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What external storage solutions are you going to use with the Mac Studio

Terramaster D1 SSD - slightly better performance then the OWC 1M2, with pretty much double the heatsink!

Full video review coming shortly!

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The Terramaster page says:


Note: Some Windows PCs with Thunderbolt 3 interfaces may have incomplete support for the USB4 protocol, which could cause the D1 SSD Plus to fail to be recognized when connected to such ports. To resolve this issue, it is recommended to connect the D1 SSD Plus to other USB port on the computer.
Click to expand...

If feasible, it would be good for people to know what the Terramaster's transfer rate is for a Mac that has Thunderbolt 3 but not USB4 support. (I can't remember which Macs fall in that category, but I know there are some.)


OWC clearly documents that on their page as:

Thunderbolt 3 port on Intel Mac or PCUSB (10Gb/s)990MB/s
 
Brian33 said:
The Terramaster page says:




If feasible, it would be good for people to know what the Terramaster's transfer rate is for a Mac that has Thunderbolt 3 but not USB4 support. (I can't remember which Macs fall in that category, but I know there are some.)


OWC clearly documents that on their page as:

Thunderbolt 3 port on Intel Mac or PCUSB (10Gb/s)990MB/s
Click to expand...

The iMac Pro falls into this category and, on one enclosure that I tried, reverts back to USB 3.1 with sub 1K speeds.
 
I only have a M4 Max Studio or M3 MacBook Air to test on.
Speeds are around 3400Mb/s read and write - pretty much on par with the 1M2. Cooling on both is going to be great of course - it just makes for a cheaper alternative to the 1M2, but with the same great performance.
 
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Great performance from the D1 - like the 1M2. I've ordered a WD SN850X 8TB SSD to put into this one and will see how warm it feels in use. The 1M2 gets quite hot to the touch when used for Final Cut projects - interested to see how this one performs.
I also notice how the thermal pad makes good contact with the SSD as I closed the unit - you have to apply some pressure to sandwich them together and the screw seals that final gap. The chipset has its own thermal pad on the opposite side too....
 
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Picked to a WD SN850X for the D1 SSD

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Seems to be plenty of space under the drive as well - between the drive and the main board......

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Quick speed test to make sure all is good......

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And it can go alongside the others in my collection!
I have way too may drives now. I don't know why I keep getting them!
Will have to start selling some as I don't even have a use for them all!!......

I trust the OWC 1M2 drives completely, so will be using the D1 with Final Cut to see how it performs with the WD drive for a while before deciding!

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Ifti said:
Picked to a WD SN850X for the D1 SSD

View attachment 2527409

Seems to be plenty of space under the drive as well - between the drive and the main board......

View attachment 2527406

Quick speed test to make sure all is good......

View attachment 2527408

And it can go alongside the others in my collection!
I have way too may drives now. I don't know why I keep getting them!
Will have to start selling some as I don't even have a use for them all!!......

I trust the OWC 1M2 drives completely, so will be using the D1 with Final Cut to see how it performs with the WD drive for a while before deciding!

View attachment 2527407
Click to expand...

People with a lot of drives usually create a YouTube channel for reviewing them. If they get enough subscribers, the companies send you the drives to test.
 
Ifti said:
Never found these - I just find an image of the drive online, remove the background, and save it as PNG. lol
Click to expand...
All my external drives are LaCie, they have a full library of every drive icon in their download section, which is nice.
 
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So I got the Acasis 80Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Compatible with Thunderbolt 5 M.2 NVMe

it is on sale on usa ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/167181396490 $195.30 -29 with this coupon ACAS25HOMEVID

so for me around 166 plus 11 tax or 177 net price. I added a Samsung 990 EVO plus 4tb nvme.2

I clone the internal and it is now my 4tb boot drive. Just as fast as the internal. I like the acasis so much I got another

and I will add another 4tb evo as a cloned backup. the 4tb Samsung is under 200 on sale so for about 177+200=377

you get a 4tb drive as fast as the internal drive of the max studio m4
 
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philipma1957 said:
So I got the Acasis 80Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Compatible with Thunderbolt 5 M.2 NVMe

it is on sale on usa ebay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/167181396490 $195.30 -29 with this coupon ACAS25HOMEVID

so for me around 166 plus 11 tax or 177 net price. I added a Samsung 990 EVO plus 4tb nvme.2

I clone the internal and it is now my 4tb boot drive. Just as fast as the internal. I like the acasis so much I got another

and I will add another 4tb evo as a cloned backup. the 4tb Samsung is under 200 on sale so for about 177+200=377

you get a 4tb drive as fast as the internal drive of the max studio m4
Click to expand...

Looks like a different design over the 'standard' one?
I don't see it on the Acasis website...
Otherwise its the same chipset etc, so no different....

www.acasis.com

Acasis 80Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Compatible with Thunderbolt 5

Adopts Intel® Certified Chip JHL9480 Compatible with Thunderbolt 5/4, USB 4 Read & write speed over 6000MB/s Supports Up to 8TB M.2 NVMe SSD Plug and Play, Driver-free, Built-in Cooling Fan
www.acasis.com www.acasis.com
 
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well it is from their official ebay store. The first one is so good. I ordered a second one. Having 4tb boot drives in my Mac mini 4 and my Mac studio 4 at a cost of about $400 each vs $1200 for the internal upgrade is really good.
 
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philipma1957 said:
well it is from their official ebay store. The first one is so good. I ordered a second one. Having 4tb boot drives in my Mac mini 4 and my Mac studio 4 at a cost of about $400 each vs $1200 for the internal upgrade is really good.
Click to expand...

I had the other design that I linked to above.
I wouldn't mind the design you picked up though - may see if I can find it in the UK anywhere.
Is there a specific model number on the box?
 
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Full video of the drive I posted above, and a good alternative to the OWC Express 1M2.....

 
For my M2 Max 64GB, I went with a two-stage external solution.

1. I picked up a cheap used TB2 Promise RAID box that holds four drives. I configured these into a RAID 5 and split it into a large Time Machine partition, a smaller Windows-compatible partition, a large partition for storing miscellaneous project files that have many TB of space to sprawl but don't need rapid retrieval, and a Media partition that serves Plex files.

2. I added a TB4 external NVMe 2-drive enclosure. I made these a RAID 0 configuration to act as a scratch disk for FCP, Motion, etc, and a place to store local LLM files for fast retrieval and installation. It's ridiculously speedy on TB4.

This setup works great for me, because I get super speed for the RAID 0, but don't leave files there that have not been backed up, and everything else automatically goes to the huge TM backup. The RAID array gets me maybe 600-700MB/s transfer, which works just fine for the purposes, and was relatively cheap to set up with 48TB of available storage after RAID.
 
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So I've owned the OWC Ultra Envoy for nearly 3 weeks and its been fast and problem free. Its a passively cooled external drive (no fans). When the drive is sitting on my desk and just on idle, I'm seeing about 38c. Not too hot, and even when I'm actively using the drive it seems to stay in the 40s. Being a full metal design, one option is to flip the drive upside down, place that on top of my Studio and let the Studio's metal skin work as a giant heat sync.

Temps drop down to 30 - 32c (on idle) when I do that. I hate the look of seeing an upside down drive sitting on top of my studio but you can't help but be impressed at how much cooler it runs.
 
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maflynn said:
So I've owned the OWC Ultra Envoy for nearly 3 weeks and its been fast and problem free. Its a passively cooled external drive (no fans). When the drive is sitting on my desk and just on idle, I'm seeing about 38c. Not too hot, and even when I'm actively using the drive it seems to stay in the 40s. Being a full metal design, one option is to flip the drive upside down, place that on top of my Studio and let the Studio's metal skin work as a giant heat sync.

Temps drop down to 30 - 32c (on idle) when I do that. I hate the look of seeing an upside down drive sitting on top of my studio but you can't help but be impressed at how much cooler it runs.
Click to expand...

Purchase another heatsink and thermal paste it to the top? lol
 
Not strictly a storage solution, but added this to my Mac Studio for keeping more of my external drives connected.
The CalDigit TS5 Plus has more ports, although I'm not finding this one too restrictive....so far....! lol

 
Ifti said:
Purchase another heatsink and thermal paste it to the top? lol
Click to expand...
The near 40c temps are not terrible, its just an interesting observation. With that said, I still have the drive sitting on top of my mac
 
maflynn said:
The near 40c temps are not terrible, its just an interesting observation. With that said, I still have the drive sitting on top of my mac
Click to expand...

My Studio is running around 39-41 degrees, probably because it's so warm outside. I'm fine with those temps as this is as hot as they will get and then they will drop in two months. I don't track the thermals on my external SSD as it's not been an issue when I've touched it. I get more bent out of shape when my Intel systems are running at 60-70 which happened at load.
 
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