How to Shop for an (external) SSD

Soundbed said:

Do you have questions about SSDs?

NVMe? M.2? USB and Thunderbolt?

I can't promise to answer them all but I tried to collect a bunch of thoughts into a video to help people like you, the composers who work with sample libraries, choose how to shop for external SSDs (and even maybe RAM and internal drives).

This has a couple products I've bought in it but I'm not trying to push any particular brand or model of SSD. (Not sponsored either.)

I'm hoping to help answer those perennial questions that keep getting asked, when people ask which SSD they should buy.



0:00 Overview, SATA and NVMe
3:20 USD Speeds
4:30 Thunderbolt, USB4
6:30 Connector Types
7:45 QLC etc
9:09 M2 and form factors vs connection types & protocols
10:40 Enclosures
13:15 SATA III 2.5" Drives
14:14 Spinning HD (HDD)
14:53 MATHs — How Fast do you need it?
16:33 Sequential vs Random Access
18:30 Internal Drive speeds
20:30 RAM speeds
21:41 Portable Products and Wrap up

Afterthought: Maybe this should move to the PC/Mac Computer Peripherals forum?

Click to expand...

Have you provided a transcription?

you can get YouTube to transcribe automatically

Because i only seriously watch videos that provide a scrollable transcript hotlinked to the video stream

Elrik Settee said:

Have you provided a transcription?

you can get YouTube to transcribe automatically

Because i only seriously watch videos that provide a scrollable transcript hotlinked to the video stream

Click to expand...

hmm ... I thought it did that for me automagically in the past, but maybe I need to check something now ... let me fiddle with it ... thanks for mentioning that it wasn't already provided!

Elrik Settee said:

Have you provided a transcription?

you can get YouTube to transcribe automatically

Because i only seriously watch videos that provide a scrollable transcript hotlinked to the video stream

Click to expand...

Ok couple things. First, I get CC when I click the little CC icon in the lower right, so there is closed-captioned text on the screen while it plays.



But I think you are not looking for closed-captioning. You are looking for a transcription.

So, 2nd I guess I have something installed in my browser (?) called Glasp that provides me transcriptions to YouTube videos. So, you might want to try looking for that if you want transcriptions for all your (other) videos in the future.

Apparently it generated one for me so I have copied it in and add it to my YouTube Video. I hope the timings got set correctly. I edited some of the transcription to make sure there are fewer error but I can't guarantee it's 100%.

Can you take a look and let me know if that's working for you now?

@Elrik Settee @Soundbed

Under the chapters

dunamisstudio said:

@Elrik Settee @Soundbed

Under the chapters

Click to expand...

Yep. Those chapters are the ones I added before the request for a transcript. Hope you found the video helpful/informative!

If you have a Mac Studio, and you want to use 3-4 UNpowered Thunderbolt (must be TB) enclosures or devices, you may need to consider powered enclosures or externally powered docks. I didn't realize this when I made the video.

This is the challenge some Mac Studio users have experienced, trying to utilize all four TB ports on the back of the Mac Studio, but not giving them external power: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255016578?sortBy=best

fwiw I use these powered enclosures, but they both will bottleneck throughput (which is still good enough for my drive needs... I also have 64GB of RAM and some stuff on the internal drive... so it's all working out for audio and some limited 4K video editing) ...:

https://sabrent.com/products/ec-t3dn (currently only holding 2 x 2TB NVMe M.2)
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/thunderbay-4-mini/thunderbolt-2 (used this with both spinning drives and SATA SSDs over the years)
https://juicedsystems.com/products/vertexhub-usb-c-hub-data-and-charging-hub-usb-3-1-gen2 (this has worked "surprisingly" well for many years, even though it's capped at 10Gbps, I tend to max it out with libraries I use less often — they usually load whatever's needed quickly into RAM, and then remain mostly idle, more or less, as I work. Because I'm not streaming samples from the drives all night and day.)

And I also use this dock which has its own power, and connects to the Mac Studio using Thunderbolt:
https://www.owc.com/solutions/thunderbolt-3-dock-14-port (lots of junk plugged into this like Dangerous Source, Clarett2PreUSB, MIDI Fader Controller, iLok, 2nd Monitor, Breath controller, External Camera(s) as needed, eLicenser, Wireless Mouse dongle, authenticator dongle, more drives, etc.)