External hard drives, HDD vs SSD

Who’s using external hard drives? been using a 5tb wd elements for ages but loading some kontakt libraries is a bit of a ball ache. How drastically different would an SSD be?

You can expect a read speed increase of 2x-3x when connecting an SSD via USB3.0. How much exactly depends on various factors like the enclosure, the exact type of the SSD and how fragmented the 5tb wd elements already is.

With kontakt libraries the loading times should at least shrink to 1/2 (I’m using a Samsung EVO850 / 500GB in a cheap enclosure).

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Thinking of buying a SANDISK Extreme Portable hard drive with 4 TB SSD. Plan is to use it with Ableton for live recording on my Mac Book Pro from 2014. Will that work or is it unrealistic with the old laptop?

The MacBook‘s spec sheets say it has USB 3 ports with up to 5 GB/s speed. Hard drive says it has USB 3.2 Gen 2, it can read at 1050 MB/s and write at 1000 MB/s.

Are there other alternatives that would work with my Mac?

Depends on how many tracks and at what resolution. Assuming 48kHz/16 bit I reckon those specs should be fine for recording 24 tracks simultaneously. More than that might get interesting.

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Thanks, that should be sufficient!

I would suggest to build your own SSD’s.

If you want to go really highspeed NVME these are great.

And these would be great for “regular” SSD’s.

I started to build my own external storage since these solutions are WAAAYY cheaper than the “ready made” ones, and I can choose the SSD’s myself and also easily exchange them if something is buggy.

I use these especially for media jobs like on movie shootings, where it is crucial to have several backups.

Regarding speed: NVME’s are obviously faster, but regular SSD’s, even with the USB 3.2 limitation, are more than sufficient for multitrack streaming, as long as you don’t work past 48KHz or have over 100 channels to process.

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I got an external SSD for my MacBook Air and attached it to the top of the case with a little neoprene pocket. It’s super convenient to plug it in when I need it and because it’s SSD the speed is awesome.

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Thanks for all of your help so far!

Can you suggest external SSDs that you personally use and know to work with Mac Books for the intended purpose? Small ones are preferred, should hold 4TB or more. Looking at you @Claid and hoping for a picture.

I was about to order the SanDisk but then read that apparently, there is an unresolved issue with Macs.

Building my own SSD is not a solution as I am really bad with these things. I would prefer suggestions from people who know they work from experience.

I got the Samsung T7:

And the pocket is this wee thing:

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Is there generally a long term reliability difference between external drives (ssd) relating to capacity? For example is a 1tb expected to have a longer lifespan than a 4tb, all else being equal?
I have a shoebox full of old external drives (hdd) that are aging and I would like to back up a lot of the data. I’m wondering if I should be buying fewer large drives or more “small” drives.

Thanks, they have a 4TB version called shield, which seems to have a good reputation with Max users. Guess I’ll just buy that.

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Go for it! Much cheaper than grabbing a MacBook with larger storage, or for bolstering an existing one.

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Yeah I would definitely prefer just having a larger internal drive. But Apple’s pricing for storage is ridiculous, considering how cheap hard drives have become.