Storage options -- new SSD or SD card?

[Freyqq]

it cant have the same read and write speed. you are watching numbers when the files are cached to the internal ssd and later written slower to the tardisk card.

once you start using Tardisk, you cant eject it. it has no native os level support, so you may end up having a corrupted filesystem on your hands. The system may eject the card for example to save the battery or whatever reason.

as it works similarly like a fusiondrive, it still is just an external card. i wouldnt start messing with CoreStorage and volumes dividing them to two differend physical storages and one not having a native support... Too risky to loose data.

as it sounds nice to double the storage so easily, it is far away beeing so simple solution.

I looked at their site. The SD card looks like it would probably be fine. It can't be faster than the internal SSD though, as USB 3 that the SD card is plugged into is slower than SATA and PCIe. Also, there are no SD cards available that are as fast as a decent SSD. There's also no way to create a fusion drive without reformatting. So, it's either a custom driver or they're just sticking the drives together and telling OSX that it's the same drive. If I bought one of those cards, I wouldn't use their software and just symbolic link a few big directories to it, like iTunes.

 

[pancakesrockyvalley]

I own the base model 15" MacBook Pro (Mid-2015) with the 256 GB SSD. I have been living with lots of external hard drives for some time now, but I would like to move my iTunes library to my local machine. I already save lots of space on my local machine, by simply using Google services for just about everything -- all of my photos and backups are on Google servers. The only thing that takes up space now is my iTunes library and general scratch data. I would like roughly divided as follows: 50 GB scratch, 50 GB system, 150 GB iTunes, with 128-256GB for "extra" iTunes data -- films, tv, etc.

I suppose that I am left with two options: an aftermarket PCIe SSD upgrade, or a very large SD card. On the aftermarket SSD -- are there actually many options here? What is the typical price range and are they as good as the Apple supplied ones? On the SD card -- how reliable are they for long term storage? £36 for 128GB is a cracking deal. I would appreciate your thoughts.

I have the jetdrive lite 330 128gb, I got it at a discount but the normal price for it is £66. The speeds are fine, not great but fine. It takes me about 26 seconds to move 1.12Gb file to the drive. It is ok for storing music, videos, photos.
I prefer to move my HD 1080p and 4k videos from the drive and to the desktop when i want to view them.
About the life time of the drive im not sure, but they offer limited lifetime warranty.
http://www.transcend-info.com/Legal/?no=7

 

[mrex]

I looked at their site. The SD card looks like it would probably be fine. It can't be faster than the internal SSD though, as USB 3 that the SD card is plugged into is slower than SATA and PCIe. Also, there are no SD cards available that are as fast as a decent SSD. There's also no way to create a fusion drive without reformatting. So, it's either a custom driver or they're just sticking the drives together and telling OSX that it's the same drive. If I bought one of those cards, I wouldn't use their software and just symbolic link a few big directories to it, like iTunes.

It is based on their software/driver. If you dont use the driver it works as a normal sd card. So it is much cheaper to buy other sd card.

And if you use the software it takes part of the ssd to work as a cache and it works like a fusion drive but os doesnt support it natively and anything can happen then.

 

[throAU]

I'd migrate the iTunes library to an SD card and attempt to shrink it down a bit via streaming stuff you listen to less.

SD is nowhere near as fast as an SSD, but it's not horribly slow for general data storage and can easily be swapped out.

AFAIK the only aftermarket SSD for the 2015 machines is via OWC and it has a number of compromises like no bootcamp support and lesser performance.

If you're keen on more internal SSD storage, i'd back up your stuff, sell your current machine and buy one with a 512 GB internal SSD from Apple. The hit shouldn't be too bad and you'll still be able to get Applecare on it. Replacing the internal SSD on yours will invalidate any warranty you have or might want to obtain.