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Comment by RobinL | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone comment on the viability of using an external SSD rather than upgrading storage? Specifically for data analysis (e.g. storing/analysing parquet files using Python/duckdb, or video editing using divinci resolve).

Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive? Thank you!

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Don't bother with thunderbolt 4, go for USB 4 enclosure instead - I've got a Jeyi one. Any SSD will work, I use a Samsung 990 pro inside. It was supposed to be the fastest you can get - I get over 3000MB/s.

Here is the rabbit hole you might want to check out: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enc...

Though TB5 should be better. I think you can already find some of these on Aliexpress.

https://www.winstars.com/en_us/category/Thunderbolt_5.html

It's totally fine.

With a TB4 case with an NVME you can get something like 2300MB/s read speeds. You can also use a USB4 case which will give you over 3000MB/s (this is what I'm doing for storing video footage for Resolve).

With a TB5 case you can go to like 6000MB/s. See this SSD by OWC:

https://www.owc.com/solutions/envoy-ultra

I'm a little sus of owc these days, their drives are way expensive, never get any third-party reviews or testing, and their warranty is horrible (3 years). I've previously swore by them so it's a little disappointing

The only OWC product I own is a TB4 dock and so far it has been rock solid.

> Also, any recommendations for suitable ssds, ideally not too expensive?

I own a media production company. We use Sabrent Thunderbolt external NVMe TLC SSDs and are very happy with their price, quality, and performance.

I suggest you avoid QLC SSDs.

Basically any good SSD manufacturer is fine, but I've found that the enclosure controller support is flaky with Sonoma. Drives that appear instantly in Linux sometimes take ages to enumerate in OSX, and only since upgrading to Sonoma. Stick with APFS if you're only using it for Mac stuff.

I have 2-4TB drives from Samsung, WD and Kingston. All work fine and are ridiculously fast. My favourite enclosure is from DockCase for the diagnostic screen.

The USB-C ports should be quite enough for that. If you are using a desktop Mac, such as an iMac, Mini, or the Studio and Pro that will be released later this week, this is a no-brainer - everything works perfectly.

Sorry. No Studios or Pros this turn. I’m as disappointed as everyone else.

i go with the acasis thunderbolt enclosure and then pop in an nvme of your choice, but generic USB drives are pretty viable too ... thunderbolt can be booted from, while USB can't

i tried another brand or 2 of enclosures and they were HUGE while the acasis was credit card sized (except thickness)

I've used a Samsung T5 SSD as my CacheClip location in Resolve and it works decently well! Resolve doesn't always tolerate disconnects very well, but when it's plugged in things are very smooth.

Hopefully in the next days/weeks we’ll see TB5 external enclosures and you’ll be able to hit very fast speeds with the new Macs. I would wait for those before getting another enclosure now.

Afaik the main oem producer is Winstars, though I could only find sketchy-looking Aliexpress seller so far.

https://www.winstars.com/en_us/category/Thunderbolt_5.html

With a thunderbolt SSD you'll think your external drive is an internal drive. I bought one of these (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BGYMHS8Y) for my partner so she has snappy photo editing workflows with Adobe CC apps. Copying her 1TB photo library over took under 5 min.

Get something with Thunderbolt and you’ll likely never notice a difference

I had a big problem with crucial 4tb ssds recently, using them as time machine drives. The first backup would succeed, the second would fail and the disk would then be unrepairable in disk utility, which also will refuse to format to non-apfs (and an apfs reformat wouldn't fix it).

Switched to samsung t9s, so far so good.

I edit all my video content from a USB-attached SSD with Resolve on my MBP.

My only complaint is that Apple gouges you for memory and storage upgrades. (But in reality I don't want the raw and rendered video taking up space on my machine).

Run your current workload on internal storage and check how fast it is reading and writing.

For video editing - even 8K RAW - you don't need insanely fast storage. A 10GBit/s external SSD will not slow you down.

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