Ext. SSD vs HDD RAID for photos new Imac?

[Dennis.Sweden]

Having some trouble deciding on what to do for storage to my new iMac.

I ordered the iMac with 512 SSD because of 1 TB would still be to small and 2 TB toooo expensive =)

I have a large Photos library of around 650GB today growing 80-100GB/year. And maybe more now when enabling 4K video on phones and camera. But mostly images so maybe not such huge difference. Maybe put videos outside of the library instead is an option.

The Library today is on a Samsung Evo 1TB SSD in a UASP USB 3 chassi and achieves around 370-420Mb/s and is a huge improvement over the WD Duo 4TB Thunderbolt 2 I also have. Library is super smooth on the SSD.

But now for the new iMac the WD Duo has to go and a new setup is a must!

I have been wondering of maybe a ordinary USB 3 4-8TB (Usage 1-1,5TB) disc for just file storage and keep the 1TB SSD for photos and when it outgrows buy a RAID chassi and get another one.

Time Machine is Backing up to Synology Nas.

Anybody thinking of a better solution for me?
Can a faster RAID HDD be similar to the SSD setup? Or is SSD just the way to go?

 

[Chancha]

Photos.app uses managed library which is the tricky part, normally with something like Lightroom you can leave permanent storage off to slower drives, and only move them to faster SSDs whenever you feel like. It is therefore asking for a single large volume to store all your photo originals, and then that drive probably has to reasonably fast since the database is also in the same directory...

4 bays+ RAID arrays can be reasonably fast if you config them right. I would go the route of getting a Drobo like RAID enclosure down the road ultimately, but for now since the 1TB Samsung is not yet full you can put that on hold. Why does the WD TB Duo have to go? You just need an Apple TB3-to-TB2 adaptor for it to work with the new iMac. Conventional USB-3 externals while generally good, but you can only get like 1-200MB/s from it which you may find it a limiting factor.