External thunderbolt 2 drive recommendations

[ericsvizeny]

Hi,

I just purchased a Mac Pro trash can for use with pro tools ultimate and need recommendations on a great external thunderbolt 2 drive to use as an audio drive. I'm looking at this but I'm not sure if it is going to be glitchy because of the raid setup. Any recommendations greatly appreciated.

[Darryl Ramm]

You are looking at a Raid HDD, using SATA drives. So significantly slower than even Thunderbolt 2 is capable of. Why not SSD?

You are asking for recommendations and not given any useful actual needs... Starting with storage space. Performance? (how but are your sessions?) Are you doing video? (OTOH disk cache can help mitigate many IO performance issues... are you able to run with a large disk cache?).

Where do you VI samples go?

The best storage performance you will get is recording to the NVMe PCIe 3 x 4 internal SSD in the Mac Pro. I'd want to use that even with full disk cache, starting up sessions, saving stuff, etc. is just fast. The trashcan is such a stupid design that it is not possible to connect equivalently fast storage to it (would be if it had Thunderbolt 3).

Do you have space to run sessions on the internal SSD? Or can you upgrade that internal SSD (or if you just purchased one, can you return it and swap for one with a maxed out the internal SSD?)

Then the external drive goals may be for backup archive and transfer. For backup you are likely better off with multiple separate HDD, including ability to easily store away from the computer. USB 3.0 is fine for SATA based HDD. If you already deal with that say via backup/archive to NAS and/or cloud then maybe you may not even need that.

[Darryl Ramm]

And if you want fast SSD Thunderbolt 2 drives (internal PCIe/NVMe not SATA), these would be top of my list....

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/le...lashdrive.html

... if you can still find them anywhere.

The Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 and Samsung X5 SSDs are faster but Thunderbolt 3 only, won't work on Thunderbolt 2.

[ericsvizeny]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

You are looking at a Raid HDD, using SATA drives. So significantly slower than even Thunderbolt 2 is capable of. Why not SSD?

You are asking for recommendations and not given any useful actual needs... Starting with storage space. Performance? (how but are your sessions?) Are you doing video? (OTOH disk cache can help mitigate many IO performance issues... are you able to run with a large disk cache?).

Where do you VI samples go?

The best storage performance you will get is recording to the NVMe PCIe 3 x 4 internal SSD in the Mac Pro. I'd want to use that even with full disk cache, starting up sessions, saving stuff, etc. is just fast. The trashcan is such a stupid design that it is not possible to connect equivalently fast storage to it (would be if it had Thunderbolt 3).

Do you have space to run sessions on the internal SSD? Or can you upgrade that internal SSD (or if you just purchased one, can you return it and swap for one with a maxed out the internal SSD?)

Then the external drive goals may be for backup archive and transfer. For backup you are likely better off with multiple separate HDD, including ability to easily store away from the computer. USB 3.0 is fine for SATA based HDD. If you already deal with that say via backup/archive to NAS and/or cloud then maybe you may not even need that.

My sessions are around 30-50 tracks on average. Recording at 24 bit 96k. In the past I was told it was very important to have your project on a different drive than your os. Is this still the case? My new Mac Pro has 1tb. Still unsure of what I should purchase.

[Darryl Ramm]

The old advice is no longer valid for fast NVMe type SSDs. Has not been for several years now. As I said there is nothing faster than the drive you have inside that Mac.

So can you work with the active sessions on the internal SSD?

[ericsvizeny]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

The old advice is no longer valid for fast NVMe type SSDs. Has not been for several years now. As I said there is nothing faster than the drive you have inside that Mac.

So can you work with the active sessions on the internal SSD?

I haven't received my Mac Pro yet. I assume I should be able to run my session off of the internal drive. I'm just thinking ahead and seeing what I should get for more storage. 24bit 96k sessions can add up really quickly.

[Darryl Ramm]

If you just need external convenient storage to move sessions to, while actually running off the internal drive I would look at the low/simple end at Samsung T5, it’s USB 3.1 Gen 2, which will run with the slower USB 3/3.1 Gen 1 in the Mac Pro all the way up to NAS storage on a network(especially with multiple systems).

But personally I would probably not be buying a Mac Pro now, not with all the limitations of it and a new redesigned product supposedly coming this year.