Looking for external storage for MacMini M2

[Alain Ternet]

I plan to change my Mac for a Mac Mini M2 Pro (or a Mac studio, I'm not decided yet). I mainly do Raw graphic and photo design (Adobe) and video (Final Cut Pro, 4K minimum).

I'm looking for an external storage solution, a fast SSD drive just for video editing (2 or 4 TB) and an HDD drive for common file storage (2 to 4 TB). I already have a dozen of Seagate or Western Digital (slow) 4-6-8-10 GB external drives for archiving. Since it's really annoying to plug and unplug I would like these two disks to be in the same external enclosure.

I found hubs with the possibility of putting an HDD and an SDD inside such as the Hagibis MC25 Pro, that would be ideal but I suspect that the speed is not fast enough for the SSD disk to do video editing comfortably. What speed do I need to work with 4k comfortably and could this case do it? If not, do you have any other suggestions in the same style that would be quicker?

Thanks for your help !

 

[ovbacon]

I guess it all depends on what speed you are actually trying to get out of an ssd... I am doing exactly what you described as needing it for and my mini m2 does an amazing job but I do have a fast external ssd (for photo and video libraries) and a separate external hdd (for backups).

I have the hdd plugged in with usb-a and the ssd with tb4

 

[HDFan]

a fast SSD drive just for video editing (2 or 4 TB) and an HDD drive for common file storage (2 to 4 TB).

MacRumors had an article a while back about an enclosure with both HD and SSD slots. It discussed the reasons the SSD slot could only run at a reduced speed. Unfortunately I can't find it.

 

[Fishrrman]

"I'm looking for an external storage solution, a fast SSD drive just for video editing (2 or 4 TB)"

Do you know what kind of read/write speeds you will need for this?

USB3.1 gen2 will give you reads around 900MBps, and writes a little lower, perhaps 750-800.

If you need "faster than that", you're going to have to look at either thunderbolt or USB4 (I think the M2pro Minis support USB4, which is 40GB, which I'm going to GUESS works out to about 3,600MBps in "real life" usage).

"... and an HDD drive for common file storage (2 to 4 TB)"

Perhaps something like a Samsung t7 "Shield" would be good for this:

SAMSUNG T7 Shield 2TB, Portable SSD, up-to 1050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen2, Rugged, IP65 Water & Dust Resistant, for Photographers, Content Creators and Gaming, Extenal Solid State Drive (MU-PE2T0S/AM), Black

Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD delivers high performance on-the-go, not matter the terrain. It has an IP65 rating for water** and dust* resistance, with Dynamic Thermal Guard to manage heat control. Transfer huge files instantly. USB 3.2 Gen 2 and PCIe® NVMe™ achieve soaring sequential read/write...

www.amazon.com

(good price, too)

 

[PaulD-UK]

As a long term video editor I have developed a wariness of relying on external devices that Apple won't have tested in their development of their computers.
If you are on any sort of delivery deadline then troubleshooting intermittently flaky gear is the last thing you want.

The data transfer technology that Apple has been most involved with in the past decade and a half that is of benefit to video editing is Thunderbolt.
So I would stick to TB - preferably using devices with Intel chipsets, as that is what Apple would have tested their port compatibility with.

So that Hagibis dock could be OK - or it could not be OK...
Certainly Apple never tested the performance of their Mac mini's wifi/BT antenna with it directly in the way.
To quote Steve Jobs, you'd be 'holding it up wrong'.

That means that I would much prefer to try out this Trebleet dual SSD TB dock if you want to go that way.
Scroll down the page to see it. (Its fairly new so I haven't heard any in-depth reports of its performance).

https://www.trebleet.com/ssd-hard-drive-enclosures

I prefer to daisy chain TB docks well away from the mini to not interfere with wireless connectivity, but even so the Mac mini can be tricky. (Don't know about a Studio).

Another advantage of TB is that its not taking clock-cycles from the CPU in the way that USB is, so is probably more consistent. And its bandwidth is more than double Apple's USB 3.2 implementation so using multiple SSD's over TB is a smoother experience in more demanding workloads.

Quote: MacRumors had an article a while back about an enclosure with both HD and SSD slots. It discussed the reasons the SSD slot could only run at a reduced speed.

If a dock is splitting bandwidth between multiple data sources, then they all share the same maximum bandwidth of TB3, and with older dock chipsets this division was done with hardware spliting, So the SSD would only get 2 of the 4 PCIe lanes routed to it.

Intel's older Alpine Ridge (JHL 6***) TB controller was like this. But with Titan Ridge (JHL7***) docks and Goshen Ridge JHL8***) - for Thunderbolt 4 docks - can now feed the SSD with PCIe 3x4 (4 lane) full 3000 GBps bandwidth if the other devices attached to the dock are idle.

You get what you pay for.

 

[roadkill401]

I have an M2 mac mini pro. I can tell you what doesn't work. and sadly its just about everything.

I converted from an iMac that ran with multiple external drives attached without any problems. that was an intel based machine so I gather that was why it had great support. I ran both USB and Thunderbolt 2 drives off it with zero issues.

The new mac mini doesn't have a thunderbolt 2 port but has 4 thunderbolt 4 ports that are suppose to be backwards compatible. I bought a USB 3.2 dock that has 2xUSB3.2 10mb C ports on the front, and a SD card reader with a NVME slot inside. I put inside of that an ADATA Legend 840 1tb drive.

For the first bit it seemed to work fine, but it would constantly get an error saying that the drive had been ejected improperly. It happened mostly at night while i wasn't using the machine but it was annoying. It was supposed to be fixed with 13.6 but that didn't seem to make any difference. If anything it made it worse. The drive would periodically eject while the mac was in use. Worse was that i set the drive up with CC and it would even report the drive as ejected while it was getting written to or read from This would lead to the drive getting corrupted.

I contacted Apple and they said that the problem is that it's a USB drive and the Realtek chip inside is at fault. they tried to say that this is a problem with every computer and it happens with Windows machines as well as with Macs. That i know it utter BS.

Then I upgraded to 14 as Apple insists that you need to be on the latest version of an OS to get support. With the upgrade I started to get the occasional drive eject error with my Thunderbolt 2 connected drives. This is using an orginal Apple Thunderbolt 3 to TB2 adapter.

Apple refuses to support this adaptor sayin that it doesn't support the M2 as its not listed.

I bought a Orico TB3-4 40gb NVME case, but it doesn't support the ADATA drive on the Mac. I have a windows laptop with a TB4 port on the side and it works perfectly fine with the windows machine (that is an intel chip).

So from what I can gather, the Mac Mini M2 doesn't support any external drive options.

 

[PaulD-UK]

@ roadkill401 The Orico TB4 NVMe case probably has a JMicron USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller chip as well as an Intel TB3 controller, so will work in USB mode with your Windows machine (you don't say if it has the optional USB 4 Thunderbolt capability).
However I guess Apple only tested their USB 4 (TB3 capable) ports with an enclosure with an Intel TB4 controller, rather than a dual controller ( TB3+US2 3.2) mashup (called USB 4) like the Orico case seems to be?

Another advantage of docks with Intel TB 3/4 chipsets is that any USB 3.2 ports (with Realtek controllers) in the dock, are decoupled from the Mac OS/hardware implementation, so will probably work as designed and at full speed, which doesn't happen if they are directly driven by the Mac's USB-C ports. In my experience.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

OWC Ministack STX. It has a slot inside for up to 8TB of m.2 and another slot for a regular 3.5" HDD in a package about the same size as Mac Mini. It also adds 3 extra Thunderbolt ports. It does not offer rocket speeds, even to/from the m.2 but easily fast enough for FCPX 4K video editing.

I can confirm it also doesn't suffer from the mysterious "unexpectedly ejected" bug(s) likely in macOS for a few generations now. In fact, this was the first dual drive external that stayed connected as I was trying to find something that could maintain a connection after my former dual drive box could not.

I've had no problems with this one for what will soon be 2 years. As I write this, they have one in their Garage Sale section at a great price.

Else, if speed worries trump all, bail on trying to jam a slow mechanical drive with a fast SSD drive and use separate enclosures. If you want to really max out speed, seek out a m.2 RAID box and setup the sticks as RAID 0. Options like Thunderblade or OWC Express 4M2 can give you abundant m.2 storage at fast read/write speeds.

Then just get any old enclosure for the slow, long-term 3.5" HDD storage. Since you have a couple of 3.5" drives laying around, maybe get a JBOD enclosure to hold more than one like this 2-bay or even a 6-bay... or 10-bay. None of those will be fast but superspeed and 3.5" drives are generally not a thing... unless you perhaps get a RAID enclosure with a bunch of matched drives working together in RAID 0... but even that is generally going to fall short of a RAID m.2 setup.

 

[Thirio2]

The spinning hard drive uses a lot of power. I have been researching external drives for my m2 mini and have decided to get a simple thunderbolt SSD enclosure for one of the thunderbolt ports and maybe later get a powered thunderbolt hub for other devices.

 

[roadkill401]

@ roadkill401 The Orico TB4 NVMe case probably has a JMicron USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller chip as well as an Intel TB3 controller, so will work in USB mode with your Windows machine (you don't say if it has the optional USB 4 Thunderbolt capability).
However I guess Apple only tested their USB 4 (TB3 capable) ports with an enclosure with an Intel TB4 controller, rather than a dual controller ( TB3+US2 3.2) mashup (called USB 4) like the Orico case seems to be?

Another advantage of docks with Intel TB 3/4 chipsets is that any USB 3.2 ports (with Realtek controllers) in the dock, are decoupled from the Mac OS/hardware implementation, so will probably work as designed and at full speed, which doesn't happen if they are directly driven by the Mac's USB-C ports. In my experience.

As said in my original post.. the windows laptop has a TB4 (Thunderbolt 4) port on the side of the laptop that I used. it using any of the speedtest will give me around the 40 mb/s transfer. But more importantly it just works.

I did try and get support from Orico, but they seemed to want just reams of photographs of what didn't work but provide no solutions. They relied on the side of there advertisement that said other than 4 drives listed, everything else is not recommended (that means something different than won't work). And two lined below, they list a whole lot of drives saying they are compatible that are in the not recommended list. I gave up and sent it back.

 

[Alain Ternet]

Thank you all for your comments.
But I'm confused and I having trouble to understanding all info.

1- From what I understand, the internal 1TB drive on the Mac Mini Pro or Mac Studio is very fast (how much? What is the speed ) and it is impossible to see such speeds externally.

2- Then, if I want a external drive (no RAID) at the maximum speed I have to opt for a
M.2 NVME SSD drive connected by Tunderbolt 3 at 40Gbps (5000 mb/s) ?
But, in real life, the speed is lower, like 2800 mb/s for this enclosure:

​

[URL='https://www.trebleet.com/product-page/trebleet-thunderbolt-3-to-nvme-m-2-2280-hard-drive-case-ssd-enclosure']Buy Thunderbolt 3 NVMe M2 External SSD Enclosure with Free Shipping

trebleet.com

[/URL]
Or 3100Mb/s for this one

​

[URL='https://www.amazon.ca/KONYEAD-Enclosure-Compatible-Thunderbolt-USB/dp/B0BB5W3QGQ?th=1']KONYEAD 40Gbps NVMe Enclosure, Compatible with M1 Pro/Max/M2 Mac,Support 8TB M.2 SSD,Compatible Thunderbolt 4/3 USB4.0/USB3.2/3.1/3.0/USB C Aluminum NVMe Adapter(8117)

amazon.ca

[/URL]
Why the Thunderbolt enclosure speed is not the same for all ?

3- And if I use a drive with only USB 3.2 I will obtain only 20Gbps ? (2500 mb/s)
(can I put a slower SSD because the speed is lower? Like what model?)

4- And USB 3.1 is 10Gbp/s (1250 mb/s)

5- And USB 3 is 5Gb/s (625 mb/s) like my collection of Western Digital MyBook, only quick enough for slow backup.

5- Now, assuming what I wrote above is correct, what drive speed is needed tho edit comfortably 4K video on a Mac Mini pro or Mac Studio with a external drive for the videos media's ? Maybe I don't need the fastest? From your experience, what is the more effective vs cost ?

 

[PaulD-UK]

1. See this post for internal SSD speeds.
These are theoretical (ballpark) speeds. Real world will be 10-20% less.
The bottom Max figure is more or less the same as the M2 Studio.

2. "Why the Thunderbolt enclosure speed is not the same for all? ...at 40Gbps (5000 mb/s)"
Because those are marketing figures and are not achieved in practice.
The rates you get depend on many things.
And TB 3 isn't 40Gb/s for data. the 40Gb/s includes DisplayPort video data.
The data transfer rate is at best only about 60-70% of the total.

The Trebleet enclosure has a more honest assessment of its performance - and their web page lists all the incompatibility problems.
The Konyead enclosure is a mashup of TB3 + USB 3.2 controllers - like the Orico enclosure that is mentioned in earlier posts, that had problems in use with a Mac.

USB 3 naming is confusing, see here:

https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/29902-48670-usb-name-changes-xl.jpg

3. Apple Macs do not support 20Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. So this is not an option.

4. 10 Gb/s USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSDs give at max about 1000MB/s. On Mac computers, mostly less - often 600-700MB/s.

5. USB 3 5Gb/s gives about 450MB/s with SATA SSDs.
Hard drives (spinning disks) give up to 200MB/s, fine for backup and archiving.
But also OK for low resolution HD/SD video source disks.

For editing 4K video if you are using simple edits without lots of stacked layers of video in your timeline, then 450MB/s SSDs will do.
If your timelines are more complicated with several streams of video being composited into each frame, then USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s is better, and editing will be straightforward.
If your have heavily multi-stream composited frames, with lots of render files in your timeline, then it allows a margin of safety if you work with NVMe ssds connected by Thunderbolt 3.
Particularly for the SSD that your video editing app is storing its render cache files on.

The situation with the USB-C (TB) ports on Apple M* Mac computers is they don't give the best data rates on USB 3.2 SSDs attached directly to the computer.
Some SSDs also can occasionally under some circumstances disconnect intermittently.

I've found the way to get stable higher performance from USB devices is to connect them to a Thunderbolt 3 dock which has multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports.
All the devices attached will share the TB bandwidth, so this will affect the data rate of any NVMe SSDs attached to the channel, but this doesn't cause any problems with video editing.

Summary:
As @Fishrrman said above, USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gb/s SSDs will be perfectly fine for hobby 4K video editing.
For anything more deadline focussed, then Thunderbolt 3/4 is the way to go.

 

[Alain Ternet]

Thanks PaulD-UK, I see much clearly now !
But, If I use a dual Enclosure (2 ssd) is the speed reduced for each disk?
Same thing for a Thunderbold hub, if I connect several disks will the speed be reduced?

And, what would be your recommendation for a Thunderbolt ssd enclosure and for a usb 3.2 Gen 2 Enclosure ?
Brands and models recommended or to be avoided?
Is it better (performance and price) to buy a model already made or to buy the SSD and the enclosure separately ?

 

[PaulD-UK]

Each USB-C (TB 3) port on a Mac has ~3000MB/s bandwidth, and this is shared with all devices attached to it passing data at the same time. How this share is apportioned depends on the particular hardware.
It's not significant for 4K video editing.

I'm not a good person to make recommendations. See my first post in this thread.
I only buy from brands who have something to lose if they sell substandard products (for use on Macs).

So I've got Glyph TB 3 and Western Digital (D50) TB 3 docks - all of which have an NVMe slot inside, and WD NVMe SSDs and HDs. No USB hubs.
Also some Samsung USB-C SSDs.
The docks were bought when I found them on sale at a reduced price - the WD D50 seems to be end-of-life in UK/Europe at the moment and a particularly good deal - 60% off...

All hanging off a M1 Mac mini - I'm not doing stuff at 4K at the moment and I bought the mini before more powerful Macs were available.

I do buy Chinese stuff - I use a DIY 5K 27" monitor with an iMac Pro screen (in an iMac case) and a Chinese video driver board.
It not without its quirks but its lovely to look at

 

[Alain Ternet]

I thought that having several SSDs in a single case was practical and would save some ThunderBolt ports, but that means that with one disk I could have something like 2700MB/S but if I but a case with two SSDs I would fall half that, or only 1350MB/S? In such a case, there is no point putting a super fast and recent SSD in a dual enclosure .

The Glyph TB 3 seems interesting but not in my price range. I am therefore looking towards a TB enclosure like Trebleet, Acasis, Orico, Sabrent, or OWC. But since these drives give a speed of 2700-2800 MB/S at best, there is no point in putting an ultra-fast SSD like a SAMSUNG 990 Pro 2TB Gen4 NVMe SSD or a WD_BLACK 2TB SN850X Gen4 PCIe, M. 2 2280, is that correct?

What would be good SSD to put in a TB enclosure in this case? Just fast enough to do 2700 - 2800 but cheaper than premium SSD (All the tests and reviews I read recommend these high-performance disks, but that doesn't seem useful to me?)

 

[fiat]

I use M2 Pro Mini with 2 SSD external drives (WD-SN770 2TB, SN-570 1TB) connected via Trebleet dock (new version). You can check this thread (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/trebleet-mac-mini-tb3-dock.2340514/) and see the posts of my test/usage at the thread end. I use the first SSD for storage extension and work with large photo files (not as large as video though) stored in it. The second SSD is for TM backup only. The speed I get from the first SSD is about the same as the internal SSD ~2900 Mbps and the second SSD ~900, which is more than enough for TM backup. I don't know how fast you need for video editing, but I don't think you can get faster than the internal SSD speed from an external drive? BTW, since the dock is self-powered (powered from external power supply), I never get "drop" issue like many other hubs or enclosures (e.g., Quiizlab hub I tried before Trebleet). Oh, FYI, my Mini is still running Ventura... I read a thread revealing many Mac users who upgraded to Sonoma and were hit by disconnection issues for their external drives. I would wait until it's cleared out.

 

[roadkill401]

. I read a thread revealing many Mac users who upgraded to Sonoma and were hit by disconnection issues for their external drives. I would wait until it's cleared out.

I had to take my Mini into Apple for service in my drive became diss-assocated with the T2 security so you couldn't use it any more. It was a simple software fix from Apple but it required them to re-flash my mac and that forced Sonoma 14.2 onto me. I found that it make the external drive drops less frequent.

Regardless I did get myself a OWC ministack STX. it is not fast at all. My ADATA Gen4x4 only gets 785 MB/s but for the type of work that I do it's plenty. I get quite a bit less from the SATA HD inside.

For the question of dual nvme drive cases/docks. The consideration is pooled throuput. So just because there are two drives, doesn't mean that both will just run at half the speed. Read the specs on the units. Like the updated trebleet mac mini dock has the first vnme 1X M.2 Expansion Socket Supports PCIe Gen 3 x4 (PCIe 3.0) where the second one is limited to 1X M.2 Expansion Socket Supports USB 3.1 Gen2: for speeds of up to 950MB/s.

OWC does sell a thunderbolt nvme enclosure https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-express-1m2

 

[fiat]

Update: Since using Treeblet dock (with two NVMe SSDs) on my M2 Pro Mac mini running Ventura, I have been upgrading and updating to Sonoma 14.2. No disconnecting or unmounted issue.

 

[dono42]

There is this big thread in Mac Accessories - I went with the Acasis TBU405

Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

Since I am owning a great new MacBook Pro, I have been searching the web for a worthy external storage to go with it. So far, I only know of stationary Thunderbolt 3 drives (mainly in the form of full-size PCIe boxes with NVMe SSDs in them or large RAID systems that weigh upwards of 5 kg), but...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[danimir]

I've used Acasis 40GB Thunderbolt 3/4 enclosure for my MacMini. I'm super happy with the results.