External SSD Drive vs. Hub with PCIe

[zionbrian]

Hello!

I just got a Mac mini for music production. I have been told that is it is better to have two external hard drives (one for my sound/sample libraries and the other for my project/session files) instead of one drive to hold both.

My question is this:

For external SSD storage, is it better to go (generally speaking) with two external hard drives (like the Samsung T7 Shield) or one of those hubs that has two slots for PCIe style storage)? Is it just all about the speed of either kind of drive? Any help and insights would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if there are any musicians out there, do you think I really need to separate out my sound libraries from my session files? My sample libraries are very large and my session files will potentially be very large as well. I'm wondering if I should try to just do everything from one external hard drive.

Thank you so much in advance for your help and time!

Brian

 

[DRDR]

I am not a music producer but I am using lots of external storage:

As storage has become cheap, I would suggest you get two Thunderbolt 3 or 4 NVMe enclosures (e,g. from Sabrent or OWC) and two NVMe drives.

But should think about having backups. Maybe start by using one drive for all and the second drive for automated backups with Carbon Copy Cloner.

 

[EugW]

I'm not a musician either but... It's not just about speed. macOS treats TB4/USB4 very differently from USB3. There are annoying bugs that sometimes occur on USB3 that generally don't happen with TB4/USB4. Plus TB4/USB4 enclosures paired with NVMe drives are much faster.

I would only recommend USB3 drives like the Samsung T7 Shield (which I own BTW) when portability and low power usage are the primary concerns. However, since this is for a Mac mini, those likely are not the main concerns here.

I am using the Qwiizlab but the OWC 1M2 seems like a reasonable solution too. The one drawback of the OWC is that it doesn't support Thunderbolt on Intel Macs, if that matters to you. Intel Macs support TB3, but the OWC 1M2 requires USB4/TB4. On those TB3 Intel machines, the drive drops down to USB3 speeds (10 Gbps, same as the T7 Shield).

 

[zionbrian]

I am not a music producer but I am using lots of external storage:

As storage has become cheap, I would suggest you get two Thunderbolt 3 or 4 NVMe enclosures (e,g. from Sabrent or OWC) and two NVMe drives.

But should think about having backups. Maybe start by using one drive for all and the second drive for automated backups with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Thank you so much!

 

[zionbrian]

I'm not a musician either but... It's not just about speed. macOS treats TB4/USB4 very differently from USB3. There are annoying bugs that sometimes occur on USB3 that generally don't happen with TB4/USB4. Plus TB4/USB4 enclosures paired with NVMe drives are much faster.

I would only recommend USB3 drives like the Samsung T7 Shield (which I own BTW) when portability and low power usage are the primary concerns. However, since this is for a Mac mini, those likely are not the main concerns here.

I am using the Qwiizlab but the OWC 1M2 seems like a reasonable solution too. The one drawback of the OWC is that it doesn't support Thunderbolt on Intel Macs, if that matters to you. Intel Macs support TB3, but the OWC 1M2 requires USB4/TB4. On those TB3 Intel machines, the drive drops down to USB3 speeds (10 Gbps, same as the T7 Shield).

Thank you – I really appreciate it!