External storage options for Mac Studio

[clay_9]

It's due to arrive tomorrow (a lovely surprise as it was originally due to ship at the end of October!) I'm definitely going the route of trying my existing storage options first before any further investment (other than a usb hub and usb-c to DP cables for additional monitors).


If I look for new storage options, thanks for all the suggestions, I'll be coming back here and further researching options.

 

[clay_9]

Just a quick update as the new mac arrived yesterday. I thought that on balance, my old macpro still did ok in terms of performance.... Well a 55 seconds vid clip exported from and to the same external drive (so comparisons of drive speed was fair). It did it in 30 seconds. The new Mac Studio, 7 seconds.

I think my workflow will be a tad quicker moving forward haha.

Also, all my files seem to run fine through usb3 external drive and dock, so for the time being I don't need to further invest.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

That's generally what I've seen with my Mac Studio as compared to my Mac Mini and MBP (both Intel based). Everything in my workflow was about 3-4x faster which is great.

 

[pigoo3]

In theory (perfect world)...able to do 8 hours of work in as fast as 2 hours!

Definitely a significant performance improvement for someone who earns a living via their computer.

Nick

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Absolutely..in my world, we compile a lot of code and in my previous company a number of engineers had pretty crappy HP machines that would take about 40 minutes to compile everything. As you can imagine they got creative about choosing WHEN to compile to avoid paying that penalty, but if you they had to compile to test some quick changes, it wasn't possible.

My MBP (first in the company) would compile the same code in about 3.5 mins. And when I found that, I pushed to get upgrades for everyone, a number of folks switched to M1 based Macs and others to faster Lenovo machines and on average the build time dropped to around 5-8 mins which meant that these high priced engineers could be more productive during their work day.

These sort of improvements are nothing to scoff at..

 

[pigoo3]

Darn Ashwin...with the savings seen from that idea (reduce code compiling from 41 minutes to 3.5 min)...multiplied by the number of engineers doing it...you should have gotten a nice pay increase...or a promotion!!!

Of course the extra time saved is now probably more time to play Frisbee football...longer lunches...or just idle time (aka...online gaming)! Lol

Nick

p.s. Unless these engineers are contract/temporary employees...then I guess the company could bill fewer hours.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Definitely got promotion, but for other reasons.

The faster compile time definitely made the engineers so much more happy to be able to get their work done and feel productive. Best yet, it allowed them to keep a regular work schedule otherwise, with 2 or 3 compiles a day you've lost close to 2 hours of your 8'ish work day.

 

[pigoo3]

Definitely got promotion, but for other reasons.

Brown-nosing?

Ha ha ha. Just teasing!

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Heck no, I'm just that amazing!

 

[pigoo3]

Just a quick update as the new mac arrived yesterday. I thought that on balance, my old macpro still did ok in terms of performance.... Well a 55 seconds vid clip exported from and to the same external drive (so comparisons of drive speed was fair). It did it in 30 seconds. The new Mac Studio, 7 seconds.

I think my workflow will be a tad quicker moving forward haha.

Also, all my files seem to run fine through usb3 external drive and dock, so for the time being I don't need to further invest.

That sounds awesome!!!

I know we discussed a lot of external drive options (and various ways to connect them to your new Mac Studio).

But 30 seconds reduced to 7 seconds using your existing drives is pretty significant. And tons more time savings when those video clips get a lot longer than 55 seconds!

Nick

 

[mac57]

For those who are worried about the remaining read/write cycles of the Mac Studio's internal SSD drive, I would encourage you to have a look at DriveDx, which in my research into this matter seemed to be the most highly regarded disk monitoring utility of a large bunch. Despite still being Intel only, it looks pretty impressive, and critically, it directly reflects the read/write cycles health of your drive.




In the above screen shot, the "SSD Lifetime Left" indicator is the key one - the documentation says that it directly reflects the number of read/write cycles left on the drive. If you run DriveDx as part of your routine maintenance of your Mac (along with things like OnyX and so on) you can keep an eye on the health of your drive, and have plenty of advance notice if and when the end is near.

DriveDx is not cheap - $19.99 for a lifetime license - but seems worth it to me. I am about to take the plunge and pay the fee myself. For the record, I have no association with the author of this program. This is NOT advertising, just the ramblings of a happy user.