SSD drives?

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Level 1

110 points

SSD drives?

I'm about to upgrade to a maxed out MacBook Pro. It's main use is editing films. I'm often working with multicam setups, and now 6K. I'm wondering whether maxing out the laptop with 8 TB of SSD drives will be of any advantage in the speed department? Normally I keep the computer relatively clean, just apps, and do all my editing on external 7200 rpm drives.

Would temporarily dumping the media (of a particular film) onto the 8TB of SSD drive IN the computer ... editing the film ... and then outputting everything to a backup drive ... be any faster than: having only 2TB of SSD drive in the computer, all media on an external drive, and editing as I've been doing for years; meaning keeping the computer mainly for apps, and all media stored on external drives.

Also ... if the answer is the latter, 2TB's SSD in the computer, all media on external drives ... is there any speed advantage to using SSD drives for the media? Years ago when I first asked about this the answer was that, for editing video, there was no real speed advantage with the SSD drives, at least in terms of the media itself. Though the apps will apparently run much smoother and faster on SSD drives.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated, I'll be setting up a lease or purchase later today ... and I'm still trying to figure out what to pack into the MacBook.

All ears, Ben

Posted on May 13, 2020 8:24 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

67,606 points

May 14, 2020 6:54 AM in response to Ben Low

That 8TB (or 2TB or 1TB) SSD in a new MacBook Pro is incredibly fast.

The old advice of putting things on "different platters" was very true when there were "platters" - i.e. it applied strongly to traditional rotating hard drives, which were capable of may 150MBPs and that was in a best case, sequential scenario.

Now you have SSD, which do not have moving parts, do not have to seek the appropriate sectors of disks, and have transfer speeds of around 3GBps (that is 3 gigabytes per second).

If portability is paramount, as you describe, and you can afford the steep price *, then go for it...

*As an example, you could buy a fully equipped 13" MBP with the difference between 1TB and 8TB

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Answer 2

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,015 points

May 13, 2020 8:34 AM in response to Ben Low

SSD is so much quicker than a spinner it's amazing. I wouldn't buy another spinning drive except for Time Machine. SSD is also way more reliable than a drive with moving parts.

I'd recommend you working in multicam with proxy files and switch off optimize multicam media, the default playback preference. 5K ProRes files are ridiculously large.

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Answer 3

May 13, 2020 8:45 AM in response to Ben Low

Going all the way to 8TB internal is frightfullt expensive...

I cannot tell you what you should do, but I can tell about my experience.

I used to work on a 2014 MBP with a 512GB SSD.

I could do small projects using it, and I also used an external SSD.

I would only work with a rotating hard drive if absolutely necessary.

I recently got a 2019 16" MBP, and chose to go with a 1TB internal.

I have an external SSD that shows a read speed of over 900MBps. It is faster than the internal SSD in my 2014 mac was.

Of course the internal SSD on my new MBP is three times as fast, but any of these drives are more than fast enough, even to deal with multicam clips with several angles of 4K. Clearly, at least for me, that is not the limiting factor.

I can buy several of these externals with the money I did not spend on a larger internal.

Hard drives I use only for archiving.

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Answer 4

Ben Low Author

Level 1

110 points

May 13, 2020 9:01 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thank you kindly Tom and Luis,

Both helpful. I'm going to max out the MBP ... but check the price of external SSD drives ... maybe just get 2T SSD for the laptop, if the externals prove less expensive. Tom, I always work in Proxy ... since a job I had to do designing elaborate moves on stills in IMAX (using Motion), I could never play the exported 6K files, but could do the most elaborate things with the proxy file, smooth as glass, no stuttering.

Luis ... was it a huge jump going from the 2014 to the 16 inch, in terms of speed? That's exactly what I'm trying to do.

It will be such a comfort to no longer have to sit forever watching beach balls, wondering if it is a freeze and crash or actually just taking-its-time to complete a task.

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Answer 5

Alchroma

Level 7

23,827 points

May 14, 2020 1:10 AM in response to Ben Low

Have a look at something like this:

TB2U3DKR2

You just feed it bare drives. I use one SSD per Library then back up to another SSD or older spinning drive.

The benefit is not having to buy external cases which are a significant cost of an external.

I use one and it's a great piece of kit.

Al

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Answer 6

Ben Low Author

Level 1

110 points

May 14, 2020 6:21 AM in response to Alchroma

Terrific Alchroma, exactly what I was thinking. And now I don't have to look for it.

Question: I've always heard it's better to have my apps on one drive (the computer drive), and all my work ... the projects on a 2nd drive. If the both are on the same drive the drive is overworking both reading and writing to itself.

I'm looking at the 8TB SSD 16" MacBook Pro (because I travel a lot, and my cutting room can be in pretty unexpected places) ... so I was wondering if anything has changed since the 'old days'. If I have all my apps on the 8TB internal SSD, and bring in a particular Library to cut a film (I usually work in 5TB blocks), do all my editing (which would mean apps and media, project work files on the same drive), then output to an external drive to store (or to continue with later re-edits and variations) ... is this going to be slower or less efficient than using the apps on the internal SSD, and all media on external SSD drives?

I'm looking at external SSD drives ... comparing prices with the internal 8TB SSD in the 16". I haven't figured out yet if the external SSD drives without cases (and using your suggested TB2U3DKR2) will be both cheaper and more efficient than coughing up for the 8TB in the MBP.

Any suggestions would be super appreciated. I'm trying to make my decision today. The current job getting too intense and the spinning beachballs too many.

Ben

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Answer 7

Ben Low Author

Level 1

110 points

May 14, 2020 7:23 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Ha ha ha. Yes, a 2nd MBP. That's great Luis, very helpful. Yeah, I know ... I'm trying to price what naked 8TB SSD drives are (which I'd pop into a dock), and compare them to the 8TB in the MBP. If the price is the same ... and, as you suggest, running apps and the actual project on the same SSD drive isn't a slowdown issue, then I'll probably go for the 8TB in the MBP.

I'm getting a lot of advice about the 'high' price of the MBP. And how to buy second hand units, or go over to PC etc. etc. ... but I'm countering that with the work itself, the reason for the MBP: I make films 24/7 more or less. And don't have a lovely fixed studio in any particular location. And have gotten quite attached to setting up anywhere and jumping into work. Last year I colour-graded a couple of IMAX films on the fly (no studio) using my 2014 MBP ... dang ... that's 6K movies (using Proxies of course), and using the actual Retina screen as my only colour reference. One of those films was later colour graded in a high end production house in LA. When we compared the two grades ... the MBP version was actually more consistent. Duh. All done on FCPX too. Even though I have Resolve (which is great). But I'm becoming a bigger fan every time Apple adds functionality to FCPX.

Thanks much for your help Luis, very appreciated. Now time to make some decisions.

Ben

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Answer 8

May 14, 2020 9:44 AM in response to Ben Low

Everything the others said is good advice.

Note that external drives will also be slower than internal drives because of the bottleneck f the interface. If you do use them for editing, get fast SSDs with the highest speed interfaces you can (Thunderbolt 3/USB-C).

Note that some external drives may be cheaper because they use lower quality components. Apple generally uses high quality, high performance internal drives. Make sure to buy external drives from trusted brands, and pay up where you need performance (editing) but maybe not if it doesn't matter (backups).

Another word about backups: don't trust the reliability of hard drives for long-term archiving. They eventually will fail, especially hard disks with all their moving parts. SSDs may be better alternatives, but haven't been around long enough to provide long term reliability info. I would recommend copying whatever you have to brand new storage devices every couple of years. Better yet, keep two copies in different locations. I like to do it by having one external drive and one cloud copy. That way I have one backup at close hand and I don't have to worry about its long term reliability if I have a cloud provider I can also trust.

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Answer 9

Alchroma

Level 7

23,827 points

May 14, 2020 6:11 PM in response to Ben Low

Hello Ben,

I think that every user will have a different scenario for the "what's the best system for me".

I use an MBPro with 512 gig ssd for my system and Apps plus the FCP X Data Base Backups.

All my Libraries and media are on external drives.

With the Thunderbolt Dock I can have hundreds or thousands of Terabytes available for use by simply plugging in the specific SSD with the appropriate Library (all Managed Media) as required. I find in my case that 500 gig or 1TB SSD drives work well for each job.

I label each SSD Drive so I know at a glance which Library/Job is needed.

I also have a collection of older spinning drives that work just fine for backups. Just plug them in and copy, it's no harder than plugging in a USB stick.

Your mileage will most likely be different.

Al

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Answer 10

Ben Low Author

Level 1

110 points

May 14, 2020 7:50 PM in response to Alchroma

Hi Al,

Aha! I've been doing something very similar. 1TB SSD drive in a 2014, all work on external 5–20TB drives. Though I've been using mostly 7200 rpm drives. I think it's the last few months of constant spinning beachballs and now shooting in 6K that have finally pushed me to switch everything to SSD. I've already got a large bay/dock/toaster picked out, that will let me build something up to XXTBs. Which will be good for the current film – shot over six years, and now stacked on about ten hard drives of various Giggawattage. But an interim step ... I priced out 8TB's of external SSD, compared it to the 8TB's internal SSD's in the MBP and was surprised to find the internal MBP' 8TB actually a lot cheaper. Huh? And having gotten a good six amazing years out of my present MBP, still going strong, I decided, since one can't upgrade or update the MBP down the road, to max out the new one. With the expectation of getting a good next six years out of it.

My master plan is to dump 2-5 TB's of media onto the MBP's SSD, do my editing at a screaming pace, and then back up the film to an external SSD poked into a dock, clean off the MBP's SSD, and load in the next film. I also travel a lot, and work everywhere, and it's been a bit of a drag to always be hauling around external drives (that have to be seriously taken care of).

Thanks very much for your help. It makes perfect sense what you say. And I'm more or less mirroring your process ... adding that little extra flourish - having everything contained on the internal drive for the duration of the edit (for the smaller films).

And I will probably just be doing what you do after a short awhile, not wanting the up and down time of loading and cleaning off the internal drive. And depending if I'm parked somewhere, where I can have a nice big fat dock and a shelf of SSD drives.

All the best Al,

Ben

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SSD drives?

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