Help on external hard drive please

[dpriest]

I'm about to get a new 2017 27" iMac with a 1TB SSD. I am going to get a USB 3 hard drive enclosure from OWC. The question is to either get an SSD or regular 7200RPM HDD depending if the difference in speed. Thoughts?

 

[waw74]

what are you doing with it?

4k Video editing? even the SSD probably won't be fast enough. you would need a RAID of some kind.

storing photos or videos? a USB2 drive is fast enough for that.

my guess is the regular drive will be enough for what you need.

 

[dpriest]

what are you doing with it?

4k Video editing? even the SSD probably won't be fast enough. you would need a RAID of some kind.

storing photos or videos? a USB2 drive is fast enough for that.

my guess is the regular drive will be enough for what you need.

No video editing on this drive. Storing media on it. I have over 2TB of movies that I keep on a Synology network drive so maybe just a standard HDD will suffice.

 

[ZapNZs]

Is the size of the 3.5-inch drive acceptable, and is the noise level of a 7200 RPM 3.5-inch drive acceptable? If so, a desktop-class HDD makes sense, given you get the most bang for your buck and the speed of the SSD probably won't be of significant enough benefit for this usage case to outweigh the much higher cost and smaller size constraint, IMO. You could do something like a decent $30 aluminum USB enclosure (the OWC Elite Pro is a nice enclosure but it carries quite a premium) + a $130 4TB 7200RPM HGST DeskStar?

I am guessing that you will use the Synology to backup all files that will live on this drive?

 

[dpriest]

Is the size of the 3.5-inch drive acceptable, and is the noise level of a 7200 RPM 3.5-inch drive acceptable? If so, a desktop-class HDD makes sense, given you get the most bang for your buck and the speed of the SSD probably won't be of significant enough benefit for this usage case to outweigh the much higher cost and smaller size constraint, IMO. You could do something like a decent $30 aluminum USB enclosure (the OWC Elite Pro is a nice enclosure but it carries quite a premium) + a $130 4TB 7200RPM HGST DeskStar?

I am guessing that you will use the Synology to backup all files that will live on this drive?

I already have a 2TB 7200RPM 3.5" drive in an OWC mercury elite pro enclosure usb 3.0. I have 2 4TB WD Mybook external drives that I use for backup, one always being stored in my safety deposit box at the bank, swapping drives regularly with backups. If I decide to use my new iMac for encoding video with Handbrake, I may get instead an external SSD as the destination for the Handbrake .mp4 files and the internal ssd on my iMac as the source. Thoughts?

 

[ZapNZs]

I already have a 2TB 7200RPM 3.5" drive in an OWC mercury elite pro enclosure usb 3.0. I have 2 4TB WD Mybook external drives that I use for backup, one always being stored in my safety deposit box at the bank, swapping drives regularly with backups. If I decide to use my new iMac for encoding video with Handbrake, I may get instead an external SSD as the destination for the Handbrake .mp4 files and the internal ssd on my iMac as the source. Thoughts?

I don't think you can go wrong with an external SSD as an export drive - you can get the Samsung EVOs and T5s, and Crucial MX300s for a pretty reasonable price, and they are certainly nice drives from an endurance, reliability, and quality perspective IMO. And as your iMac will support USB 3.1 gen 2 (over USB-C), you can get a gen 2 enclosure/external SSD and saturate the drive's capability, unlike USB 3.1 gen 1 (500-ish MB/s read/write with the Samsung T5 external or Samsung 850 EVO bare drive in a good gen2 enclosure is a reasonable expectation IMO.)

Hypothetically some 7200 RPM HDDs might potentially fill this role as well depending on what speeds you need? My HGST Ultrastar 7k6000s can reach sustained transfer speeds of about 250-ish MB/s, but they are comically noisy (my 7k4000s are considerably slower at around 170 MB/s, but eons quieter.)

 

[waw74]

Storing media on it. I have over 2TB of movies....

raw blu-ray (1080) is about 5-8 MB/s while USB 2 is about 20 MB/s
USB3 with standard drive is 70-90 MB/s, probably a little faster with SSD.

so apart from the initial load onto the drive, pretty much anything will be fast enough for you.

 

[HenryAZ]

I do have an OWC USB 3.0 enclosure for a dedicated backup drive (3.5" HGST 4TB). But another alternative, which I also have, and which is much cheaper than the full enclosure, is a Plugable USB 3.0 Dock. It takes any SATA interface drive, including 2.5" and 3.5" spinners, as well as SSD's. I use it primarily for my once-a-month offsite backup drives, both 4TB HGST spinners. But it is handy for reading any drive I have laying around, without any hassle of taking an enclosure apart and putting back together.

 

[dpriest]

I do have an OWC USB 3.0 enclosure for a dedicated backup drive (3.5" HGST 4TB). But another alternative, which I also have, and which is much cheaper than the full enclosure, is a Plugable USB 3.0 Dock. It takes any SATA interface drive, including 2.5" and 3.5" spinners, as well as SSD's. I use it primarily for my once-a-month offsite backup drives, both 4TB HGST spinners. But it is handy for reading any drive I have laying around, without any hassle of taking an enclosure apart and putting back together.

I wish I knew about this several months ago. I have 2 WD Mybook usb 3 6TB drives that I use for offsite backups.