Affordable high speed storage

[Stef202]

Hi,
New imac 27, 580, 512 gb ssd will arrive next week. I need 1.2Tb for my raw photos/libraries and other documents in total, of course this will grow in future. I appreciate good performance in terms of short read/write speeds. This all will be backed up by time machine in a separate hdd. Max cost for the high speed storage is 500 Eur.

My options as I understand are:

a. Samsung t5 1Tb (small, quiet but limited in space)
b. any affordable RAID (space for future needs, ads say speeds around 440 mb/s, but not so quiet - no idea which one (Lacie, G-drive, WD, ?)
c. Quick hdd such as Lacie d2 or G-drive Thunderbolt 3 (cheaper as b, but slower)

For me, it is important that
1. the system is quick enough for editing raws from the drive
2. the drives swith on/off together with the imac. No need for an extra swith. Power consumption in stand-by is low
3. the system is quite. That means not louder as the imac

I am not a heavy user (Three times a week for a couple of hours).

I appreciate your advice for a preferred alternative a, b, or c and product rcommendation for b, c.
One of my devices, being back-up or speed storage will be daisy chained via usb-c so there is only one cableconnected to the imac.

Many thanks,
Stefan

 

[Stef202]

I am quite impressed by a. Was lucky and got a promotional discount.

 

[campyguy]

OP, you didn't list the SW you're using so I won't get into details here on my end. For "fast" editing with our apps we use the fastest external drive we can get our hands on for a scratch disk, generally a dual-SSD enclosure with dual (128GB or 1TB) Samsung 850 EVO drives in RAID 0 for CAD/photo and video/rendering, respectively. My GF currently uses two T3 drives in RAID 0 with her iMac and rMBP, one drive in a USB port and, therefore, one drive to a USB bus, and she'll be doing the same with dual T5 drives when the price normalizes in a few weeks or so.

I use 3 desktop drives with HHDs. In short, skip the G-Tech drive with TB and get the G-Tech drive with USB 3.1 - the 4TB USB-C unit is, for me, a sweet spot and is a fast performer, at $200 for USB-C and twice that for the TB3 interface. I also use a 8TB WD easystore (Best Buy exclusive) external drive for my personal collection; my GF travels regularly to Germany and the UK (where she is now) for work and has offered that she has seen a similar WD product in stores there - the benefit to this device is that WD stuffs a WD Red NAS drive (with a 256MB cache) in the easystore, and I can't buy that Red drive bare for what Best Buy sells the easystore external drive for. My third desktop drive is one I know has been rock solid and it's been my favorite drive to use and it's not that expensive - Buffalo’s DriveStation DDR - I use the 3TB version; the 1GB of cache makes file transfers fly.

The 3 desktop drives I mentioned are fairly fast, do sleep and startup with my Macs (the G-Tech drives all have power switches, however), are quiet, and generally work perfectly. If I had to buy a desktop drive today I would lean toward the Buffalo - the DDR cache really transforms the drive for smaller file transfers; I bought the easystore because of the Red drive (an internet "secret") and it's attached to my Synology router, and I bought the G-Tech drive because of the HGST drive and solid performance - it goes in my fire safe each night…

Here's looking forward to Intel's dropping the TB tax on 1/1/18!

 

[Chancha]

The G-Drive newer 3.1 single platter actually is back to 5400rpm, where the 3.0 previous used 7200rpm, and then the newer 3.1 is still using gen 1 so it keeps the 5Gb/s I/O speed. I see no real benefit of this over the old version.

I myself bought a G-RAID TB3 8+8TB, it uses HGST Ultrastar He 7200rpm enterprise, hitting 200MB/s each and 400 when stripped. It actually costs the same as the single drive TB3 version if you subtract the individual HDD costs. I saw the 4+4TB version sold for around ~$540 US but I am in Asia.

Like the above poster said, "high speed" is a relative term in computing context, and prosumer to studio to enterprises all have options to take advantage of technologies to suit their need for (relative) speed. IMO sub-2TB photo storage is kind of on the edge of manageable by just SSD but at a cost. Most photographers would rather build HDD arrays that grow and are mirrored if their work is of financial importance. Also the RAW write speed is only meaningful during import, while the read speed is much more so whenever the program calls for a full render. However, apps like Lightroom take advantage of cache/catalog being on fast SSD, your performance is much more dependent on the speed of this SSD, which can be really fast on a recent Mac with PCI blade types, of which the full previews reside on. The RAW read speed then only matters when an adjustment is made.

 

[ZapNZs]

How much storage do you think you will need 3 years from today?
Is reliability or pricing more important?
Are 7500 RPM 3.5-inch desktop HDDs too noisy?

One idea could be the 2TB Crucial MX300 in a USB-C enclosure. This is probably the simplest option for something that is fast, reliable, and silent. They are currently priced for $520 USD. After you need more than 2 TB of storage, you have easy avenues for expansion - such as buying a USB 3.1 gen 2 RAID0 enclosure, a second 2 TB MX300, and ending with a striped 4 TB drive that has insanely good read/write speeds. Given your needs, preferences, and budget, I would probably opt for this if I were in your exact position.

Another idea could be two 1TB budget SSDs in a hardware RAID 0. Something like the SanDisk SSD Plus + a Mediasonic or Oyen Digital USB 3.1 gen 2 enclosure would give you very good working speeds and silent operation for a reasonable price, but obviously at the expense of higher failure probability and only 2 TBs of storage without an easy avenue for expansion. IMO, the 2 TB Crucial MX300 makes more sense.

A 4-bay enclosure like the AKiTiO Thunder2Quad Mini with four 1-TB WD Black 2.5 1TB HDDs could be used in JBOD or soft RAID 0 to give you reasonably-to-extremely good working speeds, and 4 TB of storage for the future. It would be reasonably quiet. In RAID 0, obviously the use of four different drives would carry a much higher risk of total failure. Consequently, four 1 TB drives in a different RAID 5 enclosure might be a better option.

A single 4 TB HGST UltraStar 7k6000 would be affordable, extremely reliable, provide high-capacity and easy paths for expansion, yield good working speeds (over 200 MB/s, which is crazy good for a HDD), but at the expense of being noisier than other drives. I am strongly biased towards the UltraStar for 3.5-inch HDDs when reliability is an important consideration. Some enclosures reduce the noise better than others.

 

[Clix Pix]

When I purchased my 15" 2015 rMBP with 512 GB SSD to replace a 2012 iMac with a 1 TB HD, I realized that I was going to need to set up some sort of system for providing additional storage space for still-needed files, and at that time I chose Samsung's T1, which had just been released. I've been more than happy with it and with its successor, the T3, and have just recently purchased the newest version, the T5, in the 2 TB size. I use it for supplementary storage of files and folders that I need from time to time but not always immediately at my fingertips in the machine's internal drive, and it works very well for this purpose. The 2 TB version is not inexpensive, true, but in the long run I feel that it is definitely worth it, as it provides room for growth and is certainly very fast. I use the older versions for backups, too, along with a couple of desktop hard drives. The T5's small size lends itself to easy portability and it is rugged enough to travel comfortably and safely in accompaniment with my laptop on trips. At home, although I don't keep it plugged in all the time, it is quickly and easily plugged in as needed either to access files on it or to add more.