP I get 3100 MB/s Read and 2900 MB/s Write speeds--more than enough for editing 4K/8K footage. I use older PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives as you can't get the benefits of PCIe 4.0 with TB/USB and they're cheaper. A 4TB Sabrent TLC NVMe drive is less than $600, so for about $700 all in you get very fast and very portable external storage.

Which NVME drive did you use to get the 3100 MB/s Read and 2900 MB/s Write?

 

[F-Train]

I'm in the process of repurposing an external GPU enclosure as an NVMe M.2 enclosure. I'll be using a PCIe carrier board and two PCIe 3.0 2TB NVMe M.2 SSDs, probably Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

The price of PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDs appears to be at an all-time low, and for my purposes the advantages of PCIe 4.0 SSDs are not obvious. As far as I know, nobody is making a PCIe 4.0 carrier board yet anyway.

 

[tlindaas]

I've tested out several difference external enclosures and right now the absolute fastest you can get is the Acasis USB4.0/TB3 NVMe enclosure. On my 16" M1 Max MBP I get 3100 MB/s Read and 2900 MB/s Write speeds--more than enough for editing 4K/8K footage. I use older PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives as you can't get the benefits of PCIe 4.0 with TB/USB and they're cheaper. A 4TB Sabrent TLC NVMe drive is less than $600, so for about $700 all in you get very fast and very portable external storage.

Can several of those Acasis enclosures be attached to different Thunderbolt ports and work as a crazy fast Raid 0 setup just like the OWC ThunderBlades mentioned earlier in this thread?

 

[Chancha]

Can several of those Acasis enclosures be attached to different Thunderbolt ports and work as a crazy fast Raid 0 setup just like the OWC ThunderBlades mentioned earlier in this thread?

I don't see why not.
But of course the data on it will be absolutely unsafe, so scratch disk type usage only.

 

[tlindaas]

I don't see why not.
But of course the data on it will be absolutely unsafe, so scratch disk type usage only.

I've used 4 SSD drives in a Raid 0 configuration as my startup disk for 6 years now without any problems. Time Machine backup to a regular hard drive.

 

[Chancha]

I've used 4 SSD drives in a Raid 0 configuration as my startup disk for 6 years now without any problems. Time Machine backup to a regular hard drive.

If you have full control in your environment then I guess it is relatively safe. But in my experience with self-built NVMe enclosure is that some of them are subject to lose connection with the host Mac, I don’t know if it has to with the quality of the cable, the port, or the board / controller, macOS lose the drives without proper eject. Therefore I never use them as sole storage for important data. But of course more reliable hardware exists, I just happen to have chosen worse ones.