M.2 Choices

[VitcoMusic]

About to receive a new Mac Studio Ultra. I plan on purchasing an external M.2 enclosure from OWC (holds four drives):

Which drive is the best value?

1) 2Tb Samsung 980 Pro - $216

https://www.newegg.com/samsung-2tb-980- ... 6820147826

2) 2Tb Samsung 970 Evo Plus - $174

https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo- ... 6820147744

3) OWC 2Tb Aura Pro - $249

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/S3DIG3P4T20/


Thanks in advance,

Dan V


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mikehalloran]

Without knowing the enclosure, it's impossible to say.

[VitcoMusic]

Here it is:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mikehalloran]

Here it is:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good. That's Intel Certified Thunderbolt 3. Non certified "Thunderbolt compatible" units are made with cheaper components and there have been issues.

TB4 allows Macs to connect multiple TB3 devices via daisy chain or a TB4 hub. TB3 ports can only connect one. It offers no other advantages though that one's very nice.

While this would appear to be the best buy, the enclosure and the Mac are TB3 so you will never see all that promised speed—TB3 maxes out at the rated 2800MB/s and multiple M2 blades, while increasing capacity, will slow the pipe down a bit (noticeable in GeekBench but not real world applications). Still, I like the heat sinks if the enclosure has enough air space for them to work.
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-2tb-980- ... 6820147826

If Apple adopts TB5 someday, then PCIe 4 x6 speeds in an external can become real (the Studio uses one or two internally depending on capacity but the blades are proprietary and Apple has not made the parts available)

Other than that, the best buy of the three you linked is the 970 EVO Plus. One unit will get you closest to the promised 2800 but I don't think it's the best buy out there.

A single 4TB blade is faster than any pair of 2TB blades. These have a 5 year warranty and Crucial's Idaho service center is very good on the rare occasions that's an issue.
https://smile.amazon.com/Crucial-PCIe-N ... ref=sr_1_7

Although the enclosure you linked is rated for four 8TB M2 blades, heat has been a major issue with those and though that enclosure is vented, there's no fan. I'm not that brave.

[VitcoMusic]

That’s helpful info Mike.

I’ll be considering the Crucial. For one of the drives, I plan to hold plug-in/sample data, so it would only be read from once for each session. The other would be for project files, so I would be saving my DP project every minute as I work. I can’t imagine heat being much of an issue since the drives won’t be working very hard for each session. However, I will install with space between them.

Thanks Mike.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mikehalloran]

That’s helpful info Mike.

I’ll be considering the Crucial. For one of the drives, I plan to hold plug-in/sample data, so it would only be read from once for each session. The other would be for project files, so I would be saving my DP project every minute as I work. I can’t imagine heat being much of an issue since the drives won’t be working very hard for each session. However, I will install with space between them.

Thanks Mike.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s a bad idea. SSDs do not behave as HDDs in a G4 over MacOS 10.4 and earlier.

One large blade in that enclosure gets the full 2800 speed and uses all 4 lanes in the TB3 pipe and nothing else is as fast. Two drives is a little less than half the speed since each uses only 2 of the 4 lanes. 3 or 4 drives in the enclosure slows down each to less than one-quarter since each uses one lane of that pipe. If multiple blades are set up as RAID 0, this combines the capacity so they appear as one drive and maintains most of the speed (it does not recover the full 2800 but close enough). Do not partition, separate the drives (JBOD) or any of those other ways that diminish performance big time. There is absolutely no advantage and too many disadvantages. If you need to install more than one bootable MacOS on the external, learn about APFS Volumes.

Do not worry about TRIM since it is active on M2 SSDs over Thunderbolt and you can’t change that—nor would you want to. TRIM works with the drive’s own Garbage Collection in the firmware to make them ready sooner for new data after data is erased.

For Time Machine, get a large HDD or two and access it/them via wireless or Ethernet. Mine connect via Ethernet to my wireless router so that my desktops access it via Ethernet while my laptops see the same drives over Wi-Fi.

[VitcoMusic]

Well I learned something there. Didn’t realize the data lanes get split amongst multiple drives, thus reducing speed. This has me rethinking my options.

Appreciate it Mike.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mikehalloran]

No problem. It’s hard to cram that much info into a post without writing a book.

Apple hasn’t let on what’s going on inside the Studio but as soon as I saw the numbers for PCIe4 x6, I knew since those are the numbers that are happening inside the Studio. Unfortunately, there isn’t a TB pipe that supports those speeds and 6 lanes—yet—and for your uses, an external at a bit over 1/3 the internal speed is more than fast enough. Less than 1/11 the internal speed (3 or 4 at JBOD) is not something you want.

[VitcoMusic]

".....One large blade in that enclosure gets the full 2800 speed and uses all 4 lanes in the TB3 pipe and nothing else is as fast. Two drives is a little less than half the speed since each uses only 2 of the 4 lanes. 3 or 4 drives in the enclosure slows down each to less than one-quarter since each uses one lane of that pipe. If multiple blades are set up as RAID 0, this combines the capacity so they appear as one drive and maintains most of the speed (it does not recover the full 2800 but close enough).,"


Check this out Mike. Apparently installing one blade into this enclosure gets you about 1/4 the advertised speed. Go to 3:35 of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SgU8RtezM&t=218s

Fascinating stuff. I'll be exploring other enclosures that are Intel certified for the time being.

[HCMarkus]

Yes, the OWC enclosure in question uses four lanes total, but each connected SSD gets only a single PCI lane, hence the limited speed demonstrated in the video.

Others have noted that RAID does not improve things for audio, so you may be better off getting an enclosure that supports more PCI lanes per drive. Also, watch out for enclosures with a fan if your Mac and Drives won't be housed in an iso box or machine room.

I've got a Studio Ultra; been using it in my studio for several months now. The Ultra has those two extra Thunderbolt ports on the front side, so you have lots of options. For my VI sample data, I went with two OWC Envoy Express enclosures, each housing a 2TB Samsung 970EVO plus SSD. The Envoy Express is a two-lane Thunderbolt 3 enclosure that houses a single SSD blade. Max speed is about 1550MB/s (I have verified), not as fast as some other enclosures, but the Envoys have been flawless for me. No fans, and I applied a pair of stick-on heatsinks to each out of an abundance of caution.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LYQPRPJ?re ... tails&th=1
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0948TKWLS?ps ... ct_details

This website's admin James Steele has a different TB enclosure that apparently uses all four lanes; he has described some connection issues; perhaps he'll chime in here. From my perspective, I've been happy with the Envoy Express enclosures and the speed they deliver.

I'll point out that VI data reads (which are continuous while playing back a VI track in a DAW) are very small. When the DAW is playing back a track with VIs, only the initial portion of each VI voice sample is played back from the computer's RAM (the "Pre-Load", the size of which depends on your VI Pre Load setting). This gives the computer time to pull the remainder of the voice sample from storage. So, writes will be very limited after the VI sample data is stored on the drive, but your VI Sample Drive is going to get a lot of read-only activity, and most of that activity will consist of lots of very small reads. I mention this because small SSD reads are much slower than sustained reads. Small reads may thus not max out the bandwidth of even a single PCI lane.

And I'll mention again: Do Not RAID! Slows small reads down a lot

[VitcoMusic]

I've pretty much come to the same conclusion. About to pull the trigger on this Intel certified enclosure. Ordering two:

https://www.newegg.com/orico-2579s3-bk/ ... 1DS2PZ6052

Since I normally load all VI/Samples into RAM (not a portion), I suspect the drives will remain cool, only writing to the drive once for all data, and reading once per session. This should work nicely with my new Mac Studio Ultra (64g RAM).

Cool stuff.

[mikehalloran]

so you may be better off getting an enclosure that supports more PCI lanes per drive.

Although they exist for server farms, I have never seen one that has a Thunderbolt connection. When TB5 exists, perhaps then.

Others have noted that RAID does not improve things for audio

True—Audio is quite slow—but that's not why you do it. RAID 0 allows one to use the entire capacity of the combined drives as does APFS Volumes. JBOD and partitions do not.

Heck, there's a company within walking distance of my house doing SCSI at near light speeds over microwave. We can't hook that up to a Mac or PC either.

[HCMarkus]

Since I normally load all VI/Samples into RAM (not a portion), I suspect the drives will remain cool, only writing to the drive once for all data, and reading once per session. This should work nicely with my new Mac Studio Ultra (64g RAM).

Wondering why you do this? I'm running minimum pre-load size in Kontakt with absolutely no issues.

But the Orico enclosure looks very solid. Metal case with fins, it should dissipate heat nicely. I have noted that NVMe drives seem to run warm regardless of read/write activity.

[VitcoMusic]

Since I normally load all VI/Samples into RAM (not a portion), I suspect the drives will remain cool, only writing to the drive once for all data, and reading once per session. This should work nicely with my new Mac Studio Ultra (64g RAM).

Wondering why you do this? I'm running minimum pre-load size in Kontakt with absolutely no issues.

But the Orico enclosure looks very solid. Metal case with fins, it should dissipate heat nicely. I have noted that NVMe drives seem to run warm regardless of read/write activity.

I've been loading all sample/VI data into RAM for the past ten years (MP 5.1 32g RAM). Would rather have everything in RAM if possible rather than streaming from external drives. It wasn't until my current project (huge orchestra template) that I've had to revert back to streaming most instruments. I was due to upgrade to the Mac Studio Ultra anyway. The MP 5.1 served me flawlessly for 12 years.

[mikehalloran]

I've been loading all sample/VI data into RAM for the past ten years (MP 5.1 32g RAM). Would rather have everything in RAM if possible rather than streaming from external drives

There is no reason to do this anymore—and hasn't been since the G4 over ATA which was 1/15 the bus speed of SATA 1 introduced in the G5.

My iMac Pro's internal storage is half the speed of a Studio with a pair of SATA 3 SSDs over Thunderbolt (to avoid the sleep issues that can plague USB) configured JBOD. These drives are about 1/10 the speed of my internal. VI streaming is just fine.

I keep IKM/SampleTank on my internal not because of streaming but because loading is noticeably faster. When SampleTank needs to rebuild its database which sometimes happens when loading a new instance, it's much faster with the IKM VIs stored internally vs on the external. Komplete/Kontakt/UVI doesn't have that issue for me.

Likewise, all active DP and video projects are on the internal while the archived ones are stored externally. Bounce to Disk is a lot slower and sometimes hesitates when I make a minor tweak to an archived project (as I did on a three year old project yesterday). For anything other than a minor tweak and re-bounce, it's faster to bring the project back to the internal first.