Regarding the advice on SSD for macbook

[Devil_Sense]

Hi there! I’m planning to buy a new MacBook Pro 14-inch with a M5 Pro 15-core CPU, 24GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD. I primarily use it for 4K editing and other tasks related to my travels. I’m considering getting an SSD to make editing easier.

I know the MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt 5 ports, but the TB5 SSDs are quite expensive. I’m thinking of a TB4 40GB Ugreen enclosure with a 990 Pro, or a TB5 (which is a bit pricey for a 1TB SSD) with a 9100 SSD. I know the TB5 SSD is future-proof, but I’m also considering the TB4 option.

I’m curious about the speed difference between the TB4 and TB5 SSDs for my editing workflow. Which one would be the best choice for me? The TB4+990 Pro 1TB SSD costs $300, while the TB5+9100 SSD costs around $500.

I’m not very experienced with these things, so I might sound like a newbie. Also, I’m wondering about the speed difference between my MacBook Pro’s built-in SSD and the TB4/TB5 SSDs. Will they be the same speed, or will the TB4/TB5 SSDs be significantly faster? (and what would be the result if i use gen5 ssd 9100 in a tb4 enclosure? Is it gonna limit it or still perform better than the 990 pro )?

Please let me know which option I should choose or if there’s any other advice you can offer.
(btw i am mostly gonna use it during travelling As well so it would be great if its a compact setup and not a big bulky heatsink structure)

 

[Ben J.]

Roughly speaking, it goes like this:
Thunderbolt 3 and 4 = 40Gbit/s = nearly 3000MB/s read/write speed.
Thunderbolt 5 = 80Gbit/s = nearly 6000MB/s r/w speed.

For comparison, a NVMe in a USB-C connected USB 3.2 enclosure will be 10Gbit/s = 7-800MB/s r/w, a 2.5" SATA SSD in an enclosure will be 5Gbit/s = 3-400MB, and our old spinning 7200rpm HDs often struggled to reach 100MB/s r/w.

I don't know about the internal drive of the M5 Pro, but the drive on my M4 Pro Mini gives me around 5000MB read, and 4000MB write.

It depends on how much data you actually need to move each day, but I'd say if you can manage to keep your internal drive half full or less (not counting 4k stuff), then a good place to start is to use that 1TB internal as your main work drive, and get an external, less expensive one for storage of work that is not in use everyday. If it's a 40Gbit/s, I even doubt that you'd notice any difference at all between the two.

I'd say start with something like that and expand later when you get a feel for what's needed. Remember; storage has almost doubled in price over a few months.

You'll need some space for backups aswell, and slower, cheaper solutions are fine for that.

If your 4k work is large and heavy, you might consider spending more on RAM than Tunderbolt 5 - if not, 24GB might do fine.

In my view, the transfer speeds of TB5 only really becomes useful when you need to move very large amounts of data - often, and you want to cut the wait in half. Also remember; read/write speeds are capped by the weakest link, so it doesn't matter if you have a TB5 drive if you're moving data to a TB4.