Moving to Mac, storage questions

[Montanawildlives]

OK, it took me 30 years, but I'm abandoning Windows/Microsoft and going all in with Apple. I've been loving my ipad for the past week, the Mac Air (M2) is arriving today, and, the reason for my post today, I'm about to order a Mac Studio. I have a few questions about storage speed, placement, etc. I know very little about the Apple ecosystem, so please don't assume that I know even the basics.

I will likely get the $1999 base Mac Studio with the M2 Max, 32 GB RAM, and 512 GB SDD. I will need much more storage, and of course there are several options. I could pay an extra $1200 for a 4TB internal SSD. I'd rather not.

Option 2 would be use external SSDs plugged into the Thunderbolt 4 slots in the back of the Studio. I currently have about 1 TB of photos and I am very meticulous about culling images, so this 1 TB is the accumulation of 8 years of wildlife photography (where I routinely come home with thousands of pictures, only 20 or so survive). I would probably get a 4 TB external drive.

I will keep my LR catalog on the internal SSD.

I saw this on Amazon:

Amazon.com: Super Thunderbolt 3 Dock for Mac Studio&Mac Mini, Dock Station with Dual NVMe Slot (Up to 2800Mbps),4X USB 3.1 Port(10Gbps), CFexpress/TF/SD Card Readers,Support Daisy Chain (up to 5 Unit) (Silver) : Electronics

and it looks pretty sweet. It has a UHS-II SD card reader and a CF Express reader (I use both types of cards). It has two NVME slots: "2x NVMe Slot (NVMe1 Slot supports PCI-e Gen3, NVMe2 Slot support USB3.1 Gen2)" The first is rated (by them) at 2800 MB/s, the second at 950 MB/s.

So, I could put my photos on a 4 TB NVME like this:

https://www.amazon.com/WD_BLACK-SN8...31&sprefix=pcie+nvme+m.2+4tb+w,aps,182&sr=8-3

And then use the other, slower NVME for my Time Machine or other backup, with a second (possibly cheaper, slower) NVME drive.

In addition to saving a bunch of money (over upgrading the Studio to 4TB), I would have removable/replaceable drives in case of any problems or future upgrading.

I am not TOO demanding; I never do any video at all; the most demanding thing I do is use LR's AI denoise, usually one photo at a time, and my current PC (i7, 32 GB RAM, 3070 Ti) takes maybe 10 seconds to return the result. I also do stacking in Helicon of maybe 50-100 photos, and the current PC takes about 30-60 seconds to do the stack, another minute to save, export, and return the result to LR.

If my photos are on the fast external NVME PCIE, will I take much of a speed hit on AI denoise or stacking versus paying Apple the extra $1200 for the 4TB internal drive?

What am I missing? Any other advice?

Thanks!

 

[paulraphael]

Those docks look handy. It's hard to say how they'll actually do without reading detailed reviews. Most still photography isn't very demanding of drives, at least not in terms of throughput. I still lean toward getting something with active cooling; m.2 storage runs hot, and can easily throttle its own performance when driven hard.

Another issue if you ever do need throughput: docks like that often don't specify how many PCIe lanes are made available to the drive. You may get much lower than the stated Thunderbolt bandwidth.

I'd take a look at OWC's offerings. They're a reliable company.

It's good that you're going for Thunderbolt rather than USB. You'll get S.M.A.R.T. status, and have an easier time guaranteeing reliability.

If there's any place you need to save money, do so on the backup drives. You don't need performance there. You won't even max out the performance of a mechanical drive. Only real advantage of SSDs for backup is lack of noise.

 

[Abbott Schindler]

I’m running a M2 Studio Ultra with the base configuration (64 GB memory, 1 TB SSD) and have virtually all of my data on external drives. One reason I chose not to buy a big internal SSD (aside from the silly-high cost) was that internal disks aren’t removable, and I don’t want to send my data in if the machine needs repair (aside from security, there’s no guarantee that the machine comes home with your data intact).

I’m running a Satechi Thunderbolt 4 dock and most of my external (SSD) drives are connected to it. I also have a couple of SSDs connected directly to the Studio. Works like a charm.

The brands of docks you might look into are CalDigit, Satechi, and OWC. Make sure you’re looking at bonafide Thunderbolt 4 docks so you get max throughput in case you need it (most apps don’t need it now, but future-proofing your setup is a reasonable thing to do). All have products with plenty of ports.

I think you’re right to store your working LR catalog on the internal drive, as it’s said to be about twice as fast as a TB4 external drive. However, since you don’t want to lose that catalog, I’d suggest keeping a copy on an external drive and using ChronoSync (shareware) to synchronize your working and backup catalogs regularly. As my entire photo library easily fits on a 4 TB SSD, I keep the catalog backup on that drive and regularly sync that drive with a backup drive, so I’ve always got 2 copies of both my photos and the catalog.

Side note: I built my external photos drive from an Acasis TB4 enclosure and a PCIe SSD piece. Total cost was a little more than buying something like a SanDisk Extreme or Samsung T7/T9, but the performance is quite a bit better, which I wanted. My backup photos disk is a Samsung T7. Note that even a Mac Studio can’t take full advantage of Samsung T9 speeds because the SSDs use USB-4 wiring that Apple doesn’t support, so a T9 gets barely more performance than a T7 (I know: I’ve got both and have measured them on both the Studio and a M2 MBP Max).

BTW: OWC makes a TB4 CFexpress reader that’s faster than anything else I’ve tried. If money’s no object and you use CFe B cards, consider one of these.

 

[graybalanced]

(I'm a Mac user since the 1980s)

It is definitely not necessary to buy more expensive internal Mac storage for photography. The much cheaper external SSDs/hard drives are fast enough for that, mine are USB 3.2.

Another issue if you ever do need throughput: docks like that often don't specify how many PCIe lanes are made available to the drive. You may get much lower than the stated Thunderbolt bandwidth.

In addition, whenever using a dock (Windows, Mac, doesn't matter) there is a potential issue that all those dock ports are being split off a single Thunderbolt or USB port on the Mac/PC. The Thunderbolt port is up to 40 Gigabits per second in theory, in some cases part of that bandwidth is reserved for monitors, so if nothing else is happening on the dock the maximum real world speed that could go through is probably around 3000 megabytes a sec that must be shared by all devices plugged into it. (This speed may have improved by Apple Silicon according to an article I read this week.)

In demanding situations, big high res displays and fast SSDs coming out of the same dock might start having to compete for the 40Gb sec of the one Thunderbolt port. But for my photography I have never noticed a slowdown relating to this.

However, if I need a device to have full bandwidth of a port on the computer, I don't plug it in through the dock, I plug it directly into the computer. But I don't need to do that very often. (A camera connected for broadcast quality video streaming can be an example of where you absolutely don't want any possibility of dropped video frames resulting from contention over the port that camera is on.)

I'd take a look at OWC's offerings. They're a reliable company.

Agree again, and it's interesting that that the dock that is linked to is from TREBLEET, one of those alphabet-soup nonsense word brands that uses Amazon to unload stuff pouring out of Shenzen factories. Now that does not necessarily mean it's bad, I for instance have good luck with UGREEN products found on Amazon. But, it is one of those. (Yeah, I know, Apple has their stuff manufactured in Shenzen too.)

To me, the TREBLEET dock looks like a generic version of the OWC MiniStack, possibly the first designed many years ago to stack with the Mac mini and now Mac Studio. The specs of the current MiniStack look great, and it starts at $279 empty (bring your own SSDs).

OWC is based in America where they do a lot of assembly and design of units made in Asia and Mexico (not saying American based guarantees quality, but I do own many OWC devices because they keep working), and have long been a go-to for storage and specialty peripherals. When RAM was replaceable in Macs, I also bought a fair amount of RAM from OWC. Currently they are expanding their offerings for high end video/photo storage solutions.

If you do not need the Thunderbolt dock to stack with the Mac Studio perfectly, you have a lot more choices. I have been happy with my OWC dock and am not yet replacing it, but more interesting docks have come out after it. If I had to buy today, I would look at the (expensive) CalDigit TS4, or more likely now the Sonnet Thunderbolt 4 Dock. It's totally loaded with at least as many ports that I like on the TS4 but $100 less. Like OWC, Sonnet is another Mac peripheral maker that goes back many many years.

If there's any place you need to save money, do so on the backup drives. You don't need performance there. You won't even max out the performance of a mechanical drive. Only real advantage of SSDs for backup is lack of noise.

Correct again. For those who do not know, bare NVMe SSDs now go out to 7000MB a sec which is comparable to the internal storage speed inside a Mac Studio, but any NVMe SSD on an external cable must be limited to the 3000+MB a sec of Thunderbolt or 1000MB sec of USB 3.2. So if you see an NVMe SSD that is cheap because it does "only" 3000MB a sec, I think that speed is perfectly OK if it is going to be connected externally. Also, any SATA SSD will not exceed around 550MB a sec no matter how you hook it up.

 

[paulraphael]

I don't really subscribe to the idea that the lightroom catalog needs to be on your internal SSD. I have yet to see benchmarks that bear this out. This fairly exhaustive benchmarking video found very minor differences in real world performance between fast and slow SSDs across photo applications.

What we can probably assume is that the catalog should be on an SSD of some type. It's a database, so is dependent on random access performance / latency. SSDs are orders of magnitude faster than spinning drives here. But the differences between SSDs, for lightroom's purposes, doesn't seem to be so important.

I'm all for using fast drives on general principle (you never know when they could become beneficial). But I wouldn't do any contortions here.

 

[JanK01]

I'm using two external TB3 NVME SSDs on my Intel iMac (OWC Espress). One as data storage, the other for TimeMachine. Works without any problems. Muuuuuch cheaper and flexible.

macOS doesn't support the trim feature for external USB SSDs, so a Thunderbolt enclosure is a must. trim must be enabled once via terminal: https://kb.plugable.com/data-storage/trim-an-ssd-in-macos

TB3 enclosures are limited to 1,5GB/s, so get a TB4 enclosure. Have a look at this one for example

https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/17vbbgp/finally_some_relative_affordable_usb4_nvme_ssd

 

[lumigraphics]

Before you buy off Amazon, check out OWC. They are the defacto leading seller of Mac expansion parts.

Apple Mac Upgrades and Computer Products – RAM, SSDs & More

Upgrade your Apple devices with premium Apple Mac upgrades and computer products from MacSales.com. We also provide docks, external storage, & more!

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A Thunderbolt dock and a few external SSD's will do just fine.

 

[low_iso]

It's perhaps a little tangential for the thread, but since you're talking about external storage, it's worth beginning the study of backup strategy too (all of which is external).

I just heard this podcast about backing up data for photographers, which has more detail that you'd ever want, but is quite educational.

The basic idea is, 3 copies, different locations, or it's not backed up. Some of the hardware applies to plain old storage.

 

[ChuckB]

The basic idea is, 3 copies, different locations, or it's not backed up. Some of the hardware applies to plain old storage.

I tend to agree. I just went to the safety deposit box to swap backup drives. I plugged in the one from the box when I got home and it was dead dead dead (a spinner). Could not even be formatted for re-use. How it died in the box I have no idea. It was in an anti-static wrapper. Oy.

 

[lumigraphics]

The basic idea is, 3 copies, different locations, or it's not backed up. Some of the hardware applies to plain old storage.

I tend to agree. I just went to the safety deposit box to swap backup drives. I plugged in the one from the box when I got home and it was dead dead dead (a spinner). Could not even be formatted for re-use. How it died in the box I have no idea. It was in an anti-static wrapper. Oy.

Can I get DriveSavers for $8000, Alex?

 

[low_iso]

I tend to agree. I just went to the safety deposit box to swap backup drives. I plugged in the one from the box when I got home and it was dead dead dead (a spinner). Could not even be formatted for re-use. How it died in the box I have no idea. It was in an anti-static wrapper. Oy.

So sorry that happened to you Chuck.

If you google a bit, you'll find a few articles about how an HDD can die "on the shelf" without being powered up. In fact, the recommendation is that every drive in unpowered storage be powerd up and mounted at least annually, if not more often. IIR, it has to do with internal calibration drift, but you'll have to check. No matter, HDDs are terrible long-term stationary storage devices. Hence the need for spinning drives, in RAID configurations. That works around the long term failures, life-outs off solid state memory, and low capacity of 1000 year opticals.

If you get into a multi-bay drive cage with a RAID controller, you have options of redundancy and speed that you simply can't get with single drives of any type.

The Drobo is dead. Long live Synology. Yeah.

 

[Philip Flower]

All sensible suggestions, but I'll throw in a couple of other ideas.

I haven't got around to a Mac Studio yet - I'll probably wait for an M3 version later this year or next. I do have a MacBook Air M2 and use a Caldigit Thunderbolt 4 dock with it which gives a lot of Thunderbolt 4 ports and USBA ports as well. Currently in the UK it is selling for less than £200. Lots of other docks I looked at had ports I didn't need - like Ethernet and Hdmi. This has 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports (1 used to connect to the computer) plus 4 USBA ports.

My main computer is still a late 2019 27 inch iMac (I love the 5k screen), but keep my main photos on an 8TB Thunderblade from OWC (expensive but fast and unobtrusive). Prices on NVMe ssds seem to vary daily but I settled on Crucial P3+ 4TB drives with Acacis enclosures. I found all of these at at least 25% less than list price simply by keeping an eye on who was selling and when. These again are very fast, small and unobtrusive.

I have about 8 TB of photos also stored on spinning hard drives connected to the iMac via a USBC enclosure. Frankly I don't see a huge difference in read and write speeds to those photos from Lightroom as compared to the Thunderblade. But keeping my main LR catalog on the Thunderblade definitely improves things. From what I understand from reading on the internet the internal SSDs in the Mac Studios are faster than connected external SSDs so it is probably sensible to get a Mac Studio with sufficient internal storage for you main catalog.

Eventually, when I do move to a Mac Studio I will retire the spinning hard drives and back up on SSDs. I've never got my head around RAID enclosures so use SuperDuper (other programs such as Chronosync or Carbon Copy seem to offer much the same options) to automatically back up to 2 separate (hard) drives of all my work once a week - which is all I really need in terms of time scale.

 

[lumigraphics]

All sensible suggestions, but I'll throw in a couple of other ideas.

I haven't got around to a Mac Studio yet - I'll probably wait for an M3 version later this year or next. I do have a MacBook Air M2 and use a Caldigit Thunderbolt 4 dock with it which gives a lot of Thunderbolt 4 ports and USBA ports as well. Currently in the UK it is selling for less than £200. Lots of other docks I looked at had ports I didn't need - like Ethernet and Hdmi. This has 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports (1 used to connect to the computer) plus 4 USBA ports.

My main computer is still a late 2019 27 inch iMac (I love the 5k screen), but keep my main photos on an 8TB Thunderblade from OWC (expensive but fast and unobtrusive). Prices on NVMe ssds seem to vary daily but I settled on Crucial P3+ 4TB drives with Acacis enclosures. I found all of these at at least 25% less than list price simply by keeping an eye on who was selling and when. These again are very fast, small and unobtrusive.

I have about 8 TB of photos also stored on spinning hard drives connected to the iMac via a USBC enclosure. Frankly I don't see a huge difference in read and write speeds to those photos from Lightroom as compared to the Thunderblade. But keeping my main LR catalog on the Thunderblade definitely improves things. From what I understand from reading on the internet the internal SSDs in the Mac Studios are faster than connected external SSDs so it is probably sensible to get a Mac Studio with sufficient internal storage for you main catalog.

Eventually, when I do move to a Mac Studio I will retire the spinning hard drives and back up on SSDs. I've never got my head around RAID enclosures so use SuperDuper (other programs such as Chronosync or Carbon Copy seem to offer much the same options) to automatically back up to 2 separate (hard) drives of all my work once a week - which is all I really need in terms of time scale.

A catalog is typically not that large, but previews can add up quickly. I'm not at home but I have maybe 350,000 images in my catalog, the catalog size is around 4GB but the previews are several hundred GB. This is maybe 6-8 TB of image files.

 

[ChuckB]

I tend to agree. I just went to the safety deposit box to swap backup drives. I plugged in the one from the box when I got home and it was dead dead dead (a spinner). Could not even be formatted for re-use. How it died in the box I have no idea. It was in an anti-static wrapper. Oy.

So sorry that happened to you Chuck.

No worries, actually. It was one of two backups of the main drive, so no data was lost.

 

[Philip Flower]

A catalog is typically not that large, but previews can add up quickly. I'm not at home but I have maybe 350,000 images in my catalog, the catalog size is around 4GB but the previews are several hundred GB. This is maybe 6-8 TB of image files.

That's right. I have rather less files that you but still about 10TB of image files on external drives. My catalog is about 80GB in size including previews, so rather less than your's - but I only use standard previews and I suspect some of those get deleted after time. The point is that with the OS, apps etc. 1TB internal storage is probably optimum. The OP might get away with 512GB of internal storage but it is probably worth the premium to go with ITB internal storage and store photos on external drives while keeping the catalog on the internal SSD. My MacBook Air has 512GB internal storage and currently has 300GB free - and I have no LR catalogs on it or photos. Somehow space does get taken up.

 

[Zeee]

OK, it took me 30 years, but I'm abandoning Windows/Microsoft and going all in with Apple. I've been loving my ipad for the past week, the Mac Air (M2) is arriving today, and, the reason for my post today, I'm about to order a Mac Studio. I have a few questions about storage speed, placement, etc. I know very little about the Apple ecosystem, so please don't assume that I know even the basics.

I will likely get the $1999 base Mac Studio with the M2 Max, 32 GB RAM, and 512 GB SDD. I will need much more storage, and of course there are several options. I could pay an extra $1200 for a 4TB internal SSD. I'd rather not.

I save money on Apples crazy pricing and out that into RAM and processing. My 2019 iMac is 512GB, 64 RAM, 8GB VRAM and my travel 2020 MacBook Air M1 is 250GB, 16GB RAM. Neither is half full.

Option 2 would be use external SSDs plugged into the Thunderbolt 4 slots in the back of the Studio. I currently have about 1 TB of photos and I am very meticulous about culling images, so this 1 TB is the accumulation of 8 years of wildlife photography (where I routinely come home with thousands of pictures, only 20 or so survive). I would probably get a 4 TB external drive.

I have about 12 years worth of wildlife and everything else. Large external SSD drives are still a little pricy for me.

The iMac. Currently all my files are stored on a powered 6TB spinner and backed up daily to another powered 6TB spinner using Carbon Copy Cloner. My OS is backed to a 3rd drive using Time machine.

Travel Mack is about the same but I use 1TB portable spinner drives. One drive is partitioned for OS backup. Those size of SSD drives are getting pretty reasonable so I may get a few but read the next reply.

I will keep my LR catalog on the internal SSD.

Good idea. I do the same and previews as well. Since I never delete previews keeping my files on an external spinner drive is not really a big issue. Files open quickly. I still have lots of drive space on the iMac an Air. Both have at least 100GB of free space for LrC to perform optimally. I find that less expensive than external SSD drives but if you have the money for them then go for it.

I saw this on Amazon:

Amazon.com: Super Thunderbolt 3 Dock for Mac Studio&Mac Mini, Dock Station with Dual NVMe Slot (Up to 2800Mbps),4X USB 3.1 Port(10Gbps), CFexpress/TF/SD Card Readers,Support Daisy Chain (up to 5 Unit) (Silver) : Electronics

and it looks pretty sweet. It has a UHS-II SD card reader and a CF Express reader (I use both types of cards). It has two NVME slots: "2x NVMe Slot (NVMe1 Slot supports PCI-e Gen3, NVMe2 Slot support USB3.1 Gen2)" The first is rated (by them) at 2800 MB/s, the second at 950 MB/s.

So, I could put my photos on a 4 TB NVME like this:

https://www.amazon.com/WD_BLACK-SN8...31&sprefix=pcie+nvme+m.2+4tb+w,aps,182&sr=8-3

And then use the other, slower NVME for my Time Machine or other backup, with a second (possibly cheaper, slower) NVME drive.

In addition to saving a bunch of money (over upgrading the Studio to 4TB), I would have removable/replaceable drives in case of any problems or future upgrading.

I am not TOO demanding; I never do any video at all; the most demanding thing I do is use LR's AI denoise, usually one photo at a time, and my current PC (i7, 32 GB RAM, 3070 Ti) takes maybe 10 seconds to return the result. I also do stacking in Helicon of maybe 50-100 photos, and the current PC takes about 30-60 seconds to do the stack, another minute to save, export, and return the result to LR.

Me neither. Denoise AI takes 33 seconds no the iMac and 115 on the Air. I have the time and remember it will improve over time. Denoise came out this time last year. Adobe reduced the DNG file size by ⅔ with the fall release of LrC 13. We have not seen an update since but I'm hoping to see something this month or soon.

If my photos are on the fast external NVME PCIE, will I take much of a speed hit on AI denoise or stacking versus paying Apple the extra $1200 for the 4TB internal drive?

I don't think so but I have not read all the posts here. AI is all about processing power. AI eats VRAM which is why I got 8GB with the iMac. I knew more would be coming.

My Air M1 is faster at everything than my iMac except for Denoise AI. There is an Apple bug. The bug prevents the use of the Neural Engine cores, so Denoise has to use the GPU cores. Everyone hopes Apple does something about this.

What am I missing? Any other advice?

Thanks!

--
You just need to keep the forests wet

 

[Zeee]

One more thing to add. I import all my files to the desktop and do all my initial editing there because that is the fastest drive. When done I drag that folder to the external drive.

 

[JRET]

You don't need to overspend for backup drives but you will appreciate faster external data drives.

I have a Studio M2 Max w/32 RAM & 1TB storage. I nearly ordered the 512 HD but glad I didn't. Actually wish I had ordered 2TB HD storage.

 

[Philip Eihuyar]

I tend to agree. I just went to the safety deposit box to swap backup drives. I plugged in the one from the box when I got home and it was dead dead dead (a spinner). Could not even be formatted for re-use. How it died in the box I have no idea. It was in an anti-static wrapper. Oy.

So sorry that happened to you Chuck.

No worries, actually. It was one of two backups of the main drive, so no data was lost.

How long did the spinner sit in the safety deposit ? I am of the idea that, as inconvenient as it seems to be, look into placing photographic image and important data on archival optical disks. I do that with data and images and no worry about data zeroing out over time. Storing only the RAW files can save some space.

 

[lumigraphics]

A catalog is typically not that large, but previews can add up quickly. I'm not at home but I have maybe 350,000 images in my catalog, the catalog size is around 4GB but the previews are several hundred GB. This is maybe 6-8 TB of image files.

That's right. I have rather less files that you but still about 10TB of image files on external drives. My catalog is about 80GB in size including previews, so rather less than your's - but I only use standard previews and I suspect some of those get deleted after time. The point is that with the OS, apps etc. 1TB internal storage is probably optimum. The OP might get away with 512GB of internal storage but it is probably worth the premium to go with ITB internal storage and store photos on external drives while keeping the catalog on the internal SSD. My MacBook Air has 512GB internal storage and currently has 300GB free - and I have no LR catalogs on it or photos. Somehow space does get taken up.

I have 256GB of internal storage and am just fine, but most of my data is on external drives.