# SSDs on new Macs w/out internal slots in case



## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 28, 2022)

What are y'all using on new Macs to hold SSDs, especially on Mac Studios (such as the one I'm planning to order in the near future)?

I have a bunch - 2x2TB, 2X1TB, and a couple of smaller ones, all SATA III. The question is whether to replace some of them, or just to get cheap USB 3.2 enclosures.

TIA


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## samphony (Jul 28, 2022)

For 2,5“ SSDs I still use the black magic multidock. Works reliably since 2013.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 28, 2022)

Thanks samphony. The problem is that I'm a large canary - CHEAP - and don't want to pay VAR prices.

Same with OWC, for example.


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## colony nofi (Jul 28, 2022)

So you have 6 drives? I would seriously replace them all with a single 8TB NVME drive. The rocket drives in a thunderbolt 3 enclosure (PCIE 3, but thats FINE!) are awesome for samples on the m1 Macs. If you need more space, then look at a NVME enclosure that allows you to put in two or more of these drives. It won't scale for speed - but it does for capacity. Newer 16TB SATA III SSD's are on their way (I've seen an engineering sample) but I'm not sure they're really what composers will go for. SATA III has limitations - although it WILL work "fine".
Large size M.2's are further away - and likely won't work in current enclosures due to power draw. Now 96 Layer QLC is interesting... there's articles around intimating 19.2TB M.2's using 96 layer NAND are around the corner.

Digressions aside, the cheap and cheerful way is to get yourself a little usb hub, and then run all your old drives via usb3.2 enclosures. Its never going to be blazingly fast - but it'll be fast enough. With 5 drives connected, you shouldn't have any issues. Shouldn't - but I still wouldn't be surprised if you did. Meaning you then need to spend more money to get it working. Sigh.

I ran into connection issues with drives connected via USB 3.2 on the Mac studio ultra here early on. I *think* the solution was cables, and an enclosure type that didn't really live up to the entire usb 3.2 spec - something that m1 Macs trip over. (And apple - kinda rightly - says tough sh!t, we are working to the spec...not much help to those effected and on a budget though!)
We run black magic thunderbolt 2 + newer USB docks for all old drives, but project work is now all on 10GBE Flash-NAS.

Are your drives for samples? Or projects? Or ???
Projects - I would seriously look at combining them in some kind of NAS using 10GbE. Even if you only have a small amount of space needed. Makes for super easy (automatic) backup onto multiple storage buckets, and tonnes easier to manage. 

Samples? You're out of luck. Its even getting super hard to put samples on one drive and share it between two identical computers. Like, it will fail these days - which is a massive pity. 

(The @SpitfireSupport is responsive when there are issues, but there is no solution for their non Kontakt libs. I've also had recent issues with Sine. And other synths with massive sound sets). Kontakt you are fine sharing, but who wants to use two different systems? Nightmareville. )

All this means having 6 copies of the data for me - with one studio system and one travel system - each with two backups. With 8TB of main storage for libraries, thats 32TB of flash storage + 16TB for the second backup on spinning rust. Starts to get super expensive super quick.

And all VI-C'ers SHOULD know that if they are doing any deadline based work, they NEED 3 copies of their samples as a minimum. 1 in use, 1 as a backup that can be used straight away (plugged in and just work) and 1 as a store to rebuild your fast storage in the event of catastrophic failure, as re-downloading everything can take much longer than you would think. And some libraries you won't be able to redownload anyway, as companies go out of business....

I am a massive fan of having all samples on a single library though - however you choose to do this. I no longer use Kontakt at all for organising things. I'm all in on using OSX finder + smart labels. With an initial investment of time (where you get to listen to all your samples - and learn how many you have that you never use!!!) its an incredibly awesome way of organising libraries. Each library - or even PATCH - can have as many tags as you want. Search for the tag or tags. Bam. 

This is way more info than you asked for Nick. Hopefully there's something useful in amongst my storage rant.


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## Kyle Preston (Jul 28, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> I am a massive fan of having all samples on a single library though - however you choose to do this. I no longer use Kontakt at all for organising things. I'm all in on using OSX finder + smart labels. With an initial investment of time (where you get to listen to all your samples - and learn how many you have that you never use!!!) its an incredibly awesome way of organising libraries.


Love it, I'm pretty much in the same boat. Just moved all my samples (mostly Kontakt) over to 2 4TB Samsung Evos, connected with SATA III, no enclosures. The drives just stand upright on the shelf, they don't get too hot. I mostly use Alfred these days and don't need Finder so much after creating folders. It's heaven!


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## sinkd (Jul 28, 2022)

I am using an OWC Thunderbay (4 slots, but 2.5" drives max) and consolidating to larger capacity SSDs. Migrating from a bunch of 1TB drives to minimum 4TB.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 29, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> I would seriously replace them all with a single 8TB NVME drive.


As I said, I'm very cheap. 

Crucial makes an external 4TB USB 3.2 drive for about $350 that might be the best solution for now.

Thanks for the detailed, informative reply.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 29, 2022)

sinkd said:


> I am using an OWC Thunderbay (4 slots, but 2.5" drives max) and consolidating to larger capacity SSDs. Migrating from a bunch of 1TB drives to minimum 4TB.


OWC is always very good, but I hate wasting money on this kind of thing.

Storage has been the worst investment imaginable, going back to the mid-'80s. The more money you spend on it, the quicker it becomes outdated.


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## sinkd (Jul 29, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> OWC is always very good, but I hate wasting money on this kind of thing.
> 
> Storage has been the worst investment imaginable, going back to the mid-'80s. The more money you spend on it, the quicker it becomes outdated.


Agreed. The last $ I sunk was for PCIe card that slotted two extra SSDs in my 2009 Mac Pro. I can refit those in the new Thunderbay and wait for run of the mill SSDs to come down in price.

Capacity has been the rip. You probably are like me in having spent about $100 a gig for an external to hook up to a G3 back around 1998…


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## HCMarkus (Jul 29, 2022)

I've got two SATA3 SSDs in inexpensive Amazon USB3.1 cases connected to my Mac Studio via a USB3 hub. They have been working perfectly and are being used for photos library and project backup. Also attached is an OWC Envoy Express with a 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus housing VI Sample Data.


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## JSTube (Jul 30, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Thanks samphony. The problem is that I'm a large canary - CHEAP - and don't want to pay VAR prices.
> 
> Same with OWC, for example.


Get the startech USB 3-sata adapters. They're like $15-20 on eBay. (<-- only applicable if they're laptop-sized SSDs, big HDDs requiring dedicated power won't work with that cheap/good of an adapter.)

Don't worry about USB 3.2 for the drive-to-USB part of this, as SATA III drives won't be able to saturate that.

You're either going to need a USB-C to multiple-USB-A breakout dock (that's the part of this chain that you actually want to make sure it supports the more recent, high-speed standards of USB 3.2 etc, so that each drive you'd have plugged in can fully saturate its SATA III speeds simultaneously).

As the owner of one of the newer apple silicons that's always where you'll need to be more planning, is the I/O and peripherals. If you don't like aftermarket USB-C docks, you're going to have to be really crafty and wise.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 30, 2022)

JSTube said:


> Get the startech USB 3-sata adapters. They're like $15-20 on eBay. (<-- only applicable if they're laptop-sized SSDs, big HDDs requiring dedicated power won't work with that cheap/good of an adapter.)
> 
> Don't worry about USB 3.2 for the drive-to-USB part of this, as SATA III drives won't be able to saturate that.


Thanks.

Well, a single drive won't, but I am worried about several drives being able to saturate a USB 3.0 bus. I actually have one of those boxes for a single external SSD, but...

...you know, it probably doesn't pay to bother with these drives. By the time I've spent $150 on boxes, cables, and a faster USB hub, I may as well just get a single bigger one and keep these drives in my current machine.







JSTube said:


> You're either going to need a USB-C to multiple-USB-A breakout dock (that's the part of this chain that you actually want to make sure it supports the more recent, high-speed standards of USB 3.2 etc, so that each drive you'd have plugged in can fully saturate its SATA III speeds simultaneously).
> 
> As the owner of one of the newer apple silicons that's always where you'll need to be more planning, is the I/O and peripherals. If you don't like aftermarket USB-C docks, you're going to have to be really crafty and wise.


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## colony nofi (Jul 31, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Thanks.
> 
> Well, a single drive won't, but I am worried about several drives being able to saturate a USB 3.0 bus. I actually have one of those boxes for a single external SSD, but...
> 
> ...you know, it probably doesn't pay to bother with these drives. By the time I've spent $150 on boxes, cables, and a faster USB hub, I may as well just get a single bigger one and keep these drives in my current machine.


YES!


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 31, 2022)

I'm gonna be in the same boat as you @Nick Batzdorf at some point in the future so I am watching what you end up doing.

I have 6 SSD's in my macPro, totalling more than 15TB. I don't really want to spend a lot of money replacing them with newer tech adding up to that much space..its not inexpensive and sata performance is perfectly fine for what we do.

The Thunderbolt enclosures would probably be the best performance but yikes they are expensive too. I see there are some TB to eSata adapters out there in the $100 range, which might be worth a look, but I don't know anything more about whether they are any good or not. But eSata would be as good as TB I think, and better then USB probably.

I Personally am also a little concerned about saturating the USB3 bus while loading samples or recording tracks, but I don't have any evidence to backup that fear. Using USB would be the cheapest solution, though I am not excited about having multiple drives dangling all around the Mac itself.

I think USB would be fine for some of the drives, two of my current drives are actually for backup purposes only. USB would be fine for them. One of the drives is for Mojave, which I won't need in the future either. Its really the boot drive and sample drive(s) that I am concerned about being on USB.. But anyway that might have to be an inexpensive interim solution until a better solution comes along. The OWC TB storage bays are ridiculously priced for what they are.

Myself I'm still holding out to see if Apple will come out with Apple Silicon machine that has PCI slots and sata storage bays that doesn't cost $10,000; But in the end I may have to go MacStudio route also due to cost, we shall see.


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## jbuhler (Jul 31, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm gonna be in the same boat as you @Nick Batzdorf at some point in the future so I am watching what you end up doing.
> 
> I have 6 SSD's in my macPro, totalling more than 15TB. I don't really want to spend a lot of money replacing them with newer tech adding up to that much space..its not inexpensive and sata performance is perfectly fine for what we do.
> 
> ...


My evidence is all anecdotal and I haven’t run any sort of controlled tests. I’ve used SSDs with both USB3 and Thunderbolt. USB 3 has been fine with a dual bay. I’ve even used four drives through a hub on USB 3 without much incident. But that was also when I was running Logic with a 512 or even 1024 buffer. 

I find that it is generally best to put my most used libraries on separate USB 3 ports, just like the old days with spinning disks. For whatever reason I find this largely to be true of drives in a Thunderbolt bay enclosure as well. From which I conclude that the limiting factor seems to be in part the SATA drives themselves. Spreading out the main libraries across several drives largely solves the issue whether I use USB 3 or Thunderbolt. 

Thunderbolt is a bit more convenient in that I have 8 SATA SSDs in two Thunderbays daisy chained together and I have no issue with saturating either the enclosures or the Thunderbolt port running Logic with a buffer of 256 or less and a Kontakt DFD of 20. Whereas when I use 4 USB3 drives through the same port I will experience some issues. But I haven’t tried one of those four bay (or larger) dedicated USB-C enclosures, so I don’t know how that would be. I’m hoping to get one soon to use for video editing.


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## HCMarkus (Jul 31, 2022)

Not trying to say they are anywhere near the fastest solution, but these $15 USB3.1 SATA SSD Cases are cheap and have not caused any discernible issues for me with my Mac Studio Ultra:



If you have a serious investment in SATA SSDs, I would imagine these cases could be useful for at least a few of the SSDs. As noted previously, I've got my photos and my working project backups on SSDs housed in these cases and performance has been solid. Admittedly, I have not tried streaming VI samples from them, but I have had no problem running DP projects from my backup SSD.

Remember that sample streaming involves lots of small files, not like video streaming, so your SSDs are unlikely to deliver anything close to their theoretical maximum speed when engaged in music-related work. USB bottlenecks _could_ be an issue but, a jbuhler notes, the SATA drives themselves may well be the actual limiting factor. 

The low cost of entry to test a few inexpensive USB cases might justify at least a wee bit of exploration.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 31, 2022)

jbuhler said:


> My evidence is all anecdotal and I haven’t run any sort of controlled tests. I’ve used SSDs with both USB3 and Thunderbolt. USB 3 has been fine with a dual bay. I’ve even used four drives through a hub on USB 3 without much incident. But that was also when I was running Logic with a 512 or even 1024 buffer.


I usually run Logic with a 64-sample buffer, sometimes 128 on my current machine with SATA II drives (half speed). If it has trouble - for example with EW Hollywood Opus - VE Pro solves the problem.




jbuhler said:


> I find that it is generally best to put my most used libraries on separate USB 3 ports,



These are the ports on the M1 Max (not the double-priced Ultra). Those Thunderbolt ports support USB 4, USB 3.1 (not 3.2 as I wrote - sorry), and Thunderbolt.

So eSATA and Thunderbolt aren't going to make any difference for SATA III drives. USB 3.1 Gen 2 should be fine.

But I'm still leaning toward just replacing the drives with a single one.


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## LinusW (Aug 4, 2022)

Get USB 3.2 enclosures for 2x2TB and 2X1TB. Migrate the smaller drives to a new NVMe based drive. The Firecuda 510 (!) works fine with the M1 Macs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 7, 2022)

LinusW said:


> Get USB 3.2 enclosures for 2x2TB and 2X1TB. Migrate the smaller drives to a new NVMe based drive. The Firecuda 510 (!) works fine with the M1 Macs.


This makes more sense to me:


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## John Zuker (Aug 9, 2022)

Nick, 

Don't mean to hijack your thread, but I'm very interested in your Mac Studio adventure. I'm also still working with my trusty ol' mid 2010 cheese grater (Hey, it still freakin' works -slowly and steadily). But as my technological clock keeps ticking, I'm now, also looking at the Mac Studio. I was likely going to wait until everything runs natively on the new M1 processors, particularly VEPro, but since I now have some down time to go through upgrade hell, sooner might be better than later. Keep us posted on all of this. You may possibly be be my CANARY in a coal mine, as I believe that our upgrade paths are somewhat similar, and I am comparably CHEAP. 

-JZ


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 12, 2022)

John Zuker said:


> Nick,
> 
> Don't mean to hijack your thread, but I'm very interested in your Mac Studio adventure. I'm also still working with my trusty ol' mid 2010 cheese grater (Hey, it still freakin' works -slowly and steadily). But as my technological clock keeps ticking, I'm now, also looking at the Mac Studio. I was likely going to wait until everything runs natively on the new M1 processors, particularly VEPro, but since I now have some down time to go through upgrade hell, sooner might be better than later. Keep us posted on all of this. You may possibly be be my CANARY in a coal mine, as I believe that our upgrade paths are somewhat similar, and I am comparably CHEAP.
> 
> -JZ



2010? So you too are working on a new computer.


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## John Zuker (Aug 12, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> 2010? So you too are working on a new computer.


Yes, looking into the Mac Studio as well. Was hoping to wait until all third parties are solidly M1 native before jumping in. It really has to blow my current system out of the water before I shell out the $$.


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## mercury (Aug 12, 2022)

colony nofi said:


> So you have 6 drives? I would seriously replace them all with a single 8TB NVME drive. The rocket drives in a thunderbolt 3 enclosure (PCIE 3, but thats FINE!) are awesome for samples on the m1 Macs. If you need more space, then look at a NVME enclosure that allows you to put in two or more of these drives. It won't scale for speed - but it does for capacity. Newer 16TB SATA III SSD's are on their way (I've seen an engineering sample) but I'm not sure they're really what composers will go for. SATA III has limitations - although it WILL work "fine".
> Large size M.2's are further away - and likely won't work in current enclosures due to power draw. Now 96 Layer QLC is interesting... there's articles around intimating 19.2TB M.2's using 96 layer NAND are around the corner.
> 
> Digressions aside, the cheap and cheerful way is to get yourself a little usb hub, and then run all your old drives via usb3.2 enclosures. Its never going to be blazingly fast - but it'll be fast enough. With 5 drives connected, you shouldn't have any issues. Shouldn't - but I still wouldn't be surprised if you did. Meaning you then need to spend more money to get it working. Sigh.
> ...


I‘m not sure whether to have my sample libraries on 2.5 SSD/s in a OWC Thunderbay Mini 4 connect to the Mac Studio via Thunderbolt or something like the Rocket NVMe contained within an enclosure. 
What would you go for? 
Having all samples on a single vs multiple (say two drives) is there a difference?
As crunch time is soon for me to decide.


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## mercury (Aug 12, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I usually run Logic with a 64-sample buffer, sometimes 128 on my current machine with SATA II drives (half speed). If it has trouble - for example with EW Hollywood Opus - VE Pro solves the problem.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Connecting a Thunderbay Mini 4 (which is Thunderbolt 3)and having 4 2.5 SSDs inside it to one of the Thunderbolt ports on the Mac Studio - I guess this wouldn’t bottle neck at all And the drives would work too their full spec?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 12, 2022)

John Zuker said:


> Yes, looking into the Mac Studio as well. Was hoping to wait until all third parties are solidly M1 native before jumping in. It really has to blow my current system out of the water before I shell out the $$.


(I was kidding about your 2010 and my 2009 machines being new.  )

But yes, I feel the say way - there has to be a compelling reason to upgrade. For me the biggest one is keeping up with Logic, which our machines haven't been able to do for a few versions now.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 12, 2022)

Mine has!  But...I guess I won't get past Logic 10.8 on it.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 12, 2022)

John Zuker said:


> Yes, looking into the Mac Studio as well. Was hoping to wait until all third parties are solidly M1 native before jumping in. It really has to blow my current system out of the water before I shell out the $$.


Having recently moved from a Mac Pro 5,1 12 core 3.33 machine to a Mac Studio Ultra, I can assure you that your current system_ will _be blown out of the water, M1 Native software or not. And you certainly don't need the Ultra for the performance difference to be very gratifying.

But, as is always advised, don't buy a new computer unless you *need* a new computer.


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## John Zuker (Aug 13, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> (I was kidding about your 2010 and my 2009 machines being new.  )
> 
> But yes, I feel the say way - there has to be a compelling reason to upgrade. For me the biggest one is keeping up with Logic, which our machines haven't been able to do for a few versions now.


Ah, missed that, sorry. Old brain cells. Interpreted as "working on" getting a new one. Yeah, the version of Logic I'm on is getting a bit moldy.


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## John Zuker (Aug 13, 2022)

HCMarkus said:


> Having recently moved from a Mac Pro 5,1 12 core 3.33 machine to a Mac Studio Ultra, I can assure you that your current system_ will _be blown out of the water, M1 Native software or not. And you certainly don't need the Ultra for the performance difference to be very gratifying.
> 
> But, as is always advised, don't buy a new computer unless you *need* a new computer.


Good to hear. And good advice re: needing a computer. In my case, "need" is up for interpretation. I'm fine staying put for a while longer. I just want to take advantage of switching systems when I have the time to do so.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 13, 2022)

John Zuker said:


> Good to hear. And good advice re: needing a computer. In my case, "need" is up for interpretation. I'm fine staying put for a while longer. I just want to take advantage of switching systems when I have the time to do so.


If you are in a place where time is available, and it might not be in the future, it is a good time to make the leap. In my case, it really only took about two-three days to get the new Mac going, and that was with a clean install of all software. VI Samples were simply copied to a new SSD from the old one, so there were no big downloads except NI.

I've got my cheesegrater sitting in the machine closet with my Ultra, ready to go in case of problems with the new Mac. However, since getting the Mac Studio going, I have not booted the old Mac Pro a single time.


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## John Zuker (Aug 14, 2022)

HCMarkus said:


> If you are in a place where time is available, and it might not be in the future, it is a good time to make the leap. In my case, it really only took about two-three days to get the new Mac going, and that was with a clean install of all software. VI Samples were simply copied to a new SSD from the old one, so there were no big downloads except NI.
> 
> I've got my cheesegrater sitting in the machine closet with my Ultra, ready to go in case of problems with the new Mac. However, since getting the Mac Studio going, I have not booted the old Mac Pro a single time.


Great to know. Thanks!!


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## pranic (Aug 15, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> This makes more sense to me:



I was prepping a solution for my laptop, and doing some composing away from my main rig. I had looked at the Crucial X6 as a potential option, but ruled it out because it didn't have DRAM on the controller for the SSD. I have been very happy with Samsung EVO and QVO drives in my main computer, so decided to go with an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini enclosure fitted with a couple Samsung 4TB EVO SSDs. Given the Macbook Pro uses USB-C and should achieve full saturation of at least one drive, I'm hopeful it will result in a good solution (but am still a day away from receiving all the components). Prior to this, I've had a bunch of USB3.0 enclosures with 1TB SATA SSDs when on the road, which worked reasonably well, but required juggling libraries between drives, rather than having them all sorted and organized in the same way as on my main computer.

The old drives that I'd used before will be repurposed for offloading and processing photos and videos, since I've largely filled up all my Samsung T5 drives with photos.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-drives/owc-mercury-elite-pro-dual/mini seems pretty highly rated. I think I'd prefer Thunderbolt, but given things have worked well on USB3.0, I'm thinking this should be just fine (I hope)


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## HCMarkus (Aug 15, 2022)

For VI Samples, USB should be excellent, as that use case is primarily read-only. It should be noted, however, that Macs do not support Trim over USB; Macs _do_ support Trim on drives connected via Thunderbolt. My research suggests that having Trim support on drives that get a lot of write activity is a good thing.

Not having the need for more than 2TB of external fast storage (like pranic, I have some old drives that have been repurposed for use in USB3 cases with my Mac Studio), when I was putting my system together I looked at buying a new 2TB SATA SSD. I ended up with a Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe drive in an OWC Envoy Express case for about $40 more.

I paid $200 for my Samsung drive. Amazon (and possibly others) currently has Samsung and Crucial 2TB NVMe TLC drives on sale for $190; an HP version is currently $180.


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## rnb_2 (Aug 15, 2022)

mercury said:


> Connecting a Thunderbay Mini 4 (which is Thunderbolt 3)and having 4 2.5 SSDs inside it to one of the Thunderbolt ports on the Mac Studio - I guess this wouldn’t bottle neck at all And the drives would work too their full spec?


This is correct - there is plenty of bandwidth over Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to handle four SATA III SSDs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 15, 2022)

pranic said:


> I was prepping a solution for my laptop, and doing some composing away from my main rig. I had looked at the Crucial X6 as a potential option, but ruled it out because it didn't have DRAM on the controller for the SSD. I have been very happy with Samsung EVO and QVO drives in my main computer, so decided to go with an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual Mini enclosure fitted with a couple Samsung 4TB EVO SSDs. Given the Macbook Pro uses USB-C and should achieve full saturation of at least one drive, I'm hopeful it will result in a good solution (but am still a day away from receiving all the components). Prior to this, I've had a bunch of USB3.0 enclosures with 1TB SATA SSDs when on the road, which worked reasonably well, but required juggling libraries between drives, rather than having them all sorted and organized in the same way as on my main computer.
> 
> The old drives that I'd used before will be repurposed for offloading and processing photos and videos, since I've largely filled up all my Samsung T5 drives with photos.
> 
> https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-drives/owc-mercury-elite-pro-dual/mini seems pretty highly rated. I think I'd prefer Thunderbolt, but given things have worked well on USB3.0, I'm thinking this should be just fine (I hope)



Am I upset at the Crucial for not having DRAM on its controller? Serious question, not snark - I didn't know about that.

The OWC 4TB drive is $679 (vs. $325). If I were going that route I'd rather go for the Apple internal storage - and in fact I'm leaning that way anyway after Mike's logic above sunk in.

He's right, I don't use everything I've hoarded all the time.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 15, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> This is correct - there is plenty of bandwidth over Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to handle four SATA III SSDs.


But don't you have to put them in Thunderbolt enclosures rather than USB 3.2?

If so, here again you're close to the price Apple charges for their internal storage.


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## mercury (Aug 15, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> This is correct - there is plenty of bandwidth over Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to handle four SATA III SSDs.


Thanks for the confirmation, I’m 99% going to get the Thunderbay 4 Mini and 4 SSDs (2 for samples libraries) all JBODs.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 15, 2022)

mercury said:


> Thanks for the confirmation, I’m 99% going to get the Thunderbay 4 Mini and 4 SSDs (2 for samples libraries) all JBODs.


Do you have a Mac Studio?

I just looked up the Thunderbay 4 Mini. The 4TB one is $1129, and Apple charges $1200 for 4TB of internal storage.


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## jbuhler (Aug 15, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> This is correct - there is plenty of bandwidth over Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to handle four SATA III SSDs.


I have this set up more or less and the Thunderbolt seems fine. I have two Thunderbays and 4 drives on the same Thunderbolt daisy chain. No issues with that per se. If I’m drawing too much on one SSD, however, it will start to bottleneck. My working theory is that the drive itself is the bottleneck as I’ve then replicated the problem in single enclosures on USB 3. I’m any case it is remedied by placing my most used libraries on different drives. Another reason I’ve resisted moving to 4TB SSDs.


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## rnb_2 (Aug 15, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> But don't you have to put them in Thunderbolt enclosures rather than USB 3.2?
> 
> If so, here again you're close to the price Apple charges for their internal storage.


Yes, I was specifically answering his question about using a Thunderbay Mini 4 with four separate drives installed. That's the route I'd go if I had a few SSDs in separate enclosures or installed inside a Mac Pro or PC and was moving to a Mac Studio, though it's certainly not the cheapest option. I certainly wouldn't go that route if I didn't already have SATA SSDs on hand - as you said, buying a 4TB Thunderbay Mini 4 SSD vs just upgrading the internal on the Studio isn't cost-effective - but for repurposing existing drives, I think it's a good setup. Four SATA SSDs in a multi-drive Thunderbolt 3 or 4 enclosure is honestly about the best match of theoretical needed bandwidth (~2.4GB/s, less in practice) to available bandwidth (~2.7GB/s) out there, and for someone using VIs, single SATA drive performance is generally fine.

Getting a single large NVMe drive is certainly an option (as @colony nofi suggested), but I get the impression you really don't want to go that route due to cost. Personally, I'm also a bit leery of going with just bus power for non-backup USB drives, having been bitten by voltage issues with bus-powered SSDs in the past (FireWire in my case) that led to dead drives. I trust voltage over Thunderbolt more, since the spec is more stringent, so I'm happy with the OWC Envoy Express NVMe enclosure.


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## pranic (Aug 15, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Am I upset at the Crucial for not having DRAM on its controller? Serious question, not snark - I didn't know about that.
> 
> The OWC 4TB drive is $679 (vs. $325). If I were going that route I'd rather go for the Apple internal storage - and in fact I'm leaning that way anyway after Mike's logic above sunk in.
> 
> He's right, I don't use everything I've hoarded all the time.


Oh, on the OWC, I purchased the enclosure separately from the drive -- so the enclosure at $84 and the drive at $399, so it is more expensive, but I really did want the 2-bay option so I didn't have to lug around two separate external SSDs in separate enclosures. However, I purposefully want to use the Samsung 2.5" SSDs. The only SSDs that have ever failed for me are Crucial MX series, and I've never been let down by Samsung.

I'm not saying that it's optimal from a data transfer rate -- I can't obviously max out the SSDs, which are rated for like 550MB/s, but at 950MB/s, I will come close to being able to use both as independent drives, and it has to be better than my USB3.0 enclosures of the past.

On your question about whether you'd care about the Crucial X6's lack of DRAM for the SSD, it typically means that your computer will have to do a bit more digging to get at the data on the SSD, which can slow down the random access transfer rate. Here was a good and concise answer on Quora that might help: https://www.quora.com/What-is-DRAM-on-SSDs-Does-it-even-matter
and then a more drawn-out explanation. https://www.maketecheasier.com/dram-or-dram-less-ssd/

If money were no object, I'd have bought a couple 4TB NVME drives and thrown them into a Thunderbolt enclosure. However, i still have multiple laptops and need to have backwards compatibility with USB, and I don't think I'm needing absolute speed (even my desktop mac has 2x4TB Samsung QVO and 2x2TB Samsung EVO SATA drives for my samples, and I haven't felt limited by the SATA transfer speed).

I do, however, have my system drive on a 2TB NVME m.2 EVO 970 PRO SSD, and appreciate the speed of having native NVME PCI speeds for non-sample libraries.



rnb_2 said:


> Getting a single large NVMe drive is certainly an option (as @colony nofi suggested), but I get the impression you really don't want to go that route due to cost. Personally, I'm also a bit leery of going with just bus power for non-backup USB drives, having been bitten by voltage issues with bus-powered SSDs in the past (FireWire in my case) that led to dead drives. I trust voltage over Thunderbolt more, since the spec is more stringent, so I'm happy with the OWC Envoy Express NVMe enclosure.


This is a very good point about bus-powered USB. I definitely don't trust this as much as I would with Thunderbolt, so this is a good point to take. I especially remember the early days of USB-C and a lot of concern about voltage stability. In my case, I'm of the opinion that my laptop rig and the USB-C enclosure I've purchased is _good enough_ for my attempts at composing on the run/vacation/etc.


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## mercury (Aug 16, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> But don't you have to put them in Thunderbolt enclosures rather than USB 3.2?
> 
> If so, here again you're close to the price Apple charges for their internal storage.


The Thunderbay 4 Mini retails here at around £240


Nick Batzdorf said:


> Do you have a Mac Studio?
> 
> I just looked up the Thunderbay 4 Mini. The 4TB one is $1129, and Apple charges $1200 for 4TB of internal storage.


The Thunderbay 4 Mini retails for around £240 - without RAID software. With RAID software it’s around £340.

Im going to get it without RAID (SoftRAID software)


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## rnb_2 (Aug 16, 2022)

pranic said:


> This is a very good point about bus-powered USB. I definitely don't trust this as much as I would with Thunderbolt, so this is a good point to take. I especially remember the early days of USB-C and a lot of concern about voltage stability. In my case, I'm of the opinion that my laptop rig and the USB-C enclosure I've purchased is _good enough_ for my attempts at composing on the run/vacation/etc.


I'm less worried about USB-C drives powered via Thunderbolt ports than USB-A drives generally, and some of that is on Apple whatever part they played in the stories we sometimes hear about issues with USB-A ports on some Macs. Especially with an OWC enclosure, I'd feel fine going that route.


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## mercury (Aug 16, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> Yes, I was specifically answering his question about using a Thunderbay Mini 4 with four separate drives installed. That's the route I'd go if I had a few SSDs in separate enclosures or installed inside a Mac Pro or PC and was moving to a Mac Studio, though it's certainly not the cheapest option. I certainly wouldn't go that route if I didn't already have SATA SSDs on hand - as you said, buying a 4TB Thunderbay Mini 4 SSD vs just upgrading the internal on the Studio isn't cost-effective - but for repurposing existing drives, I think it's a good setup. Four SATA SSDs in a multi-drive Thunderbolt 3 or 4 enclosure is honestly about the best match of theoretical needed bandwidth (~2.4GB/s, less in practice) to available bandwidth (~2.7GB/s) out there, and for someone using VIs, single SATA drive performance is generally fine.
> 
> Getting a single large NVMe drive is certainly an option (as @colony nofi suggested), but I get the impression you really don't want to go that route due to cost. Personally, I'm also a bit leery of going with just bus power for non-backup USB drives, having been bitten by voltage issues with bus-powered SSDs in the past (FireWire in my case) that led to dead drives. I trust voltage over Thunderbolt more, since the spec is more stringent, so I'm happy with the OWC Envoy Express NVMe enclosure.


Is your NVMe and OWC Envoy Express enclosure just for sample libraries? I did also consider (may still do) that exact enclosure and an NVMe purely for sample libraries, then I thought do I get 1 4TB or 2 2TB drives + 2 enclosures.

Then that would mean getting more externals for a projects drive and back up - whereas the Thunderbay 4 Mini solves all of this in its own way.


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## rnb_2 (Aug 16, 2022)

mercury said:


> Is your NVMe and OWC Envoy Express enclosure just for sample libraries? I did also consider (may still do) that exact enclosure and an NVMe purely for sample libraries, then I thought do I get 1 4TB or 2 2TB drives + 2 enclosures.
> 
> Then that would mean getting more externals for a projects drive and back up - whereas the Thunderbay 4 Mini solves all of this in its own way.


I've had a couple different drives in Envoy Express enclosures over the last year or two, with one being strictly for sample libraries for a period of time. The one that is still connected to my main Mac (a 14" MacBook Pro) is a mix of photographs, video, and samples that wouldn't fit on the 2TB internal, and everything has always worked fine for me. The Envoy Express isn't the fastest or cheapest Thunderbolt NVMe enclosure out there, but it's generally well-made, it's by no means slow, and I like that the cable looks captive but is actually a standard Thunderbolt cable that plugs in inside the enclosure, so can be easily swapped out if necessary.

If you don't need to be mobile, I think the Thunderbay Mini is probably your best option if you want to keep using your existing SATA SSDs. The Envoy Express is great if you need to be mobile, even occasionally, or if you're looking to consolidate multiple smaller SATA drives down to one larger NVMe drive. I'm not sure if you'd see better performance by splitting things across two NVMe externals than having everything on one - my gut instinct is that it won't matter (there's the equivalent of 3-4 SATA drives to work with), but I haven't tested that.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 16, 2022)

mercury said:


> The Thunderbay 4 Mini retails for around £240


Okay, I must have been looking at one with drives in it, because that's roughly what it costs here too.

In any case, Apple's very expensive internal storage still makes more sense to me. It's too much money, but at least it's not a total write-off if and when you want to sell the computer to upgrade to another one. And it's more convenient.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 16, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> Yes, I was specifically answering his question about using a Thunderbay Mini 4 with four separate drives installed. That's the route I'd go if I had a few SSDs in separate enclosures or installed inside a Mac Pro or PC and was moving to a Mac Studio, though it's certainly not the cheapest option. I certainly wouldn't go that route if I didn't already have SATA SSDs on hand - as you said, buying a 4TB Thunderbay Mini 4 SSD vs just upgrading the internal on the Studio isn't cost-effective - but for repurposing existing drives, I think it's a good setup. Four SATA SSDs in a multi-drive Thunderbolt 3 or 4 enclosure is honestly about the best match of theoretical needed bandwidth (~2.4GB/s, less in practice) to available bandwidth (~2.7GB/s) out there, and for someone using VIs, single SATA drive performance is generally fine.
> 
> Getting a single large NVMe drive is certainly an option (as @colony nofi suggested), but I get the impression you really don't want to go that route due to cost. Personally, I'm also a bit leery of going with just bus power for non-backup USB drives, having been bitten by voltage issues with bus-powered SSDs in the past (FireWire in my case) that led to dead drives. I trust voltage over Thunderbolt more, since the spec is more stringent, so I'm happy with the OWC Envoy Express NVMe enclosure.



Ah, missed this post.

Yes, USB power can definitely be a problem, but a powered hub normally solves it.

Also, I'd be surprised if the Mac Studio didn't supply enough power (because USB and Thunderbolt are the same ports).


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 16, 2022)

pranic said:


> Oh, on the OWC, I purchased the enclosure separately from the drive -- so the enclosure at $84 and the drive at $399, so it is more expensive, but I really did want the 2-bay option so I didn't have to lug around two separate external SSDs in separate enclosures. However, I purposefully want to use the Samsung 2.5" SSDs. The only SSDs that have ever failed for me are Crucial MX series, and I've never been let down by Samsung.


$84 isn't terrible, just annoying. 

As to the Crucial drive failing, a single failure (I'm assuming?) doesn't mean anything. It's when a company - whose name is Seagate - sells me four drives that fail within a month, two of them literally days out of warranty, and then are shitty about it that I stop supporting it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 16, 2022)

^ Those were spinning drives, by the way - this was before SSDs. 

That's an indication of how badly they behaved.


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## BassClef (Aug 16, 2022)

For use with my Mac Studio, I replaced my external USB/SATA SSDs with an Acasis thunderbolt enclosure and a 4 TB NVMe drive.


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## pranic (Aug 16, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> $84 isn't terrible, just annoying.
> 
> As to the Crucial drive failing, a single failure (I'm assuming?) doesn't mean anything. It's when a company - whose name is Seagate - sells me four drives that fail within a month, two of them literally days out of warranty, and then are shitty about it that I stop supporting it.


So, the Crucial MX drives that failed for me were multiple drives in a purchase of about 32 drives, I believe (this was back when I was managing servers and bought some consumer-grade SSDs for a smaller sub-cluster of servers that didn't need enterprise-class equipment). Of the bunch of drives, at least three of the 36 drives had odd failures, and at the time, I had purchased one of the MX drives for my own uses (which also failed, roughly on the same 2 year cycle). The SMART data didn't show the drive having written anywhere close to the expected capacity of the drives, but I'm pretty sure they were out of warranty when they failed.

I'm going to knock on wood, but I've had excellent luck with all the Samsung SSDs I've owned, ranging from 128GB through 4TB (both SATA and m.2 thus far). I tend to always pay the extra for the Samsung drives. Though, don't get me started on how frustrating Samsung dishwashers can be


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## mercury (Aug 16, 2022)

BassClef said:


> For use with my Mac Studio, I replaced my external USB/SATA SSDs with an Acasis thunderbolt enclosure and a 4 TB NVMe drive.


Is the NVMe drive for sample libraries? If so how do you find it?


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## mercury (Aug 16, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> I've had a couple different drives in Envoy Express enclosures over the last year or two, with one being strictly for sample libraries for a period of time. The one that is still connected to my main Mac (a 14" MacBook Pro) is a mix of photographs, video, and samples that wouldn't fit on the 2TB internal, and everything has always worked fine for me. The Envoy Express isn't the fastest or cheapest Thunderbolt NVMe enclosure out there, but it's generally well-made, it's by no means slow, and I like that the cable looks captive but is actually a standard Thunderbolt cable that plugs in inside the enclosure, so can be easily swapped out if necessary.
> 
> If you don't need to be mobile, I think the Thunderbay Mini is probably your best option if you want to keep using your existing SATA SSDs. The Envoy Express is great if you need to be mobile, even occasionally, or if you're looking to consolidate multiple smaller SATA drives down to one larger NVMe drive. I'm not sure if you'd see better performance by splitting things across two NVMe externals than having everything on one - my gut instinct is that it won't matter (there's the equivalent of 3-4 SATA drives to work with), but I haven't tested that.


No don’t need to be mobile at all, and if I do it won’t be for a very long time.

I don’t even own any 2.5 SSDs at all to even put in the Thundebay 4 Mini! I haven’t bought anything yet.

I’ve upgraded from a Mac Pro 1.1 which is all HDD. So I’m truly starting from a blank slate and now can’t make my mind up which type of SSD to get whether that be a a couple 2.5 in an enclosure or NVMe in an enclosure - purely to house sample libraries and Omnisphere 2/Trillian.


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## pranic (Aug 16, 2022)

mercury said:


> I’ve upgraded from a Mac Pro 1.1 which is all HDD. So I’m truly starting from a blank slate and now can’t make my mind up which type of SSD to get whether that be a a couple 2.5 in an enclosure or NVMe in an enclosure - purely to house sample libraries.


Congrats on the upgrade from the MacPro 1,1. I had that, and a 3,1 and a 5,1 over the years. They're such great computers, and I was happy to keep them going longer by replacing all the HDDs with SSDs -- but after Apple stopped supporting new OS upgrades on them, it was time to jump ship. 

If you can afford it, just go NVME m.2 drives in enclosures. They'll deliver higher throughput and smaller desk space used in the long-run (about 9x better throughput performance at 50% additional cost). If you want to prioritize capacity over performance at a cheaper cost, the SATA 2.5" SSDs are just fine for sample library drives, and I've rarely had any issues with SATA drives for samples. Just be careful to ensure you're buying an enclosure that takes advantage of at least 10Gbps bus (e.g. Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4, or USB 3.1 Gen 2 to take advantage of the full SATA bandwidth available from the 2.5" SSDs).


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## HCMarkus (Aug 16, 2022)

pranic said:


> If you can afford it, just go NVME m.2 drives in enclosures. They'll deliver higher throughput and smaller desk space used in the long-run (about 9x better throughput performance at 50% additional cost).


I have noticed the price difference seems to be narrowing, which makes sense, as NVMe drives don't include the box SATA drives are packaged in.

For my Mac studio, I picked up a 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus for $200 (saw 'em on Amazon yesterday for $190) and the OWC Envoy Express case (that's been discussed here) for $80. Nothing against SATA drives, plenty fast for audio work, except Mac OS doesn't support Trim over USB.


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## tmhuud (Aug 17, 2022)

pranic said:


> I'm going to knock on wood, but I've had excellent luck with all the Samsung SSDs I've owned, ranging from 128GB through 4TB (both SATA and m.2 thus far). I tend to always pay the extra for the Samsung drives. Though, don't get me started on how frustrating Samsung dishwashers can be


😝 regarding dishwashers. And keep knocking on that wood until your knuckles bleed.


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## BassClef (Aug 17, 2022)

mercury said:


> Is the NVMe drive for sample libraries? If so how do you find it?


Yes. Sample libraries only. It is really fast and so far has been flawless. These get a little warm, so I added a "stick on" heat sink... likely not necessary though.


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## mercury (Aug 17, 2022)

pranic said:


> Congrats on the upgrade from the MacPro 1,1. I had that, and a 3,1 and a 5,1 over the years. They're such great computers, and I was happy to keep them going longer by replacing all the HDDs with SSDs -- but after Apple stopped supporting new OS upgrades on them, it was time to jump ship.
> 
> If you can afford it, just go NVME m.2 drives in enclosures. They'll deliver higher throughput and smaller desk space used in the long-run (about 9x better throughput performance at 50% additional cost). If you want to prioritize capacity over performance at a cheaper cost, the SATA 2.5" SSDs are just fine for sample library drives, and I've rarely had any issues with SATA drives for samples. Just be careful to ensure you're buying an enclosure that takes advantage of at least 10Gbps bus (e.g. Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4, or USB 3.1 Gen 2 to take advantage of the full SATA bandwidth available from the 2.5" SSDs).


Thanks so glad I upgraded! I put it off for ages as the Mac Pro was working so well but at the same time pretty dated. When Apple released the Mac Studio I knew it was time to upgrade!

Yes I can afford a NVMe M.2 and an enclosure. It would need to be a 4TB NVMe as my sample library is over 2TB and I can fill it up as time goes by.

Any recommendations on a 4TB NVMe and an enclosure anyone, what works for you?

As no matter what the speed of the NVMe, it’s always going to be capped by the enclosures speed? 

The Thunderbay 4 Mini is thunderbolt 3 too - I like as there’s no hanging externals.


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## mercury (Aug 17, 2022)

BassClef said:


> Yes. Sample libraries only. It is really fast and so far has been flawless. These get a little warm, so I added a "stick on" heat sink... likely not necessary though.


That’s good to hear, I’ve read a lot they can get hot. I guess this hasn’t effected performance.

Is the Acasis enclosure thunderbolt? What brand of NVMe do you have?


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## BassClef (Aug 17, 2022)

mercury said:


> That’s good to hear, I’ve read a lot they can get hot. I guess this hasn’t effected performance.
> 
> Is the Acasis enclosure thunderbolt? What brand of NVMe do you have?


Western Digital... 4TB WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD. It runs very warm in the Acasis enclosure, but not what I would call hot. It's operating temp is well below the MAX conditions of the Western Digital specs, even without the additional heat sink. I can easily check the temp with a digital "no touch" thermometer.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 17, 2022)

pranic said:


> So, the Crucial MX drives that failed for me were multiple drives in a purchase of about 32 drives, I believe (this was back when I was managing servers and bought some consumer-grade SSDs for a smaller sub-cluster of servers that didn't need enterprise-class equipment). Of the bunch of drives, at least three of the 36 drives had odd failures, and at the time, I had purchased one of the MX drives for my own uses (which also failed, roughly on the same 2 year cycle).


Ah, then that's different!


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## HCMarkus (Aug 17, 2022)

BassClef said:


> These get a little warm, so I added a "stick on" heat sink... likely not necessary though.


That's what I did, too. Noticed the NVMe case warmth; think I saw your note about this in another thread and followed your lead. Thanks!


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## mercury (Aug 18, 2022)

BassClef said:


> Western Digital... 4TB WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD. It runs very warm in the Acasis enclosure, but not what I would call hot. It's operating temp is well below the MAX conditions of the Western Digital specs, even without the additional heat sink. I can easily check the temp with a digital "no touch" thermometer.


I was looking at this exact NVMe recently. Does the heat sink go on the NVMe itself?


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## BassClef (Aug 18, 2022)

mercury said:


> I was looking at this exact NVMe recently. Does the heat sink go on the NVMe itself?


No. I have two of the heat sinks, and they are both placed on the outside of the Acacias enclosure. One on top and one on the bottom. This enclosure is used "desk top" only. If I were using it with a laptop as part of a mobile rig, I'd likely not use a heat sink since it adds bulk.


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## HCMarkus (Aug 18, 2022)

Here's how the same or similar heatsinks look on an Envoy Express:






The lovely Mac Studio is, somehow, less beautiful when most of its ports are occupied 

This is mine in my studio machine closet. its front faces the rear of the closet so most ports and power switch are easily accessible when I open the door. The two front TB Ports connect my Audio Interface and second Display (via USB-C to Display Port adaptor). Angling the Mac keeps the air outflow from reflecting off the closet door directly back into the Mac.


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