Suggestion for External Storage for new Mac Pro

[jowens]

I am moving from a 2008 Mac Pro to a new 2015 Mac Pro.

The new configuration is:
- 3.5GHz 6-core with 12MB of L3 cache
- 64GB (4x16GB) of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC
- 1TB PCIe-based flash storage
- Dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each

I want to set up additional external storage for my session files and the files for my BFD drums that need to be on another drive.

I was looking at the Pegasus2 R4 which comes with 4 3TB drives. I am not sure if this will work as it is a RAID setup allowing RAID 0,1,5 and 10. Comes configured with RAID 5. It is very fast with the Thunderbolt connection.

The question is if this is useful or if what I really need is just 4 individual disks in an external box - no RAID.

Another important aspect is I want it to be very low noise... so the fan should be very quiet.

Help and thanks.

[Darryl Ramm]

You *really* need 12 TB?

If you want performance start with SSD. Ideally PCIe based SSD. So much faster than HDD anything that it no comparison.

Looking at Thunderbolt interface speeds does not tell you much. If you are writing a session you are often limited to the speed of a single old spinning disk drive. Yuk.

And in the modern era of PCIe SSD drives, thunderbolt is actually slow, 1 or 2 $350 Samsung 950 Pro M.2 drives could saturate a Thunderbolt link. Each little M.2 950 Pro drive can do over 2.2 GB/sec (sustained read).

Unfortunately there are really not great solutions I'm aware of that can leverage the newest superfast low cost M.2 SSD drives. Thunderbolt 2 PCIe card or M.2 PCIe expansion chassis expand out to PCIe 2.0 lanes not the PCIe 3.0 lanes that these fast new drives want, but they should work at degraded performance (but still fast)--but the devil is in the details of finding who actually has them running today in an expansion chassis (possibly full PCIe chassis with M.2 adapter cards in it). There are also SATA M.2 drives and Thunderbolt expansion chassis for them, you *don't* want those. The industry is really waiting on Thunderbolt 3. Uh which unfortunately your new Mac Pro won't support. God I hate Apple's stupid decision to abandon PCIe slots.

Another PCIe SSD option is the Lacie 1TB Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 which is a dual PCIe SSD box (but each M.2 drive in only PCIe 2.0 an is significantly slower than state of the art Samsung 950 Pro type drives with PCIe 3.0 interfaces, still the box can sustain 1.2 GB/sec or so). Lacie need to update the technology in that box... I'm sure they are waiting on Thunderbolt 3. Still it's been a popular small Thunderbolt SSD box. Akitio also make Thunderbolt boxes with M.2 drives in them, again using old technology M.2 cards.You decided to buy into the Apple walled garden, with a PC with PCIe slots your can drop one or more inexpensive M.2 to PCIe adapters and 950 Pro M.2 cards into PCIe slots in the PC and have just *stunningly* fast IO...

If its just BFD drums, stick those samples on the internal SSD in the Mac Pro (pretty sure that is a quad PCIe 3.0 drive as well), and if you don't need much space stick your sessions on that drive as well... you may well get better performance doing that than the big slow HDD boat anchor you are talking about. Or put sessions on an external SSD. Maybe something as low-end (but still very nice) as a Samsung T1 USB 3 SSD.

[jowens]

Darryl - this is really helpful. Thanks for your time and input on this.

Given the Mac Pro is Thunderbolt 2 - from your suggestions it looks like my best option may be to get the Samsung T1 USB 3 SSD.

What do you think of the G-Drive or Lacie Thunderbolt 2 external drives. Are these slower than the Samsung T1 USB 3 SSD.

- John

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by jowens

Darryl - this is really helpful. Thanks for your time and input on this.

Given the Mac Pro is Thunderbolt 2 - from your suggestions it looks like my best option may be to get the Samsung T1 USB 3 SSD.

What do you think of the G-Drive or Lacie Thunderbolt 2 external drives. Are these slower than the Samsung T1 USB 3 SSD.

- John

What do I think of G-Drive and Lacie? I think they are brands of disk drives. :-O

Stop looking at brands or "Thunderbolt" so broadly an look at specific models/what is inside the drive. The Lacie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 is a nice performance external Thunderbolt 2 drive (usable as 2 x JBOD) as I already indicated, but you pay for it.

Bang for the buck at the lower end of external SSD storage you likely won't better the Samsung T1. And that will humble much larger and much more expensive RAID drives for performance, but not capacity. If you ever want to upgrade beyond the T1, it is not money wasted as you still have a nice small handy/portable/high performance SSD that is a bit more portable cross systems than Thunderbolt drives since it is USB based. I really have no idea what your requirements or budget is, so it's not possible to recommend anything specific.

[jowens]

Got it... need to look at the specs and as you suggest stop thinking so broadly, brands/thunderbolt.

If I am going to get one excellent/fast/very quiet external drive - the Lacie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 looks like a very good solution. Seems the major downside is price. Exactly what you already said.