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What external storage solutions are you going to use with the Mac Studio
- Thread starter Baja63
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There are undoubtedly extra points of failure for external connections. These NVMe enclosures are usually bus powered also, where power issue I believe is the major cause of losing connection.
But back to the topic; Disk Utility has been able to put together software stripped RAID0 out of any mounted logical volume. Two or more TB NVMe drives can be fused this way.
There are exceptions. Netstor makes this wall-powered enclosure for two M.2 SSDs: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...usa_netstor_na611tb3_thunderbolt_3.html/specs
I believe that it also makes one for four, although B&H doesn't appear to sell it.
I talk about repurposing an enclosure for an external GPU in this new thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...2-external-storage-read-write-speeds.2340127/
The PCIe slot in the GPU enclosure is the same kind of slot that @tlindaas has in his Mac Pro.
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Yes I replied in your thread also, that’s an interesting route but also somewhat niche.
For laptop use, bus-powered makes all the sense. For desktop use, PCI cards probably makes more sense than anything external. But in the case of Mac Studio, it is a desktop but it has no slots… therefore having a PCI enclosure with guaranteed power stability has a major benefit there.
Yes. However, there are a fair number of people with 2018 Mac minis outfitted with an external GPU. Some who are moving to an M1 Mac may be attracted to the idea of repurposing their GPU enclosure.
Which other thread did you reply to?
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The thread where you asked to repurpose your eGPU enclosure but started the question on U.2 SSD.
It turns out a PCIe enclosure housing NVMe SSD may make a lot of sense with the Mac Studio now, as we discuss the reliability of the bus-powered ones.
Got it. Yes, as the new thread linked in post #78 says I'm going with M.2. I think that U.2 involves unnecessary complications including availability of the SSDs.
I think that there are three issues with most of the enclosures that are being used. You've identified one, the fact that most of them are bus-powered. As you suggest, this may be why people frequently report disconnects.
The second arises from the fact that most of these DIY enclosures are very small and quickly get very hot. I think that they're an invitation to throttling. That is less of an issue with a PCIe slot in a tower computer, and I don't expect any heat issue with the Asus GPU enclosure.
Also, most if not all of the enclosures available on Amazon, which are what most people are buying, will only take one SSD.
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Just to be clear, my SSD drives are not connected to the PCIe slots, but to the normal hard drive slots. I use these: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MMP35T25/
My plan for Audio use, yet to be tested as my Mac Studio is still on its way:
2 x 1TB SATA SSDs in USB3 enclosures serving Virtual Instrument Sample Data
1 x 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD in OWC Express TB enclosure for Project Data
3 x 8TB Seagate External USB3 HDs for Time Machine, Project Daily Direct Backup and Project Archive
Everything, including the Mac Studio, goes in a machine closet, so noise is not an issue. Hoping the External USB3 cases will allow the SATA SSDs to perform properly. I will have 2TB internal storage available and will be able to use that for audio-related data as necessary.
2 x 1TB SATA SSDs in USB3 enclosures serving Virtual Instrument Sample Data
1 x 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD in OWC Express TB enclosure for Project Data
3 x 8TB Seagate External USB3 HDs for Time Machine, Project Daily Direct Backup and Project Archive
Everything, including the Mac Studio, goes in a machine closet, so noise is not an issue. Hoping the External USB3 cases will allow the SATA SSDs to perform properly. I will have 2TB internal storage available and will be able to use that for audio-related data as necessary.
I use Logic and have about 2TB of sample libraries. Consequently, I'm sorting out the same issues. A question... With a 2TB internal drive, why are you using a 1TB external drive for project data, which I assume means your DAW session?
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Both. The power issues are to do with the USB-C specs and circuitry than to do with the data side of it.
Well ordered the storage which is why kept to 512gb internal
Highpoint ssd7204 nvme card installed in sonnet echo express se IIIe
WD black sn750 1TB x 2
WD black sn750 2tb x 2
Going to detach the 2nd disk slot on some older sonnet sata ssd cards and fit two more 2tb Samsung sata ssd for some bulk storage that don’t need immediate access too.
Will be enough for what actively working on.
Works out less then the Apple internal upgrade and will be available to attach to any Mac not just with the studio.
Highpoint ssd7204 nvme card installed in sonnet echo express se IIIe
WD black sn750 1TB x 2
WD black sn750 2tb x 2
Going to detach the 2nd disk slot on some older sonnet sata ssd cards and fit two more 2tb Samsung sata ssd for some bulk storage that don’t need immediate access too.
Will be enough for what actively working on.
Works out less then the Apple internal upgrade and will be available to attach to any Mac not just with the studio.
This afternoon, I ordered a replacement for the Mac Studio/Max that I got from an Apple store on March 18th. I decided to bring more storage inboard and went with a 2TB internal SSD. The delivery estimate is June 27-July 11, so I have lots of time to think about rejigging the plan for outboard storage 
I've create a 32tb Raid0 striped volume with 4 units of OWC Thunderblade 8tb, each one connected to a different Thunderbolt4 port on the Mac Studio Ultra. The read/write speeds are amazing! View attachment 1986139
View attachment 1986139Quick update: I just changed all the cables from Thunderbolt3 to Thunderbolt4, now read/write speeds have improved!! Amazing
That is fast! But I wonder why the read speed is lower with 4 drives than with 2 (with 2 drives you had a read speed of 5,800 mb/s.)Quick update: I just changed all the cables from Thunderbolt3 to Thunderbolt4, now read/write speeds have improved!! Amazing
Ok, I see. If you have the time, and could test read/write speeds with both 1, 2, 3 and 4 Thunderblades in RAID 0, it will be easy to calculate the speed increase percentage for each additional drive. These numbers at least I am very interested in seeing!
Ok, I've been investigating a bit. The first 2 Thunderblade units I bought last year have inside Aura P12 Pro disks, and the 2 Thudnerblade units I bought last week have inside Aura Pro IV disks... In OWC website you can see that the new Aura Pro IV disks are much more faster... see attached images. I am not sure now if my bottleneck is due to mix both type of disks... maybe if I had the 4 units with the Aura Pro IV disks, I would get even higher read/write speed results... Although we are still limited to the max speed you can get via Thunderbolt4 ports, so I am not sure if I would benefit or not, or the bottleneck is just the Thunderbolt4 limitations... any thoughts??
I think you will be disappointed by NVMe as scratch disk. You will be capped by TB4 speed.
NVMe TB3 enclosure as bootdisk.
10Gbe Synology NAS to allocate a few TB's as general cache.
USB3 sata SSD as daily active project backup.
10Gbe Synology NAS to allocate a few TB's as general cache.
USB3 sata SSD as daily active project backup.
External storage for Mac Studio? Well, if I buy such a Studio, I' ll certainly keep my 2 Lacie d2 external harddrives (Professional and Thunderbolt). What?? No SSD?? Yes, no SSD....yet. Didn't find any problems with even working from these external harddrives (working on images). Are they vulnerable. Ofcourse. In time they will then probably be replaced by SSD.