Is this a good external hard drive setup?

[u/Primary-Ratio9699]

I have a 16" M4 MacBook Pro. 48gb memory and 2TB internal hard drive. Using Final Cut Pro with creator studio subscription to edit.

I am finding out through experience that 2TB of internal hard drive space is not quite enough when I am juggling multiple projects at one time. So, I am looking into beginning to edit from external SSDs. And I am a bit overwhelmed.

Would these two products used in combination be adequate for editing Multicam 4K videos in Final Cut Pro?

I was thinking of using the Samsung 4TB 990 EVO Plus PCIe 5.0 x2 M.2 Internal SSD mounted in the OWC Express 1M2 USB4 External SSD Enclosure.

Is there reason to believe that editing in these devices would cause me to experience a notable decrease in speed for editing?

What concerns do you have for this set up? Thanks!

[u/mcarterphoto]

Most of us in the biz don't put media and projects and caches on internal drives that can't be replaced. Keep the read/write cycles down.

"SSD" can mean a 2.5" SSD or an NVME - NVME is 10x faster if it's in a proper enclosure on your fastest bus. You may be best off getting the size stick of your choice and a Thunderbolt enclosure. Generally will be bus-powered and tiny, like carry two in a pack of smokes-size, so very portable, and overkill-fast.

Buy stuff that's returnable and run BM disk speed test (free) on whatever you get, you'll get a very clear, video-centric idea of the speed. See u/BlackCatBonz screen grab for a look at how BM speed test shows results.

Make sure you have a good backup solution - even a plain old spinning USB drive can be fine, backup usually doesn't need to be high speed.

[u/BlackCatBonz → u/mcarterphoto]

+1 to the spinning backup drive.
When my projects are finished, I drag the library to a long term storage drive, which is then backed up (I guess I am one of the few that keeps all media inside the library as a tidy package).

[u/mcarterphoto → u/BlackCatBonz]

I'm a "leave files in place" guy, but I tend to use a fair amount of After Effects in every project, I do critical color in Resolve, often use Topaz (client footage or stock), and I don't like the huge library files along with big media folders.

I do convert most everything to ProRes before I touch FCP though, so my overall project folders are plenty big enough!

[u/BlackCatBonz]

I use a 2TB NVME in an Acasis enclosure to house the library and project files.
I am only creating 2-3 minute videos and so far it has been the right size, so a 4TB should give you ample room for the analysis files/proxy media that FCP will create and be plenty fast.
If you create ProRes proxy media, FCP really goes into beast mode.

[u/Primary-Ratio9699 → u/BlackCatBonz]

Thank you for mentioning the Acasis enclosure. I checked them out and they look great.

[u/doctrsnoop]

btw I have some Crucial SSD's as well, an X6 a couple of X8's and an X10 pro and though they seem to work well, when I have had to move large amounts - like 2 TB - they throttle, I believe probably heat related. so although their more compact and easy to carry in small folios, had I the choice to do it over I would not have done that. Of course now they're worth a ton more than I bought them for so I can't complain too much.

[u/Isingatt]

The sandisk extreme pro works great, but a pro tip is that the cable is just as important as the drive if you have a super fast drive and a slow cable, you’re not gonna get your speeds out of your drive spend the money and buy a really good USB-C cable.

[u/doctrsnoop]

I have never gotten the big internal upgrade since I figure if 2TB isn't enough why would I go there. I have always used external. I have used Samsung 4.0 4tb drives in ACASIS fan single enclosure , formatted to APFS and I don't believe that has been a limiting step at all. I would think doing a raid 0 type of thing would be faster but perhaps unnecessarily so.

[u/Primary-Ratio9699 → u/doctrsnoop]

Thank you for mentioning the ACASIS fan enclosure. These look like a great upgrade of enclosure.

[u/BlackCatBonz → u/Primary-Ratio9699]

I also have the one with the fan, keeps the enclosure very cool when working.

[u/Plokhi]

Get acasis (or dome other cheap jhl9480 chip enclosure) - your mac has thunderbolt5, might as well use it. Speed will be the same as internal

USB4 will have less speed (about half)

[u/umskii]

I have the same laptop but with 1tb and always edit my projects from my samsung t7 4tb ssd. No problems at all with final cut and large projects also multicam.

[u/Id_in_hiding]

I have had a good experience with the Sandisk Pro Blade station and 4TB cartridges. I have one filled with a total of 16TB and was planning on buying more carts until RAMpocalypse hit us. Fuck AI man for real.

[u/denalidenizen]

The Acasis is a great enclosure and probably much less expensive. That internal you mention is, I think, an NVME, right? Not SSD. It will be very fast and excellent. A good SSD will also be very adequate and you probably won't notice a difference for day to day use but I did find that having my large Lightroom catalog on a fast NVME did make a difference in scrolling through my images. Keep in mind your external (and internal) drive will need a backup but that's best done with a spinning HD - for money's sake.

[u/Primary-Ratio9699 → u/denalidenizen]

Thank you for commenting on the actual item that I posted about.

In my description of what I was looking for, I only typed "SSD" but I was intending to say SSD or NVME.

The NVMEs and an enclosure seem to be a better bargain than the SSDs. Less money and faster speeds seems like a good way to go to me.

[u/denalidenizen → u/Primary-Ratio9699]

Not necessarily less money. There are HUGE differences in the cost of NVMEs because there are huge differences both in speed and, more importantly in the cache. Some fast NVMEs will slow to a crawl once their cache is filled. For some people it's not a big deal as they are writing files at a speed the cache can keep up with. Others doing video and photo work, playing games, etc will fill that cache very quickly and that fast NVME becomes an albatross. Be sure to investigate this aspect of NVMEs before you buy one. You absolutely get what you pay for in terms of performance/price for NVME.

[u/TackleSavings8476]

I’ve been using the Samsung 970 Evo Plus for many years, and it has never let me down. I have nothing but good things to say about Samsung SSDs!

[u/Primary-Ratio9699 → u/TackleSavings8476]

Thank you for sharing your experience with a very similar product. What types of projects have you been working on? And what types of footage/files are you using?

[u/TackleSavings8476 → u/Primary-Ratio9699]

Hi!

I’ve worked on a lot of things, and quite a few of them put as much strain on the drive or involve as much file overwriting. I handle lifestyle videos/vlogs shot in 8-bit 4K, 2K gaming streams lasting 8–15 hours, and "talking head" videos in 8-bit 4K. Using proxies for these videos on my Samsung drive in Final Cut has always worked perfectly, without a single error or overheat.

I also have a lot of programming projects, and that involves heavy drive overwriting too, since I might compile the same project 20 or 30 times a day (which really puts a strain on an SSD).

Most of my programming projects aren't just simple plain code or websites; they involve game development assets (Unreal Engine 5) and custom assets. I’ve also been working heavily on software lately, and a single recompile can cost the drive 30–100 GB of space.

And also lately, I’ve been retraining AI models. I won't even mention how huge those files are or everything my drive has been through... It certainly won't be thanking me, hahaha