Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Fast SSD External Thunderbolt for iMac 27' video editing

C

chrisfromalbany

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 24, 2010
403
19
I got 500gb SSD base for new iMac 27 5K, but wanted to know what ppl are using for additional space rather then gettin the 1 TB internal SSD(which is crazy expense).

So looking for something fast access and about 1 TB in size external SSD for video editing of 4K files.
 
I have two of these on two different iMacs, used as bootable clone SSDs just in case the internal SSDs die.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MOTGTBH5T1.0/

I pulled the HDDs out of them and put in my own SSDs (one was an OWC, the other an Intel) and put the leftover HDDs into these:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MOTGS3U3/

It's not the cheapest solution, but you also end up with a 1TB portable drive that can be setup easily as a time machine backup drive.

You could easily drop in a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD into the Thunderbolt enclosure (1st link) and have a very fast external drive.

If you need really really fast Thunderbolt external storage, then you're either looking at the expensive LaCie Little Big Disk or an OWC Thunderbay 4 mini with 4 SSDs in RAID 0. I have the latter configured with 4 x 500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSDs giving me a combined storage of 2TB, but it cost about US$1100, though it does deliver awesome speed 1140MB/sec read, 970MB/sec write.
 
Any thunderbolt enclosure and a HD of your choice should be fine. Many people are using OWCs ThunderBay 4, these can have up to 24TB of storage connected via Thunderbolt. If you are not aware of OWC, check out www.macsales.com

Good luck.
 
rkaufmann87 said:
Any thunderbolt enclosure and a HD of your choice should be fine. Many people are using OWCs ThunderBay 4, these can have up to 24TB of storage connected via Thunderbolt. If you are not aware of OWC, check out www.macsales.com

Good luck.
Click to expand...
ok good.. so are there any deals for 500 or 1 TB SSD drive itself I can use which has good access speeds and lower failure rate?
 
rkaufmann87 said:
Any thunderbolt enclosure and a HD of your choice should be fine. Many people are using OWCs ThunderBay 4, these can have up to 24TB of storage connected via Thunderbolt. If you are not aware of OWC, check out www.macsales.com

Good luck.
Click to expand...

I doubt very much that a single hard drive would be fast enough for 4k video editing, unless you like waiting a LOT.
 
I use a ZOTAC MSATA BOX which runs with two mSATA SSDs as RAID 0 in case as small as a 2.5" SSD. This is double as fast as a single SSD and cost only about 90 $

Correction: Just bought the second SSD and the performance did not improve at all with this case. Maybe they use only one SATA controller or something like that.....Maybe I switch to the Neutrino Thunder Duo. That should give better performance with a RAID 0...
 
Last edited:
matreya said:
I doubt very much that a single hard drive would be fast enough for 4k video editing, unless you like waiting a LOT.
Click to expand...
In my experience the I/O rate when editing long-GOP 4k video is not that high. However the CPU and GPU load is very high. If transcoding to intra-frame Prores, this decreases the CPU load and increases the I/O load, but even then the I/O load for a single stream isn't that high.

I would never suggest editing 4k video from a bus-powered 5400 rpm USB 3 drive, but an AC-powered 7200 rpm single drive can probably handle 4k video without problems, especially if the library/temp/scratch files are elsewhere.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back