Mac Studio - Separate Drive?

[mattrixx]

Originally Posted by thin ice

It is not quite as simple as saying internal is better for all. Unless you are creating absolutely huge sessions, you won't see any problems with an external drive, particularly on USBc or Thunderbolt connection.

You just have to weigh things up. I bought a Samsung 1TB external Thunderbolt drive for £100 and the equivalent upgrade for a 1TB internal would have been £400.

Running sessions for mixing and recording of around 100 tracks, I never have any issues. Of course some people will require more, but just look at what makes sense for you.

This absolutely, is a very great point.
Pro Tools in particular has a pretty great caching system (as do most DAWS these days). So yeah, def not horses dor courses…. Just depends on what your specific requirements are and by now, we have a pretty fair basis to establish from.

[JFreak]

Just remember with these new security chips you cannot boot from external drive, so once that ridiculously fast and no matter how large internal SSD breaks the whole machine is bricked. Apple may be able to swap the motherboard if under warranty, but better stream from somewhere else.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Just remember with these new security chips you cannot boot from external drive, so once that ridiculously fast and no matter how large internal SSD breaks the whole machine is bricked. Apple may be able to swap the motherboard if under warranty, but better stream from somewhere else.

Good point, and another reason to have a strong backup plan to minimize file loss.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by thin ice

It is not quite as simple as saying internal is better for all. Unless you are creating absolutely huge sessions, you won't see any problems with an external drive, particularly on USBc or Thunderbolt connection.

No doubt -- there are still several considerations -- but the question was 'are external drives required' and, thankfully, they aren't anymore.

[sw rec]

My biggest reason for a secondary drive…..if (when?) there’s a hard drive crash, and I’ve had a few, it’s ALWAYS been my C Drive. And my sessions were residing safely on my D Drive. (Yes, I back that up regularly.) Even in the not so good old days of 7200 rpm spinners,I never had access errors. Using Samsung SATA SSDs in there now (internal but separate from the main system drive) and it’ll take everything I throw at it without a hiccup. I’m erring on the side of safety over blazing speed, and when I jump into the MAC STUDIO pool, I’ll run 2-m.2 Samsungs on PCI-E cards in a Sonnet Thunderbolt chassis. I have it on good authority this will work like a charm! And all my session will still be on a separate drive. Just my 2 cents worth.

[thin ice]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

No doubt -- there are still several considerations -- but the question was 'are external drives required' and, thankfully, they aren't anymore.

Well spotted and I wouldn't have worried about using an internal drive when they could be exchanged. I got through quite a few on my Mac Pro system.

However, you might as well consider throwing away a new Apple if the drive goes. That extra usage on a part you cannot swap out and 4 times the cost of storage is a good reason to use external if your requirements are crazy.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Just remember with these new security chips you cannot boot from external drive, so once that ridiculously fast and no matter how large internal SSD breaks the whole machine is bricked. Apple may be able to swap the motherboard if under warranty, but better stream from somewhere else.

I have two bootable volumes on external drives, which are clones of my internal drive, created with Carbon Copy Cloner. They boot fine, and are updated every night. I can use any application including PT on them and it works just like the internal.

(There is something in MacOS called "Legacy Bootable Copy Assistant" that you can easily enable on a task in CCC by right-clicking on the destination volume. During running of the task, a system volume will be crated and the internal system cloned. Mike Bombich has very informative stuff about all this in his FAQs.)

I don't know about Monterey, but I don't see why would not have it there also. Little unclear on this, but it might be that the external bootables won't work if the mac for some reason can't find the internal drive. I also don't think you can use this to have different versions of MacOS to boot from. But if something breaks, like the internal -data drive was erased or something, I could be up and running on the bootable clone within a minute.

[glasswing]

I got external NVME's because I'm old school and too stubborn to graduate. One set for samples the other for sessions. Possibly stupid, but it works quite well.
The only problems I ever have with my MSU is USB2 stuff. it's cranky.
My old reliable Kensington Trackball was booted the other day - and rather than spend the time to debug etc I found an old Magic Trackpad that works just fine.

[Obsidian Dragon]

From earlier posts:

Originally Posted by JFreak
Just remember with these new security chips you cannot boot from external drive...

Originally Posted by Ben Jensen
I have two bootable volumes on external drives, which are clones of my internal drive, created with Carbon Copy Cloner. They boot fine...

These two statements seem to contradict each other. Can we get a definitive answer? I'm getting a new system and would like to know so I can plan my working storage and backup strategy accordingly. Thanks guys.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Obsidian Dragon

From earlier posts:

Originally Posted by JFreak
Just remember with these new security chips you cannot boot from external drive...

Originally Posted by Ben Jensen
I have two bootable volumes on external drives, which are clones of my internal drive, created with Carbon Copy Cloner. They boot fine...

These two statements seem to contradict each other. Can we get a definitive answer? I'm getting a new system and would like to know so I can plan my working storage and backup strategy accordingly. Thanks guys.

Yes. My post was to correct Janne's post. I have no doubt about what I wrote, I have used these bootable clones on MacOS 11 since january when I got my M1 mini. But like I also wrote; I don't have all the details.
Check Bombich help pages, search for 'bootable backup'.