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

[MistD]

I am one of the people that was waiting for a quality thunderbolt DAS that can take multiple NVME for some time now.

I waited so long for that OWC MiniStack Studio and i just gave up on it …

As you guys said it before, this market segment (DAS) it’s really ignored.

I don’t want / need a NAS because :

- I am single user and don’t need a multi-user / multi-device storage solution.

- I don’t want RAID. Uptime and availability it’s not mission critical for me so RAID it’s just another overkill / complicated overhead and point of failure.

- I don’t want to deal with arrays and other file systems structures, proprietary raid controllers , software, OS etc. I just want to plug my storage directly to any PC or MAC out there and it just works.

- I don’t need huge storage pools that can be achieved only by RAID.

- I hate to set-up user accounts, credentials and permission levels just to be able to access my storage as a single and only user and no “outside” access needed.

… and so on

I would love to have :

- A dead simple, fast and silent external storage solution

- Keep using mainstream filesystems (NTFS, APFS, HFS) on these storage devices that can be read hassle free by any mainstream OS (Mac, Windows)

- Bigger NVME SSD (4-6-8-12 tb) using a reliable technology (TLC)

- Just give me one simple location (6-8-12 TB) to dump my files and i’ll be happy. Give me a fast one (SSD + Thunderbolt) , a dead silent one (no fans, hdd noise etc.) , a reliable one … and i’ll be in paradise )

 

[MistD]

…. the drives make a repetitive and annoying drive access sound, as generated by the unit. Not happy about this at all.

Yeah, that stupid repetitive clicking it’s a “feature” nowadays that hdd manufacturers (WD in particular) implemented.

It’s coming from the drives themselves and it’s not generated by the enclosure accessing the drives.

It’s called PWL (preventive wear leveling) and it’s just so so stupid.

 

[Boidem]

Yeah, that stupid repetitive clicking it’s a “feature” nowadays that hdd manufacturers (WD in particular) implemented.

It’s coming from the drives themselves and it’s not generated by the enclosure accessing the drives.

It’s called PWL (preventive wear leveling) and it’s just so so stupid.

Ah. But if it helps reduce the chance of drive failure, isn't that a good thing, ultimately? The design of the enclosure can definitely affect how noisy the whole thing is though. Like a guitar uses a sounding box to help create that sound.

 

[MistD]

But if it helps reduce the chance of drive failure, isn't that a good thing, ultimately?

Older hard drives didn’t have this “feature” and they were pretty reliable.

I can see how this thing can help the internal lubrication of the drive but doing it every few seconds it’s just creating frustration for users.

Maybe they know better, i’m not a HDD engineer 🙂

It’s just annoying AF 🙂

 

[Boidem]

It’s just annoying AF 🙂

It is. I've put some self-adhesive foam strips in my Orico enclosure to help with sound deadening. It's helped a little but not much.

 

[Kimmo]

I am one of the people that was waiting for a quality thunderbolt DAS that can take multiple NVME for some time now.

I waited so long for that OWC MiniStack Studio and i just gave up on it …

As you guys said it before, this market segment (DAS) it’s really ignored.

I don’t want / need a NAS because :

- I am single user and don’t need a multi-user / multi-device storage solution.

- I don’t want RAID. Uptime and availability it’s not mission critical for me so RAID it’s just another overkill / complicated overhead and point of failure.

- I don’t want to deal with arrays and other file systems structures, proprietary raid controllers , software, OS etc. I just want to plug my storage directly to any PC or MAC out there and it just works.

- I don’t need huge storage pools that can be achieved only by RAID.

- I hate to set-up user accounts, credentials and permission levels just to be able to access my storage as a single and only user and no “outside” access needed.

… and so on

I would love to have :

- A dead simple, fast and silent external storage solution

- Keep using mainstream filesystems (NTFS, APFS, HFS) on these storage devices that can be read hassle free by any mainstream OS (Mac, Windows)

- Bigger NVME SSD (4-6-8-12 tb) using a reliable technology (TLC)

- Just give me one simple location (6-8-12 TB) to dump my files and i’ll be happy. Give me a fast one (SSD + Thunderbolt) , a dead silent one (no fans, hdd noise etc.) , a reliable one … and i’ll be in paradise )

Just checked again with OWC about the timing of the Mini Stack Studio.

Still no details about when this will be available.

 

[rworne]

I purchased a base model Mac Studio & Studio Display last July. The main reason for getting the 512GB storage unit was due to a dying (apparently) Late 2013 iMac (i7, 3TB fusion) and a lack of alternatives that would have me waiting up to a month or more for a custom ordered unit. What the hell, I figured, I can always go with cheaper external storage, or someone will come out with an internal upgrade sooner or later.

Wow. I learned some valuable lessons post-sale. Speed tests are down a bit further. I also wanted to include what I planned to do, and how I was thwarted at every turn by mostly the OS.

Here's a rundown of my intentions:

1. I wanted to keep the OS and Apps on the internal disk - cause it's stupid fast.
2. Move the user directory which contains all my account info and data to external disk (thunderbolt SSD) as the speed impact won't be too apparent.
3. Still wanted encryption on the external - it is personal data after all

I looked through this thread and saw what everyone was recommending. Unfortunately, quite a few of them are in sort supply now. I eventually settled on the OWC Envoy Pro FX 4TB (TLC NAND) due to the high performance rating and Intel certification. As for hardware compatibility, it works like a charm, never had an issue with the OS detecting it and having it auto mount (more on auto mount later).

The setup utility on the disk was broken, I assume this may have to do with Ventura more than anything else - but it's not too hard to format it APFS (or APFS encrypted) with disk utility. The utility had issues unmounting and formatting the disk after giving an ad for a trial Acronis account, but that's an easy fix with the built-in tools.

So I created a recovery account (turned out to be a really good idea), formatted the disk encrypted APFS, used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my user directory to the external, and here's where the troubles began.

I knew older versions of OS X allowed relocation of the user directory. It turns out Ventura does too, they just now hide it very well (control-click on the user account for the menu). I changed the directory, logged out of the recovery account and tried to log in to my user account.

It started up, but the finder froze up. Restart and the account was broken - cannot log in. Thank the FSM I made that recovery account.

It turns out that the user logging in needs access to the keychain, which is unavailable because the drive is encrypted. So I do the same thing all over with an unencrypted APFS partition, and it works like a champ. But I do need that encryption. So some Googling later I found a utility that allows boot up mounting of APFS drives (BootUnlock). It should handle the matter nicely. Does it work? Yes and no. I redo the encrypted partition, and from the recovery partition use the utility to mount the external. Reboot and try to log in to my user account: Broken.

Log in to the recovery account, and after a few moments, an alert box for APFSUtil (or something like that) pops up asking for an admin password. Once supplied, the drive pops up automatically. Reboot and the recovery account simply mounts the drive without complaint. Reboot again and the user account is again hosed - likely because the drive isn't mounted. It's that damn chicken and egg problem again.

So Ventura won't mount an encrypted APFS drive during boot before any users log in. Just wonderful. OK I'll use it as plain external storage (encrypted) salvaging the data I already have on there from the user directory move. I set the user directory back to the internal, and spent the rest of the night fighting with symlinks and such (they typically work, but you cannot symlink the Desktop or bad things happen™. But downloads, documents, movies, and music work. So I go that route.

Great, AirDrop won't drop files to a symlinked folder either.

Now the weirdness begins.

Getting back on topic, the OWC drive is a piece of art. A heavy solid slab of aluminum, it never gets hot, just slightly warm to the touch. Zero issues with he hardware, and the TB3/USB-C cable i expected was not included, they instead included a TB4 with a USB-A dongle (no complaints).

Running Blackmagic - I get the strangest results.
Write speeds are very fast: 1800MB/s, with reads in the 480-500MB/s range. This isn't consistent. Other tests will show 400-600MB/s write while showing 1800+MB/s reads. Nearly always alternating, with a rare instance go both of them being high.

This was not what I was expecting. I expected super-fast read speeds and write speeds lower then, but reasonably comparable to the read speeds. I suspected the encryption had something to do with it, and I was right.

I decrypted the partition, waited for everything to settle down and ran it again. Here are the results:

and one rare unicorn:

The latter was what I was expecting (at least on a more consistent basis). Here's AmorphousDiskMark... it returned surprisingly good results:

Going back to Back Magic, it's doing the 1900MB/s writes and 700MB/s reads again, with about 1 in 6 to 1 in 10 tests giving high speeds: 2028/2686. When using CCC, I got a transfer rate of approx 400 MB/s copying my user directory with 500GB of misc crap in it. This was consistent whether the drive was encrypted or not.

And I think I may have found a clue for the slower speeds - thermal throttling, or OS shenanigans?

While typing this out I go back after a while and rerun the tests to see if there is any change. Apparently after a 5-10 min rest period, the OWC does indeed return fast results:

Got 4-5 of these in a row, then the slow read speeds started up again. Writes are consistently fast.

Anyone seeing similar results with other SSD solutions?

 

[dimme]

I purchased a base model Mac Studio & Studio Display last July. The main reason for getting the 512GB storage unit was due to a dying (apparently) Late 2013 iMac (i7, 3TB fusion) and a lack of alternatives that would have me waiting up to a month or more for a custom ordered unit. What the hell, I figured, I can always go with cheaper external storage, or someone will come out with an internal upgrade sooner or later.

Wow. I learned some valuable lessons post-sale. Speed tests are down a bit further. I also wanted to include what I planned to do, and how I was thwarted at every turn by mostly the OS.

Here's a rundown of my intentions:

1. I wanted to keep the OS and Apps on the internal disk - cause it's stupid fast.
2. Move the user directory which contains all my account info and data to external disk (thunderbolt SSD) as the speed impact won't be too apparent.
3. Still wanted encryption on the external - it is personal data after all

I looked through this thread and saw what everyone was recommending. Unfortunately, quite a few of them are in sort supply now. I eventually settled on the OWC Envoy Pro FX 4TB (TLC NAND) due to the high performance rating and Intel certification. As for hardware compatibility, it works like a charm, never had an issue with the OS detecting it and having it auto mount (more on auto mount later).

The setup utility on the disk was broken, I assume this may have to do with Ventura more than anything else - but it's not too hard to format it APFS (or APFS encrypted) with disk utility. The utility had issues unmounting and formatting the disk after giving an ad for a trial Acronis account, but that's an easy fix with the built-in tools.

So I created a recovery account (turned out to be a really good idea), formatted the disk encrypted APFS, used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my user directory to the external, and here's where the troubles began.

I knew older versions of OS X allowed relocation of the user directory. It turns out Ventura does too, they just now hide it very well (control-click on the user account for the menu). I changed the directory, logged out of the recovery account and tried to log in to my user account.

It started up, but the finder froze up. Restart and the account was broken - cannot log in. Thank the FSM I made that recovery account.

It turns out that the user logging in needs access to the keychain, which is unavailable because the drive is encrypted. So I do the same thing all over with an unencrypted APFS partition, and it works like a champ. But I do need that encryption. So some Googling later I found a utility that allows boot up mounting of APFS drives (BootUnlock). It should handle the matter nicely. Does it work? Yes and no. I redo the encrypted partition, and from the recovery partition use the utility to mount the external. Reboot and try to log in to my user account: Broken.

Log in to the recovery account, and after a few moments, an alert box for APFSUtil (or something like that) pops up asking for an admin password. Once supplied, the drive pops up automatically. Reboot and the recovery account simply mounts the drive without complaint. Reboot again and the user account is again hosed - likely because the drive isn't mounted. It's that damn chicken and egg problem again.

So Ventura won't mount an encrypted APFS drive during boot before any users log in. Just wonderful. OK I'll use it as plain external storage (encrypted) salvaging the data I already have on there from the user directory move. I set the user directory back to the internal, and spent the rest of the night fighting with symlinks and such (they typically work, but you cannot symlink the Desktop or bad things happen™. But downloads, documents, movies, and music work. So I go that route.

Now the weirdness begins.

Getting back on topic, the OWC drive is a piece of art. A heavy solid slab of aluminum, it never gets hot, just slightly warm to the touch. Zero issues with he hardware, and the TB3/USB-C cable i expected was not included, they instead included a TB4 with a USB-A dongle (no complaints).

Running Blackmagic - I get the strangest results.
Write speeds are very fast: 1800MB/s, with reads in the 480-500MB/s range. This isn't consistent. Other tests will show 400-600MB/s write while showing 1800+MB/s reads. Nearly always alternating, with a rare instance go both of them being high.

This was not what I was expecting. I expected super-fast read speeds and write speeds lower then, but reasonably comparable to the read speeds. I suspected the encryption had something to do with it, and I was right.

I decrypted the partition, waited for everything to settle down and ran it again. Here are the results:

View attachment 2129110 View attachment 2129111

and one rare unicorn:
View attachment 2129112
The latter was what I was expecting (at least on a more consistent basis). Here's AmorphousDiskMark... it returned surprisingly good results:
View attachment 2129113
Going back to Back Magic, it's doing the 1900MB/s writes and 700MB/s reads again, with about 1 in 6 to 1 in 10 tests giving high speeds: 2028/2686. When using CCC, I got a transfer rate of approx 400 MB/s copying my user directory with 500GB of misc crap in it. This was consistent whether the drive was encrypted or not.

And I think I may have found a clue for the slower speeds - thermal throttling, or OS shenanigans?

While typing this out I go back after a while and rerun the tests to see if there is any change. Apparently after a 5-10 min rest period, the OWC does indeed return fast results:

View attachment 2129114
Got 4-5 of these in a row, then the slow read speeds started up again. Writes are consistently fast.

Anyone seeing similar results with other SSD solutions?

If it a newish system your speed variation could be due to spotlight indexing. Also I have a iMac with 512DB internal and 6GB of storage via a OWC TBmini. I keep my home directory on the iMac but mt files live on the OWC drives, I just do old school file management.

 

[Boidem]

Getting back on topic, the OWC drive is a piece of art. A heavy solid slab of aluminum, it never gets hot, just slightly warm to the touch. Zero issues with he hardware, and the TB3/USB-C cable i expected was not included, they instead included a TB4 with a USB-A dongle (no complaints).

Hmm. Are other OWC products of decent quality? The 2 Thunderbay 4s I had were pretty shoddy. AsI've said, no better than a cheapo £25 HDD enclosure really. I'd be willing to take a punt if other products were of good quality; owning Macs for 20+ years has made me a bit fussy over such. Too much poorly made rubbish out there. WD and LaCie stuff seems to be good, but a bit basic in function and nothing I really need. I'm reassessing my storage requirements, and may actually buy a 4-bay NAS for 2xRAID sets*, backup for all files, and a very fast desktop drive for current projects. Yes; it would be nice to have more onboard storage, but then you always need backups anyway.

*The idea being that they can be located somewhere where the noise won't be an issue. The noise is the most annoying thing about them. A small desktop SSD type drive would be silent.

 

[rworne]

Hmm. Are other OWC products of decent quality? The 2 Thunderbay 4s I had were pretty shoddy. AsI've said, no better than a cheapo £25 HDD enclosure really.

I cannot say for their enclosures, but the Envoy Pro FX here is very nicely built. It's supposed to be water resistant and all that - but mainly I look at a large chunk of anodized aluminum with no obvious seams or gaps to show where it was put together - I'm guessing it opens from the bottom where the ribbed plate is a covering with the screws hidden by the rubber feet. As a bonus, it is just short enough that it can sit on top of the Mac Studio and the Studio Display will have just enough room (4-5mm) to clear it.:

 

[Boidem]

Yes that looks ok. The Thunderbay 4 is just a metal case with some gubbings inside, but no sound dampening or anything. The connection ports were very poorly aligned, the shoddy construction is undoubtedly why one unit had a faulty TB port. By comparison, something like a LaCie enclosure is much better made. Given that the OWC was £400+, it should have been much better quality.

 

[rworne]

That's a shame, because OWC was always the go-to for aftermarket Mac upgrades. I was looking at the M.2 thunderbolt enclosure, but finally decided that 2.5 to 3TB is my high-water mark for my digital junk drawer, the 4TB Envoy should keep me happy.

Then again, if it fails I could just replace the failed module in the enclosure for $100-$200 and be on my way. This way I gotta buy a new envoy - or see if my theory on how it was put together pans out and just replace the module inside.

Looks like I lucked out - I just found this video for the USB-C case. They seem to use the same type of enclosure so the module should be replaceable.

 

[xterratop]

This.

I just put a 10GBe card in my DS1621+ and bought a small 10GBe switch.

Ready and waiting for my Studio to arrive and it'll plug right in.

How do you like your setup with the Mac Studio connection to your DS1621+ with 10GBe card? I have the DS1621+ with 10GBe card to my MacBook but use a 10Gb OWC adapter to thunderbolt and I keep losing connection. When it does that, my transfer rate goes down tremendously because it will connect via wifi to the DS1621+. I'm almost thinking of purchasing the Studio but when the M2 version come out and get rid of the MacBook because I want a reliable connection instead of using some adapter.

 

[JamesScheller]

I haven't noticed any connection issues... Black Magic reports ~500MB/s write performance and 622MB/s read performance to the Synology, which is plenty fast enough for what I'm using it for. That's about 10% of what the internal SSD in the Studio clocks for me.

 

[transmaster]

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.

This enclosure looks interesting. I have 5 Samsung EVO SSD four 1TB, and one 2TB, They are all formatted NTFS. I would really like to use them with My new Mac Studio. Can my Mac mount these NTFS formatted drives housed in this enclosure? I would like to convert these file to APFS but I have to get in a position for the Studio to see these files. It is not a big deal I have a 14 TB Seagate One Touch Hub going but it is doing exFAT. I have around 7 TB in the 6 HDD's I had mounted in my dead Full tower AMD hotrod system full of music, and video files.

 

[transmaster]

I have 6 of these enclosures loaded with Samsung EVO SSD's I like the fact they are clear so you can see the capacity of the installed drive. What you will need to do is get a USB "C" to mini "B" cable. I had to do this with my Seagate Hub it came with "A" to mini "B" and I did not want to use an adapter. The are well made, the enclosure is easy to open and close, and best of all cheap.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NF6JQQ4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_WQYNYSPMDYZZSDCPYGDS

 

[Traverse]

This enclosure looks interesting. I have 5 Samsung EVO SSD four 1TB, and one 2TB, They are all formatted NTFS. I would really like to use them with My new Mac Studio. Can my Mac mount these NTFS formatted drives housed in this enclosure? I would like to convert these file to APFS but I have to get in a position for the Studio to see these files. It is not a big deal I have a 14 TB Seagate One Touch Hub going but it is doing exFAT. I have around 7 TB in the 6 HDD's I had mounted in my dead Full tower AMD hotrod system full of music, and video files.

I don't see why note. Currently I don't have the disks utilizing any RAID so when I plug in one cable macOS sees all three drives separately.

 

[DRDR]

I switched from the internal SSD (512 GB) to an external TB3 SSD (2 TB) for macOS. So far no problems, sleeping still works.

 

[brandair]

One of my new two Acasis TB405 enclosures just semi-died after tow days of use and was forcibly ejected by Mac OS Monterey. The TB controller seems to be gone because that TB405 now reports under USB instead of Thunderbolt/USB4, with a speed of 10Gbps, and is not reliable anymore. Sh***y Chinese production quality once again, it seems. Are the Acasis TB enclosures actually certified by Intel?

 

[transmaster]

One of my new two Acasis TB405 enclosures just semi-died after tow days of use and was forcibly ejected by Mac OS Monterey. The TB controller seems to be gone because that TB405 now reports under USB instead of Thunderbolt/USB4, with a speed of 10Gbps, and is not reliable anymore. Sh***y Chinese production quality once again, it seems. Are the Acasis TB enclosures actually certified by Intel?

I can vouch for the Sabrent enclosures I mentioned above, and they cost $11.99 USD each. They don't do Thunderbolt but just how much speed do you need in external drive?

 

[brandair]

Much!

I use the TB enclosures as work drives and have them zero raided, which gives me similar speeds as the internal Apple SSD PCI.

I can vouch for the Sabrent enclosures I mentioned above, and they cost $11.99 USD each. They don't do Thunderbolt but just how much speed do you need in external drive?

 

[edubfromktown]

FYI all- Tom's Hardware rated Kingston KC3000 M.2 the fastest performer. I checked out the specs on Kingston's site and they are offered another 10% off (which beats Amazon's sale price). Ordered up two of them to setup RAID-0 on my Studio Max base model.

 

[handheldgames]

I can vouch for the Sabrent enclosures I mentioned above, and they cost $11.99 USD each. They don't do Thunderbolt but just how much speed do you need in external drive?

HEAT kills.

 

[edubfromktown]

I'm going to kick the tires on a couple of SABRENT EC-T3NS enclosures for now. Might think about ZikeDrive if the RAID 0 performance of these two (attached to separate TB controllers) is on the low side. I'm not doing rocket science 3d rendering here lol

 

[Pressure]

I'm going to kick the tires on a couple of SABRENT EC-T3NS enclosures for now. Might think about ZikeDrive if the RAID 0 performance of these two (attached to separate TB controllers) is on the low side. I'm not doing rocket science 3d rendering here lol

They are just as slow as any other USB4 enclosure on Apple Silicon. Just buy a real product you can actually take down from a shelf.