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donster28

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 5, 2006
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Great White North
Looking for a reasonably priced 1TB external drive for Final Cut Pro X. Preferably SSD with a Thunderbolt 2/3 connection. Thanks in advance!
 
Nothing special about FCPX. For 1TB SSD you will spend about $500 for TB3. Where something like the Samsung T5 USB 3.1 may be plenty fast for your application at about $300 (which some say is a reasonable price but look out for sales). You are probably checking the peripheral section too?

https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-accessories.77/
The Samsung looks enticing. Will the USB 3.1 fast enough to edit my whole project from the external SSD?
 
Dunno, I picked a couple up on sale and use them as a portable boot drive on a couple iMacs and its certainly fast enough for that.

Someone here edits with USB drives and should jump in here soon.
 
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I have four external samsung SSD's with the USB 3.1 connectors - use them for cloning / back up of drives and media - fast enough for me.

I guess that a thunderbolt connection would be faster - but not sure how much faster or if even noticable.
 
The Samsung looks enticing. Will the USB 3.1 fast enough to edit my whole project from the external SSD?

I have a 500gb and a 1TB Samsung T3, which is the previous generation. I think the T5 is just slightly faster. I use the 1TB T3 as an external boot drive for my 2.6ghz i7 quad core 2012 Mac Mini Server. This machine also has an original Apple internal 256gb SSD. The internal SSD is faster, but the user experience is pretty much the same - the only difference I really notice is that it takes about 15 seconds longer to boot from the T3 than the internal drive.

I use this machine exclusively with Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X and am very happy with the T3. Here's what I get:

samsung1tb.jpg
 
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I have a 500gb and a 1TB Samsung T3, which is the previous generation. I think the T5 is just slightly faster. I use the 1TB T3 as an external boot drive for my 2.6ghz i7 quad core 2012 Mac Mini Server. This machine also has an original Apple internal 256gb SSD. The internal SSD is faster, but the user experience is pretty much the same - the only difference I really notice is that it takes about 15 seconds longer to boot from the T3 than the internal drive.

I use this machine exlusively with Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X and am very happy with the T3. Here's what I get:

samsung1tb.jpg

Looks like I found what I'm looking for...thanks!
 
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I have a 500gb and a 1TB Samsung T3, which is the previous generation. I think the T5 is just slightly faster. I use the 1TB T3 as an external boot drive for my 2.6ghz i7 quad core 2012 Mac Mini Server. This machine also has an original Apple internal 256gb SSD. The internal SSD is faster, but the user experience is pretty much the same - the only difference I really notice is that it takes about 15 seconds longer to boot from the T3 than the internal drive.

I use this machine exlusively with Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X and am very happy with the T3. Here's what I get:

samsung1tb.jpg
I have a question. What’s your t3 advertised speeds by Samsung? I recently bought an internal EVO 5 ssd from Amazon to use as a scratch disk for Fcpx, advertised as 540 read / 520 write but I am getting approximately 350 read write with the Blackmagic disk test. I thought that was due to the Sata to usb 3 adaptor bottlenecking the data transfer but seeing your speed results being kinda the same as mine, might be something else not getting the advertised speeds.
 
I have a question. What’s your t3 advertised speeds by Samsung?

Sorry, no idea what Samsung advertised but I'm sure you can look it up as easily as me.

However, I can tell you that SSD's have been discussed a number of times here in the Mac Mini forum and those speeds are about as fast as anyone has posted for an external USB SSD on a 2012 Mini.
 
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