Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What are people using as external drives with their Mac Studio?
- Thread starter sparkie7
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I use the following (why is everything bold?)
Not defending the price - and maybe they could have built it more flexibly - but I'm not sure the PCIe 3x1 speeds are a practical problem.
The point is that they're both limited to the total bandwidth of a single TB port, which is basically the same as PCIe 3x4. If you want to run multiple PCIe3 x4 SSD drives flat out (and realistically that's only gonna happen for serious-callers-only high-def video editing - or running disk benchmarks!) you'll need to give each one its own, private TB port.
So the two products have clearly different purposes:
- The Mini Stack STX is a Thunderbolt 4 hub with 3 downstream TB4 ports, plus storage - but there's no sense putting expensive, ultrafast SSDs in there and (say) connecting 4k displays or other fast storage to those TB4 ports - there just isn't the bandwidth (esp. displays which will use bandwidth continually). Frankly, NVME x1 is more than fast enough for general use if you just want to shift junk off your internal SSD. If anything, the ability to stick a spinning-rust SATA hard drive in there for Time Machine etc. is more useful (until 4TB+ SSDs come down in price, if ever).
- The Studio Stack looks more like a fast SSD multi-drive/RAID enclosure with some USB 3 A/C ports. The SSDs are going to soak up most of the available TB bandwidth (esp. if you RAID them for speed) - so there's no point in having downstream TB ports. A few USB 3 A and C ports are useful, though and won't necessarily use much bandwidth.
Yeah. I just realized that the enclosure itself it's limited to 1 Thunderbolt port bandwidth.
So basically, you split this single TB port bandwidth between the number of internal SSDs and/or other ports on the enclosure.
A rough idea will be, 40 Gb / 6 Nvme ... and you will get about 6.6 Gb per nvme drive .
That's about 825 MB/sec transfer speed (read/write) per NVME, in a perfect world not accounting for the extra ports / overhead. I think it will be more like 700-750 at most, per individiual NVME.
If you RAID them together you can hit the max bandwidth of the single TB port (40 Gb/s) + the total capacity of the multiple nvmes.
BUT, if you want a solution that will just host multiple SSDs being used as independent disks ... that's a bummer.
You are basically locked down close to SATA speed anyway.
For this reason i pulled the trigger and went with Thunderbay 4 Mini and some WD RED SA500 nas ssd.
I was set on the Samsung 870 Evo's but got scared of the avalanche of failures they had last year (2021).
I'm not going to wait any longer for the MiniStack Studio, and went with Thunderbay 4 mini for these reasons :
1. Limited individual ssd speed by using 1 TB port anyway
2. 4 TB and up nvme SSD are rare (just WD and Sabrent) and more expensive.
3. 4 TB nvme are dual-sided (i am not sure how well they cool down)
4. Nvme put out more heat and i assume 6 of them will generate a lot of it, thus the MiniStack Studio will have a little powerful fan (concerned about the noise ... see their OWC Express 4 M2, sounds like a rusty airplane)
5. Sata SSD's are still relevant and i think they will go mainstream for mass storage sooner than NVME's.
6. You can find thunderbolt enclosure for multiple SATA drives all over the place, while multi-NVME thunderbolt enclosures are almost non-existent.
For now, SATA it is ...
I think the MiniStack studio it's targeted towards users that needs nvme Speed + big Capacity, that can be achieved ONLY using RAID in an external TB enclosure.
For users like me, that just needs a quiet, reasonable fast SSD external storage solution for mass storage (no RAID and any other complicated stuff) ... SATA it's more than ok.
Last edited:
You fine Sir win the best post of the day/saved me money award in my eyes! I was just about to order one, ridiculous to do that, I should have known after all the problems I had with their original white mini stacks, thank you for your post, you’re a blessing to the forum… going to go research your Crucial gear mentioned in post 2…..(yup, that’s the one for my mini, thanks for the post on it, ordering now).
Have a great weekend.
Jen
Last edited:
I love the part where he says it’s a perfect match to the Mini and Studio….. yea if you’re color blind!!!!!!! Stop making items meant to stack on or under these computers and then make then making them a different color, it’s totally ridiculous, fire your prod dev mgr who said that looked cool.I’m waiting for OWC to release their Ministack Studio, thunderbolt enclosure with 6 nvme drives
I think it’s going to be a perfect match for Mac Studio.
You can see it showcased in the video below (min 5:35 aprox)
Scratch that (my above post about buying the one recommended in post 2)... Why the he** would a company make a dock that matches an Apple Mini in looks, is obviously targeted to that market then force you to have a Windows machine WITH thunderbolt to do firmware updates... that's worse than OWC and their non matching colored Mini enclosures... Jesus... https://www.trebleet.com/forum/tb3-mac-mini-dock/mac-mini-dock-latest-firmware-update-09apr2022
For backup: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D5V2ZXD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
External: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YD5F561/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 in a https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JQTO8TU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 enclosure.
External: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YD5F561/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 in a https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JQTO8TU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 enclosure.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
This was new to me. You definitely are right about having to use a Windows machine to update firmware. It makes no sense at all for a device supporting an Apple machine. My device is fine. I have Windows 11 installed via bootcamp on my 2018 MacBook Pro, but I'm not going to install the firmware upgrade. If if ain't broke...don't try to fix it.
It is still my best choice for now.
… and not just a Windows machine, according to a post I read, one with thunderbolt, when was the last time you saw one of those? It still looks like a great unit thoug, still tempting but there’s virtually nothing online about it other than one marketing video, glad it’s working for you, hope it stays that way.
I’m running a 980 Pro in one of these (Acasis 405) and it is smokin fast… ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, Sturdy 8TB USB-C Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure, for M1 Pro/Max Mac, Support 2280 B+M M-Key PCIe, Compatible with Thunderbolt 4/3 USB4/3.2/3.1/3.0/2.0 https://a.co/d/2MSX4BH
Kevin has some great videos on this arrangement.
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I do not need high-performance backup or SSD storage so I just go with the cheap stuff.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Where did you purchase yours? 😉 They appear to be permanent-out of stock on the right color.
Samsung T7 Shield is on special right now. I got the 2T version for when I get either a new Mini or Studio.
SAMSUNG T7 Shield 2TB, Portable SSD, up to 1050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen2, Rugged, IP65 Rated, for Photographers, Content Creators and Gaming, External Solid State Drive (MU-PE2T0R/AM, 2022), Blue
Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD delivers high performance on-the-go, not matter the terrain. It has an IP65 rating for water** and dust* resistance, with Dynamic Thermal Guard to manage heat control. Transfer huge files instantly. USB 3.2 Gen 2 and PCIe® NVMe™ achieve soaring sequential read/write...
www.amazon.com
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
I just got mine from across the ocean today. I ordered 1/11 so 2.5 weeks total time shipping to Texas. It works just fine with 2TB NVME and SATA SSD drives. The reader will take XQD cards, and all USB ports appear to work. The color is close enough, but some light reflects differently. I care more about function in this case, and it does function. I get to put my card reader in the dongles and cables drawer.
I have a Samsung T7 Touch for photos, music, videos and documents. Two Transcend StoreJet HDD's, 1 TB for downloads, installers and other scratch and junk. The 2 TB I use for Time Machine backups. The Trancend StoreJet's are cheap, very sturdy and shock proof drives.
I've got a 1 TB Studio and a 2 TB Samsung T7 Shield that I store my files and work off of. I primary use it for editing photos in Photoshop and doing Motion Graphics in After Effects and have no issues with performance.
I keep the T7 Shield under my desk and connected to the Studio at all times. I've been clumsy several times with the drive so having that extra durability has really been helpful.
I keep the T7 Shield under my desk and connected to the Studio at all times. I've been clumsy several times with the drive so having that extra durability has really been helpful.
I am using a 14TB Seagate hub with my Mac Studio it is formated to APFS.