Mac Studio External Storage Options

[Rick Cornish]

Thanks, James… much appreciated.

[mikehalloran]

This 4 Lane USB4 ACSIS m.2 enclosure is under a hundred bucks. Until TB5/USB4.2 gets here, 2800 over 4 Lanes is the fastest external that you can connect to a Mac or PC. I have an 8TB blade in it running cool to the touch.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBZT42HC?re ... tails&th=1

OK—Maybe I'm thick, but the Amazon listing for this enclosure says USB… I don't see TBolt mentioned anywhere.

That's because it is USB4 but not Thunderbolt. TB3/4 is based on the USB 4 spec but is certified and licensed by Intel. The TB specs are tighter but that doesn't always mean better.

As I tried to make clear, USB 4 gives you connectivity options that Thunderbolt cannot. I know because I've tested it with USB 3 and 2.0. A TB drive will not connect (I returned the 2 Lane OWC TB3 enclosure that I bought a couple weeks earlier after putting the ACSIS through its paces).

The only TB3 external boxes that would let me add my own m.2 drive were 2 Lane (1500) only. This ACSIS is 4 Lane for about the same price or a little less and it delivers the full 2800 without getting hot to the touch. Oh, USB 4 supports TRIM as well (would have been returned if it didn't). My only issue wass that neither of the supplied heat sink tapes were quite thick enough to make full contact with both the blade and aluminum housing—so I used one on top of the other. It runs a little above room temperature.

Who knows when we will see TB5? Not I but it isn't here yet. That will be based on the new USB 4.2 spec. Again, there will be Intel certified Thunderbolt devices and non-licensed boxes but that is a bridge to be crossed later.

[HCMarkus]

Oh, USB 4 supports TRIM

Didn't know that... great news!

[mikehalloran]

Oh, USB 4 supports TRIM

Didn't know that... great news!

Yea, I thought so, too. Over Sonoma, it doesn't mention TRIM one way or the other but neither does the internal storage nor did the OWC TB3 housing. I was on a different call with Apple when I asked, "Oh by the way…?" Here's where you would see TRIM on another drive

Screenshot 2023-12-18 at 1.14.24 PM.png (130.98 KiB) Viewed 15597 times

I still have my SATA III SSDs connected over TB2 and they do give the usual TRIM Yes/No message.

I've attached a screen shot. The Mac sees it as TB3 — I suppose there's nothing in the firmware to tell it differently.

As for the Up to 40 Gb/s spec, remember that this includes about 25% overhead for video and that b does not equal B. It works out to the normal 2800 GB/s advertised be everyone.

Screenshot 2023-12-18 at 1.04.27 PM.png (304 KiB) Viewed 15600 times

[Rick Cornish]

That's because it is USB4 but not Thunderbolt. TB3/4 is based on the USB 4 spec but is certified and licensed by Intel. The TB specs are tighter but that doesn't always mean better.

Ahhh..... (lightbulb comes on)… now that makes sense. Thanks (as always), Mike.

So… on a related topic (or, as a former client used to say, "same curch, different pew")…

I bought the OWC Envoy Express enclosure you mentioned so I could read from the blade that was in my old Mac Pro. It works great (waaaayyyy better than the USB one I had on hand)… which begs the question:

Once I have everything copied off the SSD that was in my old Mac Pro (Crucial P2 2TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD), would that SSD in the OWC enclosure be usable as an external drive for my studio? To what extent (i.e. sample playback for VIs or just general file storage)?

[HCMarkus]

I bought the OWC Envoy Express enclosure you mentioned so I could read from the blade that was in my old Mac Pro. It works great (waaaayyyy better than the USB one I had on hand)… which begs the question:

Once I have everything copied off the SSD that was in my old Mac Pro (Crucial P2 2TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD), would that SSD in the OWC enclosure be usable as an external drive for my studio? To what extent (i.e. sample playback for VIs or just general file storage)?

I use two of those (2TB each) with my Mac Studio; each serves VI Samples very nicely. Would also work great for general storage or DP project files.

[Rick Cornish]

I use two of those (2TB each) with my Mac Studio; each serves VI Samples very nicely. Would also work great for general storage or DP project files.

Thanks, HCM—great to know!

[mikehalloran]

I use two of those (2TB each) with my Mac Studio; each serves VI Samples very nicely. Would also work great for general storage or DP project files.

Thanks, HCM—great to know!

The answer is Yes, they're great!

The only reason I returned mine is that it's 2 Lane and the ACSIS is 4 Lane for $10 more when I bought it a few weeks ago. I used the same 8TB blade in both when I A/B'd them. The Envoy ran a little cooler to the touch (room temp vs a little warm) as expected being 2 Lane only. Because the heat from 8TB blades causes a lot of problems for many, I was quite prepared to return the ACSIS if it ran too hot.

Since I bought it, the Envoy Express has dropped $22.49.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVXP00

Had I been past the return window, I would have kept the Envoy Express without buyer's remorse. As for connectivity, yes, the ACSIS USB4 unit will connect backward to USB 3.0 and 2 but … who really thinks I would do that except for testing?

So if you buy another, consider the ACSIS but what you have is great. If you run out of ports, a TB4 hub lets you connect up to five to any TB4 port on a Mac.

[Rick Cornish]

So if you buy another, consider the ACSIS but what you have is great. If you run out of ports, a TB4 hub lets you connect up to five to any TB4 port on a Mac.

Thanks again, Mike. Good to know.

I have already ordered the ACASIS enclosure and a Samsung 990 2tB SSD which I'll use for sample playback and will use the OWC Envoy with the 2tB Crucial SSD that came out of my Mac Pro for Loops, SF/X, file storage, & c.

I plan to also use my existing OWC TB2 dock (via the Apple dongle adapter) to provide more USB inputs for iLoks, etc. (so I can reserve the onboard USB-A ports for my audio interface and MIDI keyboard) and to provide connectivity to my collection of TB2 drives, when needed. This will still leave me one TB4 out to use as DisplayPort for my monitor, in case HDMI doesn't do what I need.

Just got word that my Mac Studio is on it's way out of China, so it should be here sometime next week.

[mikehalloran]

This will still leave me one TB4 out to use as DisplayPort for my monitor, in case HDMI doesn't do what I need.

DisplayPort… Worked great on my iMac Pro. With my Studio, my DP monitors would not sleep for more than 30 seconds at a time. Fortunately, my LG monitors also have HDMI ports and changing over to USB-C to HDMI cables fixed the problem.

Though many users have reported this phenomenon, I had to take my Studio to the Cupertino mothership to to show them. If they have fixed it in an OS update, I don't know. I still have the USB-C to DP cables to test if I want.

[Rick Cornish]

This will still leave me one TB4 out to use as DisplayPort for my monitor, in case HDMI doesn't do what I need.

DisplayPort… Worked great on my iMac Pro. With my Studio, my DP monitors would not sleep for more than 30 seconds at a time. Fortunately, my LG monitors also have HDMI ports and changing over to USB-C to HDMI cables fixed the problem.

Though many users have reported this phenomenon, I had to take my Studio to the Cupertino mothership to to show them. If they have fixed it in an OS update, I don't know. I still have the USB-C to DP cables to test if I want.

Yep…. On my LG monitor (the one you recommended) HDMI looked like crap coming out of my Mac Pro, so I found a TB2 to DisplayPort cable, which worked great. I’ll try HDMI when my Studio gets here next week, but ordered a USB-C to DP cable **just in case**. I’ll hope one of the other will do the trick.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Rick Cornish]

And BTW: We've been talking about drives and enclosures, but what about cables?

Has anyone seen this?
https://youtu.be/AD5aAd8Oy84?si=iCvI34AQHYrFi5VE

(Apologies if it has been posted here, but I couldn’t find it, if it was.)

Was pretty interesting to me.

Since we're trying to get max speed out of our devices, are the cables we're getting from OWC and Amazon up to the task?

[tbwnm]

I solved the issue with My Cloud not recognizing certain external drives connected via USB. Turns out WD My Cloud will only play nice with external USB drives that are 16TB or less. The 18TB Dell EMC Exos was recognized by My Cloud once I made a 2TB and 16TB partition (it won't recognize WD HDD that are larger than 16TB either). However, I did the happy dance a little too early as far as successfully completing a Time Machine back up to a WD 16TB Ultrastar USB drive. After letting it run for 5 days (back up was 9.7TB) the resulting xxx.sparsbundle could not be opened by Time Machine and the USB volume would no longer perform additional incremental back ups to it. I Re-formatted the external USB drives again (both the Exos and the Ultrastar) and restarted the Time Machine back up ussing the Exos 16TB partition connected to My Cloud and will see if I gave better luck before I throw in the towel on this option for real. Will report back in another 5 days or so. Although at the speed it's going right now, backing up 9.7TB to the Exos may take closer to 2 weeks. It's taken about 2 hours so far to just back up 78.89GB of data (it's currently 2%). It's definitely running slower than when I tried the first failed back up to the WD Ultrastar. At this point, I'm ready for BlackBlaze to just take my money and sign up for yet another data/storage subscription.

[Michael Canavan]

For what it's worth I've been running an Acasis USB4 enclosure on the Macbook Air and M2 Mac Studio for over a year and it's fantastic, around 2800MBs so top speed.

I want to know where this 8TB NVME drive for $150 is?

[mikehalloran]

For what it's worth I've been running an Acasis USB4 enclosure on the Macbook Air and M2 Mac Studio for over a year and it's fantastic, around 2800MBs so top speed.

I want to know where this 8TB NVME drive for $150 is?

I will have to go back and reread my post on that. I thought that I'd saved about $150 buying the last 8TB OWC NVMe 3 x4 Aura Pro drive on closeout (that's what the email claimed I was going to save).

The new ones are NVMe 4 x4 priced at $1,199. That's $500 more than I paid for the slower blade — if I was installing in a PC 4 motherboard. Over TB4/USB4, both are limited to 2800GB/s/
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/P4U8T1PT08/

If you type 8tb m.2 ssd into an Amazon search, you'll find a number of blades from $776 to $1199. All the ones I have found are 4 x4 or 4 x6, If there are any more 3 x4 close-outs out there, I'm not seeing them.