Moving from Mac Pro to Mac Studio – external storage advice?

[skippermonkey]

I'm used to having two 8TB hard drives in my MP (one for assets, one for Time Machine backup). I know nothing about external storage, but ideally want to replace this setup with a dual-drive enclosure with as fast I/O as possible, and for ease of use, I was going to get an empty enclosure and plug in the HDDs.

So, any suggestions on the best enclosure? And what's the best way to connect them? USB-C Thunderbolt? Gigabit ethernet? Any old USB...? Thanks in advance!

 

[Pressure]

Are the 8TB drives just normal SATA harddrives or SSDs?

If they are NVMe SSDs then I strongly recommend you buy external 2nd generation USB4 enclosures like the HyperDrive Next USB4 NVMe enclosure, Satechi USB4 NVMe SSD Pro enclosure or ZikeDrive USB4 UVMe SSD enclosure Z666.

This will give you maximum speeds with the correct drives at over 3GB/s read and write.

If they are just normal SATA harddrives you can connect them with whatever you got at hand, as long as it is at least USB3 10Gbps as they might be limited by USB2 480Mbps.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'm used to having two 8TB hard drives in my MP (one for assets, one for Time Machine backup). I know nothing about external storage, but ideally want to replace this setup with a dual-drive enclosure with as fast I/O as possible, and for ease of use, I was going to get an empty enclosure and plug in the HDDs.

So, any suggestions on the best enclosure? And what's the best way to connect them? USB-C Thunderbolt? Gigabit ethernet? Any old USB...? Thanks in advance!

What you could do is create a RAID storage solution and have it operate as a network drive within your studio so it doesn't have to be plugged into the Mac Studio. OWC makes several RAID enclosures for that purpose you can find on Amazon

Alternatively many are using rack mount solutions that have space for external SSDs

 

[skippermonkey]

Are the 8TB drives just normal SATA harddrives or SSDs?

If they are NVMe SSDs then I strongly recommend you buy external 2nd generation USB4 enclosures like the HyperDrive Next USB4 NVMe enclosure, Satechi USB4 NVMe SSD Pro enclosure or ZikeDrive USB4 UVMe SSD enclosure Z666.

This will give you maximum speeds with the correct drives at over 3GB/s read and write.

If they are just normal SATA harddrives you can connect them with whatever you got at hand, as long as it is at least USB3 10Gbps as they might be limited by USB2 480Mbps.

Nah, just standard 7200rpm hard disc drives.

 

[skippermonkey]

What you could do is create a RAID storage solution and have it operate as a network drive within your studio so it doesn't have to be plugged into the Mac Studio. OWC makes several RAID enclosures for that purpose you can find on Amazon

Alternatively many are using rack mount solutions that have space for external SSDs

I'd want it plugged in so I can get quick access to 3D assets, VDBs, textures etc. I know Wi-Fi is quick, but presumably wired is quicker.

 

[Ethosik]

I recently went through an overhaul process of my network. Based on how much you want to spend, ideally would be to get a NAS solution with 10 Gbe available. It’s nice to transfer at 1GB/s on a NAS that has 150 TB of space.

Otherwise I would just get an enclosure and connect it. I’m not a fan of the permanently attached external drive approach which is why I went with a network solution.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'd want it plugged in so I can get quick access to 3D assets, VDBs, textures etc. I know Wi-Fi is quick, but presumably wired is quicker.

Then what you'll need is a RAID SSD enclosure. OWC makes them

What kind of SSDs do you wanna use? NVMe? SATA? PCIe?

 

[skippermonkey]

Well I was hoping to just use the hard drives from the MP. I'm not working in 3D professionally, just want to replicate the setup I currently have. I think a simple enclosure will be fine, but I'll check out the various options.

The OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual looks a suitable candidate...

 

[iKnowMyABGz]

Im not sure if this is a all around thing, but "Time Machine" on my Studio f**ks my shiz up, and looking thru certain blogs I noticed a trend of people mentioning time-machine as doing this or that. All of which my issues seemed to be, ended up deleting Time Machine or well stopped it lol and never had any issues. Thats just bc you mentioned using it etc. But I have 2 external Toshiba's (4tb ea) that work great with the machine and a just in case seagate(2tb) all of which never had any issues.

-Toshiba CANVIO Advance Plus - Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 4TB - Here's the main ones!
-Seagate 2tb, was only 70 bucks and is one of the higher rated ones, Toshiba's only $100 ea

-I have the satechi base for my studio and to be honest it sucks. I could've went on amazon on got a knock off that did the same **** for 1/4 the cost. My drives constantly crashed being plugged into it. So I gave up and got a docking hub. But if you get these "accessories" just make sure you look close to their output ratings. I really didnt care that much as it took me a year to do anything about it lol But I kept getting pissed off about why my damn refresh rate wouldnt come close to the monitor(240/60). Kept reading that HDMI was the best cable choice and blah blah blah. I use display port to HDMI, instantly doubled the rate to 120. Then I lowered the res from 5120 and got my 240. But bc it's a 49" I went back to 5120. But upon reading little more into this issue(oh I even have a $200 usb-c thunderbolt cable) APPLE regulated which **** can get you that 8k res and 120 refresh if your monitor allows it. And its much more complex then I thought like just ****ing make them all do it fi you voice it to begin with. Bc you never hear them say, "oh btw you cant get this refresh rate if you do this. You must only do this." Heck no, they just say "can have up to 4 screen at blah blah blah or 2 screens at 8k" But yeah the satechi was mainly bc I wanted more USB-c for monitors when I have two used up for charging cords lol So yeah unless they revamped the crap out of that thing since beginning of year when I bought it. Get a high rated knock off at amazon or go with J5create docking station(again check the output ratings as most wont shell out over 60 hz except the $300 ones lol)