Your best tips on SSD configs, please

[David Emm]

I have a new all-SSD Mac with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of memory. No more spinning disk. I can easily set up a poor man's RAID with 128 GB flash drives, but if I want to buy a proper dock for outboard SSDs (I'm not working at the pro soundtrack level, ahem), give me a few ideas on a sensible median configuration, name brands welcomed. That would still include having a serious orchestra plug from Spitfire in residence. Go!

[ElmerJFudd]

If you haven"t had an SSD boot drive in a Mac before - you"re going to love it. Everything runs and feels so much quicker than a spinning drive. 512gb is a decent size - you may consider replacing it with a 2tb internal SSD and partitioning it for OS, your DAW plugins and libraries on one side and using the other for recording to. I can"t remember if current Mac Book Pros can hold two SSDs or not.

 

I personally don"t think you need to bother with any RAID configurations to record to/use as your project drive. Thunderbolt is damn fast and has plenty of bandwidth for external SSDs and a larger monitor.

 

Some of my favorite and most cost effective storage solutions come from otherworld computing. Check out their kits for replacing your internet SSD with a larger one, and Thunderbolt SSD enclosures and drives.

 

https://eshop.macsales.com/

[Skinny]

you may consider replacing it with a 2gb internal SSD

2TB perhaps?

[KuruPrionz]

As a long time Mac user, I would avoid a RAID configuration. SSD drives are really fast. Add one via a Thunderbolt port and a spare for backup and call it good.

It has been my experience that once you turn a drive into part of a RAID array on Mac OS, it will be nearly impossible to "un-RAID" it if you ever need or want to do so.

 

It was a good way to speed up a spinner but you won't need the speed boost, you already have much better.

 

Mac Mini? I am focusing on one for my future. I have a 512 drive in my 2014 MacBook Pro and it's barely enough but it is enough.

 

If somebody makes an SSD that is configured for Mac, consider it. Find out if it can be configured as a boot drive, I froze a Samsung drive that was not Mac configured trying to do that.

[ElmerJFudd]

you may consider replacing it with a 2gb internal SSD

2TB perhaps?

 

Indeed what I meant.

[Docbop]

There is a lot more to RAID than most people know, storage systems/SAN & NAS was my speciality before I retired. Then working in media as I did in my 2nd to last job dealt a lot with audio and video capture on Mac's. We experimented a lot and what worked was local storage for capture, That gave us the write speed we needed. Then we offloaded to RAID storage for protection and other media computers could access the files too. With media RAID isn't good for capture because of the RAID overhead from it calculating the RAID stripe it writes. RAID for post works you are mainly reading the disks and the RAID can help speed reads up.

 

I like RAID for the protection if can offer, BUT it can bite you in the ass too. What most don't understand if a drive fails RAID will only protect you for so long, if you keep writing the stripe will get corrupted. To avoid that you need to have a good RAID controllers that you can setup "Hot" spare drive(s) that the RAID controller automatically fails over to if a drive dies. But now your getting into good RAID controller and additional drives so not cheap.

[o0Ampy0o]

As a long time Mac user, ........If somebody makes an SSD that is configured for Mac, consider it. Find out if it can be configured as a boot drive, I froze a Samsung drive that was not Mac configured trying to do that.

What has lead you to this perception? It appears to me that you may not have understood what was happening and your conclusions are incorrect. A Mac cannot do anything with a drive that is not formatted to use with MacOS. Well it can, it can format the drive and formatting a drive is simple using Disk Utility. There is also formatting to make a drive both MacOS and Windows OS compatible at the same time. The brand being Samsung is irrelevant. I have a couple Samsung drives.

 

I have not noticed any drives marketed as "Mac configured." I have not looked for "Mac" anything on a drive I aimed to purchase. Maybe they exist but I have never seen one when shopping for drives. I look at speed and size specs. I have purchased 10? SSD's or disk drives, upgraded numerous Macs numerous times and also built a Hackintosh using Mac compatible Windows hardware. Out of all of the parts for the Hackintosh researching the drive was one of the easiest items because most if not all are Mac compatible. I leave room for not considering certain specialty application drives but the bulk of drives available are Mac compatible. There is no mystery to setting up a drive for MacOS or making a drive the boot drive. You can even change the boot drive to another drive installed in your system whenever it suits you. Of course the software installed on a boot drive or alternate boot drive needs to be an operating system or you will have to install one as soon as you attempt to boot using that drive. It goes without saying but it doesn't so of course the sequence you attempt to do these things will matter and I should add there are probably exceptions but generally, you are not going to need to be all that concerned about finding a Mac compatible drive to use in a Mac.

[KuruPrionz]

As a long time Mac user, ........If somebody makes an SSD that is configured for Mac, consider it. Find out if it can be configured as a boot drive, I froze a Samsung drive that was not Mac configured trying to do that.

What has lead you to this perception? It appears to me that you may not have understood what was happening and your conclusions are incorrect. A Mac cannot do anything with a drive that is not formatted to use with MacOS. Well it can, it can format the drive and formatting a drive is simple using Disk Utility. There is also formatting to make a drive both MacOS and Windows OS compatible at the same time. The brand being Samsung is irrelevant. I have a couple Samsung drives.

 

I have not noticed any drives marketed as "Mac configured." I have not looked for "Mac" anything on a drive I aimed to purchase. Maybe they exist but I have never seen one when shopping for drives. I look at speed and size specs. I have purchased 10? SSD's or disk drives, upgraded numerous Macs numerous times and also built a Hackintosh using Mac compatible Windows hardware. Out of all of the parts for the Hackintosh researching the drive was one of the easiest items because most if not all are Mac compatible. I leave room for not considering certain specialty application drives but the bulk of drives available are Mac compatible. There is no mystery to setting up a drive for MacOS or making a drive the boot drive. You can even change the boot drive to another drive installed in your system whenever it suits you. Of course the software installed on a boot drive or alternate boot drive needs to be an operating system or you will have to install one as soon as you attempt to boot using that drive. It goes without saying but it doesn't so of course the sequence you attempt to do these things will matter and I should add there are probably exceptions but generally, you are not going to need to be all that concerned about finding a Mac compatible drive to use in a Mac.

 

 

Useful information and easy to understand, thank you. I've configured quite a few boot drives for my Macs and the only problem I ever had was with the Samsung SSD. I let it reformat overnight and something happened, it won't do anything, It is "bricked".

I could just be superstitious and certainly I am not very current on what's available. I found a software on the Samsung site that was supposed to "heal" it but the results were not notable.

 

I do remember buying hard drives in the past that didn't need to be reformatted for Mac, you could just install a bootable system on them straight away. I've reformatted too but only on the older drives.

If they fixed that it works for me.

 

My experience with RAID drives comes from adventures with a 2008 Mac Pro and an older system. I could not "break" a pair of drives running RAID to use them separately. They were duplicates not parallel storage.

I have no delusions about being a Mac genius, it would be handy but I'm doing pretty well just getting things done with software. I ran both Mac and Windows for years doing graphics and printing but I'm not a deep diver on the systems.

 

So much more fun to play my guitar.

[RABid]

I bought a Samsung SSD and use velcro tape to attach it to the back of the monitor. It stays permantly connected. This setup actually works out very well.

[Tusker]

The 500 GB SSD should be more than sufficient for a Spitfire 'ensemble' library like Albion One at 90GB, with which you can make great music. The detailed libraries would require external SSD"s but for now you should be OK.

 

I am in roughly the same journey. Using the internal SSD for Abbey Road Foundations (70GB) I am betting that when the detailed Abbey Road libraries come out (with first chairs, legato strings etc.) it will be closer to a TB. I might also upgrade to BBCSO professional (more mics!) at 630 GB.

 

Your storage upgrade path could be one or two of the above-mentioned Samsung SSD"s and if (eventually) needed, a black-magic dock to house them.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Jerry

[Reezekeys]

Is this Mac a laptop, an iMac, a Mini, a Mac Pro? We haven't been informed of which, unless I missed something in this thread. Today's Mac laptops of course have soldered-in SSDs so cannot be upgraded. Other Apples with non-soldered SSDs use a proprietary Apple connector. The oldest ones (2010 to 2012) use eSATA interfaces but those after 2012 are PCIe and can be upgraded using any standard NVMe gumstick drive and an adapter card. I use the Sintech adapter in my Late-2013 MacBook Pro, so I was able to replace the stock 256GB drive with a 1TB Intel 660P I got for a little less than $100, considerably cheaper than an adapter-less Apple-compatible drive. If your Mac has a blade drive and is newer than a 2012 model, this would be the way to go. Forget RAID, get any decent 1 or 2TB NVMe drive, load up all the orchestral samples you want, and make music. Speeds are more than fast enough for audio work. I used to have externals for sample storage, but with higher-capacity SSDs being way more affordable these days I have everything on my internal drive and use Disk Utility to partition it into separate APFS volumes. I store the samples on one of those volumes. That's probably unnecessary, but I like it for organizational reasons.

 

If anyone is interested in a deep dive into the various disk technologies used in Macs, this is a fantastic article that sums everything up very concisely: https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades

[David Emm]

That's immensely helpful, so thanks, everyone. I took a small gamble on a Mac Mini in large part because of the Thunderbolt ports. Clearly, for me, a RAID would be overkill, which I suspected. That's for heavier lifting. I appreciate *not* needing a studio support squad like Zimmer and Klaus Schulze.

 

I was wary of early reports on SSD dependability over many cycles, but its paradigm shift time. Apple committed to them, so I'll stay the course. Its worked well for me. So far, the only blemishes have been Operator Errors, quickly addressed. Virtually everything about Logic & my third-party tools has behaved more smoothly than with any previous upgrade.

 

I'm going to keep up with my usual flash-driving, but after what's been described, the smart money calls for a small outboard dock and a couple of drives to feed it. I'll be amply covered. Backups have become a major snap since I had shoeboxes full of Mirage and Korg diskettes.

[Reezekeys]

If by flash drives you mean USB stick drives, that's not the same kind of memory as true SSDs. Back when I was using externals for sample storage I tried using a USB3 stick drive in place of the 2.5" SSD in a USB3 enclosure - the stick was so much smaller and easier to deal with in a rushed setup situation. It was fast enough, but it only lasted about a year, then failed in the middle of a show. I went back to my clunkier external SSD in the enclosure â which never let me down. I continued using that setup for a few years until I upgraded my lapop with the 1TB internal, then moved all my samples there.

 

My USB stick failure could easily be bad luck, but I also had the thought that these kinds of memory may not be as robust in delivering multiple streams of continuous audio sample data for a long time.

[Docbop]

Good SSDs their controllers monitor hotspots (heavily used data) and move the data around. They also monitor heavily used areas remove them from table of available space. That throws some seeing their SSD drive size shrink over time.

[o0Ampy0o]

I have a new all-SSD Mac with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of memory. No more spinning disk. I can easily set up a poor man's RAID with 128 GB flash drives, but if I want to buy a proper dock for outboard SSDs (I'm not working at the pro soundtrack level, ahem), give me a few ideas on a sensible median configuration, name brands welcomed. That would still include having a serious orchestra plug from Spitfire in residence. Go!

Curious, new as in M1 or the last stock of Intel's?

[Tusker]

(OT) So Reeze, flash drives are inherently not as reliable as SSD?

 

Good to know. Disappointed to hear that since I was thinking of getting a few, but appreciate the warning and will stay away.

[KuruPrionz]

(OT) So Reeze, flash drives are inherently not as reliable as SSD?

 

Good to know. Disappointed to hear that since I was thinking of getting a few, but appreciate the warning and will stay away.

 

Flash drives and SD cards are handy for mobility. If you just want to take a few files with you somewhere else, copy them onto a couple of flash drives and or SD cards and travel light.

As an example, I don't own a printer. I don't print enough pages per year to make it worthwhile. I probably print 30 pages annually. I put the files I want to print (mostly shipping labels) on a flash drive and go to a nearby FedEx Office, print them off and done for another few weeks. Any problems with printers are their problems, not mine. And they have lots of spares so I know I can get my prints.

 

Always back flash dries and SD cards up to other media. Aways back EVERYTHING up on all your drives, no drive is truly 100% reliable.

[Reezekeys]

(OT) So Reeze, flash drives are inherently not as reliable as SSD?

 

Good to know. Disappointed to hear that since I was thinking of getting a few, but appreciate the warning and will stay away.

I'm a sample size of one in this "study", lol. I'm just guessing that continuously streaming sample data off a USB stick drive is not a typical use case for those kinds of devices. Also, since my days of using that stick there are now some very small form factor external SSDs like the Samsung T series:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Portable-SSD-MU-PA1T0B/dp/B073H552FJ/ref=sr_1_2

[Lou_NC]

....... I can easily set up a poor man's RAID with 128 GB flash drives, but if I want to buy a proper dock for outboard SSDs (I'm not working at the pro soundtrack level, ahem), give me a few ideas on a sensible median configuration, name brands welcomed.........

 

My recommendation is to go directly to a simple NAS setup. Mine is attached via Ethernet to my main home router, and it's accessible by anything on my WiFi or wired home network. I have a Synology 2-bay box with two Western Digital "Red" 4TB NAS hard drives. (These are high-quality rotating media intended for NAS applications).

 

Lou

[zephonic]

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmultidock

[ElmerJFudd]

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmultidock

 

Almost reasonable price at $595. Fanless?

[analogika]

USB sticks are disposable data shuttles. They rarely approach anything near the speeds of a 'real' SSD, and they do not last.

 

RAID is completely overrated in the age of Thunderbolt and SSDs like the Samsung T7, unless you absolutely need the capacity of rotary drives at that price point.

 

If 2TB is enough, then the T7 is my recommendation.

 

I have two T5 and one T7 drive, and I love them.

[Theo Verelst]

Raids have two main functions, or you could just as well interpret drive constellations as logical drives, volumes and partitions. For pro use, it can be necessary to increase reliability by adding drives; whereas increased speed can be desirable by using drives in parallel, possibly doubling the throughput bandwidth (and build in cache buffer).

 

A raid with two drives can be more reliable by simly writing data two both drives, and in case of the failure of one, use the data from the other. More complicated Raid setups can make the redundancy less crude but requires more work. The reliability of SSDs depends on other factors than theor spinning counterparts, which normally only break when they are old or abused. Ssds can have software failure (because of how the usable bits are used for storage) and can wear out through writing. To many times the drive capacity written to an SSD and it will get errors and must be replaced. Hours on and data read from SSD aren't very important.

 

Adding more storage isn't a raid tthing, normally. More speed than the 1/2 giga Byte per second you get from one SSD (or maybe still more in case of some new machines) most likely isn't much of a limiting factor for most applications, while for audio latency might be more an issue, which could suffer from a striping driver activity.

 

External drives with Usb3 (can work fine) Thunderbolt or eSata run the risk of getting disconnected while operating. During write operations thisw will almost ceertainly lead to dataloss or worse.

 

T

[Reezekeys]

Last time I checked this was the Keyboard Corner... you know, keyboard players doing songs on their DAWs or playing gigs. Not a video production house needing to render hours of 8K video. Jacob Collier is doing 400+ track Logic projects and I don't think he's using a RAID array, or that Black Magic multidock. As always, we here on KC are very good at spending someone else's money!

 

As I mentioned, my USB3 stick drive failed and I wouldn't recommend it as a medium to stream samples from - but the fact is, before it died its read speeds were absolutely fast enough for all my work - large acoustic piano libraries in Kontakt Player, strings, guitar samples, etc. Probably 50 to 100 continuous streams of 44.1K audio (that's a rough guess based on an occasional glance at the voice count in Kontakt). Do the math and you'll see that streaming audio doesn't require super speeds. I was doing gigs with my laptop 15 years ago, with probably the same voice count, using a spinning platter 7200 rpm notebook drive connected via Firewire 400.

 

What I'm trying to say in my usual verbose style - don't sweat this!

[Tusker]

Yeah what reeze said. You"ve got plenty to get started. If you are like me though, now comes the hard part, when you have all the tools, but you realize your voice-leading, counterpoint and orchestration skills are not what you thought they were.

 

Let it not be so for you. Good luck! ðð

[analogika]

Raids have two main functions, or you could just as well interpret drive constellations as logical drives, volumes and partitions. For pro use, it can be necessary to increase reliability by adding drives; whereas increased speed can be desirable by using drives in parallel, possibly doubling the throughput bandwidth (and build in cache buffer).

 

A raid with two drives can be more reliable by simly writing data two both drives, and in case of the failure of one, use the data from the other. More complicated Raid setups can make the redundancy less crude but requires more work. The reliability of SSDs depends on other factors than theor spinning counterparts, which normally only break when they are old or abused. Ssds can have software failure (because of how the usable bits are used for storage) and can wear out through writing. To many times the drive capacity written to an SSD and it will get errors and must be replaced. Hours on and data read from SSD aren't very important.

 

Adding more storage isn't a raid tthing, normally. More speed than the 1/2 giga Byte per second you get from one SSD (or maybe still more in case of some new machines) most likely isn't much of a limiting factor for most applications, while for audio latency might be more an issue, which could suffer from a striping driver activity.

 

External drives with Usb3 (can work fine) Thunderbolt or eSata run the risk of getting disconnected while operating. During write operations thisw will almost ceertainly lead to dataloss or worse.

 

T

I am fully aware of the potential benefits of RAID systems. The redundancy aspect only applies to instant recovery in case of a hardware failure. The whole idea of using a RAID is completely beyond the scope of the original poster's usage scenario.

 

Dumping multi-gigabyte sample libraries on external drives is far from anything a RAID would be better at than a simple USB-C SSD such as the aforementioned Samsung T7.

[Tusker]

I'm a sample size of one in this "study", lol. I'm just guessing that continuously streaming sample data off a USB stick drive is not a typical use case for those kinds of devices. Also, since my days of using that stick there are now some very small form factor external SSDs like the Samsung T series:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Portable-SSD-MU-PA1T0B/dp/B073H552FJ/ref=sr_1_2

 

Nice option. Thanks. ð

[David Emm]

Addenda: Its an M1 Mini, because hearing drives grind away over the years has unnerved me too often, heh heh. I also came to feel better about SSDs as I considered having an orchestra or Omnisphere on tap, at will. My current rig is very modest, but it also has its power hitters. I'll have ample room for the almighty More. Cherry Audio and Memorymoon are testing my desire to maintain a streamlined rig, though. What, an orchestra ain't enough work??

 

By "flash drives," I was referring to USB drives, but not for streaming, yeesh. I may line a few up in an archive shape and save myself some scrabbling around. I have a few elderly 1.0s that still deliver, but they're all strictly for retention, not critical functions. I save MP3s/WAVs of most compositions as I go, for reference. Its saved my @$$ to include Projects and stems a few times, too. Its a digital belt-and-suspenders thing: the host Mac, USB drives, backup HDs and CDs have very rarely failed in total. Now there is a composition I seemingly saved nowhere but as a WAV file. This would be a classic case of Digital Jackass, No Excuse, Sir. How did I miss it? Aw, shuddup, tell us about YOUR last glitch!

 

I did all-night processing at a bank several decades back. The standing drives exhibited disks that were about two feet in diameter. Having so much on USB sticks- c'mon, 128 GB and up?- is like having a genie who offered you 50 lifetime wishes instead of just three. That's not so many when you admit that ten of them would already have gone for synths.

[KuruPrionz]

Addenda: Its an M1 Mini, because hearing drives grind away over the years has unnerved me too often, heh heh. I also came to feel better about SSDs as I considered having an orchestra or Omnisphere on tap, at will. My current rig is very modest, but it also has its power hitters. I'll have ample room for the almighty More. Cherry Audio and Memorymoon are testing my desire to maintain a streamlined rig, though. What, an orchestra ain't enough work??

 

By "flash drives," I was referring to USB drives, but not for streaming, yeesh. I may line a few up in an archive shape and save myself some scrabbling around. I have a few elderly 1.0s that still deliver, but they're all strictly for retention, not critical functions. I save MP3s/WAVs of most compositions as I go, for reference. Its saved my @$$ to include Projects and stems a few times, too. Its a digital belt-and-suspenders thing: the host Mac, USB drives, backup HDs and CDs have very rarely failed in total. Now there is a composition I seemingly saved nowhere but as a WAV file. This would be a classic case of Digital Jackass, No Excuse, Sir. How did I miss it? Aw, shuddup, tell us about YOUR last glitch!

 

I did all-night processing at a bank several decades back. The standing drives exhibited disks that were about two feet in diameter. Having so much on USB sticks- c'mon, 128 GB and up?- is like having a genie who offered you 50 lifetime wishes instead of just three. That's not so many when you admit that ten of them would already have gone for synths.

 

 

Reviews indicate the Mac Mini is very quiet and runs cool. My 2014 MacBook Pro has an SSD but pushing it a bit kicks on the fans. It is getting close to time to find something that I can push harder and stays quieter.

I think the Mini with 16 gigs RAM and 1TB SSD would be quite a step up from where I am now.

[o0Ampy0o]

As an owner of a new M1 Mac Mini I would agree that they are significantly more powerful than ever and having owned an earlier generation they remain practically silent. Boot up is almost instant. For a long time now it has seemed that as hardware became more powerful they got sloppier and less efficient with software so you did not see as much evidence of the true power advances. This time around the MacOS received a coinciding significant adjustment. Pushing a Mac Mini will eventually involve the fan (still relatively quiet unless you place it at ear level in a quiet environment) but what constitutes a push is much further up the road.