SSD?

[Sergius]

I'm going to be updating iMac soon and external drives. I've been out of the loop for a while. Are SSDs approved for use?

[Darryl Ramm]

Approved? Avid is way behind here. There are hundreds of threads on DUC talking about SSD recommendations and use, going back many years. You can search for those. And the right SSDs have been used in the most demanding/high-end applications and pro-studios for many years.

"SSD" is near meaningless as a label. You should be asking for specific recommendations for your exact needs, and computer connection type, and budget--including because performance between different products/technology can vary by over an order of magnitude.

Lets start with what a "iMac i7 2.93GHz" actually is, nobody should be forced to try to guess that. What is the actual model date code name and screen size, and even better EMC number. Where are your VI samples stored? how much space (size on disk) are they taking? ... same with sessions? What internal storage is in the iMac today?

[DontLetMeDrown]

I agree the term SSD is becoming meaningless. The fastest drives are M2 drives which are also SSD's. M2, Gen 4 is currently the fastest, but I'm a PC guy and don't know if Macs are using M2 drives yet.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by DontLetMeDrown

I agree the term SSD is becoming meaningless. The fastest drives are M2 drives which are also SSD's. M2, Gen 4 is currently the fastest, but I'm a PC guy and don't know if Macs are using M2 drives yet.

Uh be careful, M.2 is just a physical card form factor that supports multiple technology options. M.2 SSDs can support slow old SATA SSDs, AHCI over PCIe SSD, or NVMe over PCIe SSD.

"Gen 4", you mean PCIe 4 M.2 drives? They are not actually the latest, vendors are starting to ship PCIe 5 M.2 cards. But that is kinda irrelevant for an iMac that will at best be using PCIe 3 (if it has any internal SSD connectivity at all) or PCIe 3 via Thunderbolt 3 (if it has Thunderbolt 3). And if it has internal PCIe SSD support it will use proprietary cards not M.2.

And while M.2 is common and important to many of us it strictly is not the fastest SSD, which are still models using large form factor PCIe cards, beyond what a typical Pro Tools setup would use. And for many enterprise apps, folks will use U.2 drives or maybe other high density packaging.

Not sure where you've been but Apple really pioneered personal computer SSD and later NVMe/PCIe SSD use in their products, been available for years, largely using proprietary (not M.2) SSD cards and more recently soldered to motherboard NVMe/PCIe SSD. Significantly ahead of the Windows PC world.

[Sergius]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Approved? Avid is way behind here. There are hundreds of threads on DUC talking about SSD recommendations and use, going back many years. You can search for those. And the right SSDs have been used in the most demanding/high-end applications and pro-studios for many years.

"SSD" is near meaningless as a label. You should be asking for specific recommendations for your exact needs, and computer connection type, and budget--including because performance between different products/technology can vary by over an order of magnitude.

Lets start with what a "iMac i7 2.93GHz" actually is, nobody should be forced to try to guess that. What is the actual model date code name and screen size, and even better EMC number. Where are your VI samples stored? how much space (size on disk) are they taking? ... same with sessions? What internal storage is in the iMac today?

Sorry for the vagueness in my post. I'm going to be buying a new iMac 27". It comes with a 500GB internal SSD (might get the 1TB). RAM will be at least 32GB. I'm assuming I will also need an external drive and meant to ask if an 1TB SSD like the Samsung T7 or the G-Technology R-Series are compatible for Pro Tools audio sessions. All sessions, VI samples will be on external SSD drive. I currently run G-Tech Firewire drives on my mid2010 iMac 8GB RAM.

[Darryl Ramm]

Ah excellent.

No change your thinking now.

The best drive you can get on this Mac is the internal SSD. Stop thinking you must use an external drive(s). Old rules about seperate drives for sessions and samples etc. no longer apply... and in many cases trying to do that will give you worse performance than everything on the internal blindingly fast PCIe/NVMe SSD, especially on these iMacs with limited external expansion/connectivity.

The best thing you can likely do is try to fit samples and sessions on that internal SSD along with all the macOS stuff. Just hold your nose and pay the Apple tax/price on that SSD and max out the size of that SSD as much as you can afford. It's nice not to have external cables/connections and the speed, well you won't know what hit you if you are on Firewire/SATA drives today.

But I asked about sizes of samples... if you have many TB of samples and then it may make more sense to put on an external drive. And for lower-cost uses then something like a Samsung T7 SSD can be a good choice. They are tiny, can literally be stuck to the back of the iMac etc. But it's slower, not a PCIe drive, but rather a NVMe over USB drive which is a little unusual, and just a bit faster than old SATA drives. I've lost track of how many T5 and T7 drives I have, they are great for what they are but I can't state enough that if I was buying an new iMac I would aim to max out the internal SSD at time of purchases (you can't upgrade the internal SSD later). High performance external PCIe based drives use Thunderbolt 3 and include the Samsung X5 (bit overpriced) and similar and options of installing M.2 cards in PCIe expansion chassis for folks who want to play/need lots of storage... e.g. I' have Samsung M.2 980 Pro SSDs in an Thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis for my MacBook Pro... as well as X5, T5, T7, ...

And on a modern Mac you are going to be running an APFS not HFS+ file system or your boot drive and you are likely better off using that on any external drive (more robust and higher performance than HFS+) unless you need backward connection compatibility/portability.

And I assume you know about the Apple transition to M1/Apple silicon and are grabbing one of the last of the Intel iMacs? (there still might be some future Intel product bumps).

Edit: And on the internal SSD upgrades: I believe these current 27" models have up to 4TB of SSD on the motherboard, and part of their T2 security protected mumble mumble stuff, and if the Mac is ordered with 8TB has the next 4TB on a plug-in Apple PCIe card, but that card socket is not included on the motherboard unless the original order has 8TB. Oh Apple and your stupid walled garden. (I'd love to hear that somebody has hand soldered on those components and got a SSD card slot working ) Anyhow mere mortals like us just order the iMac with as large an internal SSD as we can possibly afford.

[spinsong]

You have different memory types, and ram rarely fails. Most ssds are based on flash memory. Either or, one of their biggest enemy so to speak is failure. The failure could be caused by a number of factors. One of the main factors would be heat. The other would be wear and tear, otherwise known as read writes. The internal drive has enough going on for you to add more stress. You’re better off trashing an external than a soldered on drive on your internal. Also, as an added note, Apple is going through a transition over 2 years. By the third year, the operating system might do away with Rosetta altogether as they did in the first transition. You’re better off going with Apple silicone. Less heat, and try to keep off the stress on the internal for more longevity.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by spinsong

You have different memory types, and ram rarely fails. Most ssds are based on flash memory. Either or, one of their biggest enemy so to speak is failure. The failure could be caused by a number of factors. One of the main factors would be heat. The other would be wear and tear, otherwise known as read writes. The internal drive has enough going on for you to add more stress. You’re better off trashing an external than a soldered on drive on your internal. Also, as an added note, Apple is going through a transition over 2 years. By the third year, the operating system might do away with Rosetta altogether as they did in the first transition. You’re better off going with Apple silicone. Less heat, and try to keep off the stress on the internal for more longevity.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

What a pile of clueless incoherent garbage. Like nearly every damn thing you wrote is wrong or muddled up. And much of the worst mis-information has been covered many times before on DUC.

RAM and SSDs have nothing to do with each other. Failure rates across either devices are not comparable and have very different causes. RAM sure "fails" and in many non-ECC systems you may not even be aware of it. For the purpose of any discussion on DUC *all* SSDs are based on (NAND) flash. "wear and tear" on a SSD is not read and writes, it's effectively writes only, and modern SSDs have write wear lifetimes that will just not ever be issues. DAW write usage is typically so low vs published wear lifetime numbers that this is such a stupid thing to worry about. I expect most users will see more reliable use with using all internal SSD than with old HDD or potentially any external SSD with cable connections easily knocked out etc. And if write wear was an issue we would have seen many many posts on DUC about this problem affecting all the folks who have been using SSDs for many years... shhhh.. listen quietly can you hear the *crickets*. But all drives potentially fail, that is what backups are for. And it's silicon not silicone, one computer chips the other breast implants. Apple "Doing away with Rosetta"??? uh that will affect users with M1 silicon based Macs, the future issues for people with intel based Macs is when Avid stops supporting Intel binaries and Apple stops providing new macOS versions for Intel based Macs.

[spinsong]

wintelguy.com could explain a little about read writes. It has to be referred to in order to write you don’t need to be exact. The fact is the next operating system probably will do away with Rosetta, and macs are better with dissipating heat. Silly cone silicon what have you. Same letter Si on the chemo. Point is, are you willing to risk a soldered on system for extensive use such as post with video, or an external to run it off of.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by spinsong

wintelguy.com could explain a little about read writes. It has to be referred to in order to write you don’t need to be exact. The fact is the next operating system probably will do away with Rosetta, and macs are better with dissipating heat. Silly cone silicon what have you. Same letter Si on the chemo. Point is, are you willing to risk a soldered on system for extensive use such as post with video, or an external to run it off of.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

You should stop. This is incoherent nonsense. You seem to be stringing together words that do not make coherent sense. If you want to learn how modern SSDs work please go do some reading. I work with SSD companies and SSD technology in my professional career, in extreme demanding enterprise use, I helped get early innovators in this space funded. etc.