Silent hard drive bay

[uptheoctave]

Originally Posted by SD2

OK James, thanks, I'll look into that.

Also, am I right in assuming that SSD NVME drive don't go above 4GB? I can't find 8GB models...

There are a few.

SABRENT 8TB Rocket 4 Plus NVMe is one.
There are probably others.
They are more expensive than 4x2TB drives or 2x4TB drives though.

The sweet spot for price/size was 2TB, I have something like 10 of them, it might be 4TB now. I haven't looked in a while.

[SD2]

I did some research.
The Sonnet Echo Dual does seem like a good candidate.
And 8GB ssd NVME drives do exist but there are very few of those and they're quite expensive.

[gives]

Originally Posted by uptheoctave

If you mean the Sonnet that he linked to then you'd use a PCIE NVME card like the OWC Accelsior 4M2: https://www.owc.com/solutions/accelsior-4m2

The one I linked to you can put 2 NVME's in it with no PCIE card required.

This one looks interesting to me!

I had looked at this one, Glyph Atom PRO Portable Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD V2, but it's a gen or 2 behind and way expensive for just 8TB max.
I would have to get at least two of them even when they were on for like 1k each US.

Here is one idea maybe for this person who is asking.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2JXDB77...alEvent=1&th=1


and the Kingston NV2 4TB M.2 2280 NVMe Internal SSD | PCIe 4.0 Gen 4x4 | Up to 3500 MB/s | SNV2S/4000G
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZMK1LWS...alEvent=1&th=1

OR faster, but more money: PNY M280CS3140-4TB-RB XLR8 M.2 NVMe Gen4 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

ALSO LASTLY THIS ONE IS PRETTY SIMPLE and will fit under a Mac Studio as a ssd case: Haggis USB-C dual HD Hub: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096LMGTNG...alEvent=1&th=1
GET the on for $79 as I heard the ports for video are not really great.


I"m waiting it out for now and seeing what happens in 2024.

G

[SD2]

Thanks for the inputs.
The last one you're mentioning has also SATA 2'5 in it (and just one SSD) which I'm not really interested in, they make a lot of noise.

[gives]

Originally Posted by SD2

OK James, thanks, I'll look into that.

Also, am I right in assuming that SSD NVME drive don't go above 4GB? I can't find 8GB models...

Here is one that is coming for ya.. Been chatting with Glyph about this new line
Here is there reply on Dec 24th.

"So speeds are limited to roughly 2900MB/s, that’s as fast as any external Ssd will be until TB5 comes out late 2024/early 2025. We do have a 1,000 mb/s 15TB Ssd launching soon, Q1 of 2024."

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by SD2

Hi Darryl,

Thanks for the lead.
Regarding the Sonnet, I'm a little bit lost. Will it take SSD NVME hard drives?
It's supposed to take PCIe cards but I'm a little bit confused regarding those formats....
Is a SSD drive considered as a PCIe card?
(sorry for the dumb question but it has been 10 years since I last changed my setup, so.......)

Lets rollback here. NVMe is a type of disk command protocol not a drive format. NVMe has largely replaced the ATAPI command protocol in high performance SSD uses. Almost certainly you are referring to M.2 SSDs, like say a Samsung 990 Pro.

M.2 is a electrical/physical card form factor, the standard provides communications options over PCIe or SATA. The type of drive you are likely talking about like the Samsung 980 Pro are M.2 PCIe cards, and they support NVMe over PCIe, but not all earlier M.2 PCIe drives supported NVMe. And an external Samsung USB drive like their small T7 drive supports NVMe over USB, and an enterprise class 2.5" U.2 drive connection might support NVMe over PCIe, or might support SAS or SATA, and so on.

The Sonnet PCIe expansion chassis provide computer style PCI slots, you then can install an PCIe to M.2 adapter card and install say a Samsung 990 Pro M.2 card on the adapter card. Just about any $15-$20 dumb adapter card works fine, fill all three PCIe slots in a Sonnet chassis gives you 3 x drives. Need more space you can use cards with two M.2 slots but be careful of performance implications of dumb cards, and for best flexibility you want a PCIe switch based card if using an adapter card that can hold more than more than one M.2 drive.

This is the way I operate, just buying quality Samsung consumer M.2 drives and using these adapter cards in a Sonnet chassis. I specifically want (need to in my case) use off the shelf M.2 drives. If you need more than 3 x M.2 drives I'd likely look first at a second expansion chassis to avoid Thunderbolt being the bottleneck.

Any thunderbolt to SSD connection has the potential to bottleneck I/O performance given that a single modern M.2 4 lane x PCIe 4 drive can be bottleneck with the 4 lane x PCIe 3 that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 provides. If storage performance is most critical it may be worth it to pay the Apple tax and purchase Apple SSD inside the computer, nothing will be faster than that. If you want maximum aggregate performance of external storage on say a modern Mac Studio you would connect separate M.2 drives to each thunderbolt port. But the cable mess are reliability become issues. So going to say 3 drives in a three slot short Sonnet Chassis is my compromise there (I often have one or two of those chassis connected depending what I'm doing).

I've written about all this and more many times on DUC and you should be able to find those threads with a Google search with site:duc.avid.com qualifier. I've also written about the importance of checking drive firmware is up to date (https://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=425632)

[SD2]

Thanks for taking the time to explain Darryl!