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External HD or External SSD #1
G Mitchell's picture
by G Mitchell
December 18, 2013 - 3:28am

I run managed and I’m looking to move my Aperture Library along with video and music to external storage, Thunderbolt or USB 3.  First HD or SSD , is SSD worth the price. With either should I be storing the Library and other data on a raid 0 formated drive or just a regular formated drive . I’ll be running regular backups and time machine backups of the either drive. What is the advantage of storing on a raid drive vs the other.

G. Mitchell

gfsymon's picture
by gfsymon
December 18, 2013 - 9:42am

SSD is incredibly worth it for Aperture and video or music editing.  If you’re just listening to your music and just watching your videos, then they will not benefit.

You may want to check out what Raid levels do before deciding.  Striped is twice as fast and twice as likely to fail (2 drives treated as a single volume)  If one fails you loose all your work.  Striped also requires a fast bus speed, because if you aren’t delivering the data fast enough, then there is no benefit and only increased risk.  You need to look at how fast your computer can deliver to the drives and how fast the drives are capable of writing.  The drive controller may or may not be able to handle striping (but the MacOS can).

USB3 (5Gbps) cannot saturate a 6Gbps SSD drive at write speed … thus striping 2 drives will not improve anything at all.  Thunderbolt is capable of sending 10Gbps to peripherals, so there would be an advantage and unlike USB it doesn’t slow down.  Thunderbolt2 can write at 20Gbps.  With Thunderbolt you may already be using the bus for other stuff, like your monitor, so this will reduce the theoretical speed by that amount.

Walter Rowe's picture
by Walter Rowe
December 18, 2013 - 4:13pm

How much total storage do you need for Aperture, Music and Video? Prices vary based on how much storage you need. Consider how much that is likely to grow over the next two years also. Will it double? Will it grow 10%? Make sure you include growth factor in your total storage requirements. No point in spending money now only to have to spend more next year.

I use WD MyPassport 2TB USB3 external HDDs for my photographs. They are USB powered so no extra power adapters or chords to cart around or store or throw away later. They are $99 each. Plenty speedy for me and I have a Nikon D800 camera with 40MB+ raw files.

I have a new MacBook Pro 15” Retina with internal TB SSD, but I don’t load my images there. I do keep music and videos there. I only use the external HDD for photography.

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