Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

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RobertElse
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Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by RobertElse » Tue Nov 08, 2022 11:20 am

Hi all -

My main workstation is a PC running Pro Tools, and I currently have 3 internal 2TB SSD's, used mainly for storing sample libraries. I will soon add a 4th for a total of 8TB. I am considering an external SSD for all 4 drives, mainly because (1) I can then use these libraries on my Macbook Pro as well when I work remotely, where I run Logic and Pro Tools, (2) in case of emergency (fires are the biggest threat where I live (Southern California) I can quickly grab the enclosure in case of evacuation, whereas grabbing the whole tower PC is much clumsier, and everything there is backed up and easily replaceable. I know sample libraries can be re-downloaded, so this goal is not as important as #1.

If any of you are using a multiple-SDD enclosure (for example, 4 drives of 2 TB each), or a single large SSD drive (I'm thinking 8TB), I would love to hear from you about the pros and cons of that setup.

Thanks in advance,
Robert

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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by audiogust » Wed Nov 09, 2022 5:55 pm

I got a Blackmagic Design MultiDock which is a dock that has 4 slots for SSD drives. You can swap drives pretty easily and mine has room for 4 drives. I was able to even migrate my plugin data drive to a larger capacity by sticking in a larger drive in an open slot, copying the content and then renaming the drive to match the previous name. Everything just kinda worked.

One of the nice features is that it has two different USB-C connectors so you can split the drives into two completely different channels that can stream content concurrently and that will help your load times.

In case of needing a quick exit, you could just grab the 4 SSD cartridges and beat a hasty retreat.

-Chris

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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by Paulie » Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:40 pm

I'm thinking about moving away from my separate external 4TB drives and going with a Synology NAS and running a RAID5 set of 3x4TB SSD (for a total of 8TB storage). Several of my friends use one, hoping for a Black Friday sale.

If you keep it simple and go with a single 8TB SSD, make sure you get a second drive and mirror the content. Drives fail, period... you never want to have a single point of failure in your storage solution.
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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by RobertElse » Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:30 pm

audiogust wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 5:55 pm
I got a Blackmagic Design MultiDock which is a dock that has 4 slots for SSD drives. You can swap drives pretty easily and mine has room for 4 drives. I was able to even migrate my plugin data drive to a larger capacity by sticking in a larger drive in an open slot, copying the content and then renaming the drive to match the previous name. Everything just kinda worked.

One of the nice features is that it has two different USB-C connectors so you can split the drives into two completely different channels that can stream content concurrently and that will help your load times.

In case of needing a quick exit, you could just grab the 4 SSD cartridges and beat a hasty retreat.

-Chris
Thanks Chris! Still considering various alternatives. I appreciate the reply.
Robert

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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by RobertElse » Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:32 pm

Paulie wrote:
Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:40 pm
I'm thinking about moving away from my separate external 4TB drives and going with a Synology NAS and running a RAID5 set of 3x4TB SSD (for a total of 8TB storage). Several of my friends use one, hoping for a Black Friday sale.

If you keep it simple and go with a single 8TB SSD, make sure you get a second drive and mirror the content. Drives fail, period... you never want to have a single point of failure in your storage solution.
Thanks Paulie - I like the NAS idea, and definitely agree about the single point of failure... Murphy continually lurks in the shadows. Will check out the sales.
Robert

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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by audiogust » Tue Nov 22, 2022 9:56 pm

RobertElse wrote:
Mon Nov 21, 2022 12:32 pm
Paulie wrote:
Sun Nov 13, 2022 8:40 pm
I'm thinking about moving away from my separate external 4TB drives and going with a Synology NAS and running a RAID5 set of 3x4TB SSD (for a total of 8TB storage). Several of my friends use one, hoping for a Black Friday sale.

If you keep it simple and go with a single 8TB SSD, make sure you get a second drive and mirror the content. Drives fail, period... you never want to have a single point of failure in your storage solution.
Thanks Paulie - I like the NAS idea, and definitely agree about the single point of failure... Murphy continually lurks in the shadows. Will check out the sales.
Robert
I have a Synology NAS. It is great! It works well as a backup copy of my content but it will not work well for any files you want to use for active music production because it can only be accessed across the network so the latency is going to be too slow for sample libraries used by plugins or active DAW projects.

-Chris

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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by Paulie » Wed Nov 23, 2022 9:27 am

audiogust wrote:
Tue Nov 22, 2022 9:56 pm
I have a Synology NAS. It is great! It works well as a backup copy of my content but it will not work well for any files you want to use for active music production because it can only be accessed across the network so the latency is going to be too slow for sample libraries used by plugins or active DAW projects.

-Chris
THANKS for this... this is the exact question I had in my mind. Most of my libraries are on my internal SSD, but my entire sample collection is on an external drive. I believe that when I add samples to a Logic project that they are copied into the Audio Files directory within the project folder, so this might still work. Not sure how performance would be to preview samples.

Thanks again,

PC
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Re: Recommendations for 4-drive SSD enclosure, or 8TB SSD drive?

Post by jdstamper » Wed Jun 14, 2023 8:12 pm

audiogust wrote:
Wed Nov 09, 2022 5:55 pm

In case of needing a quick exit, you could just grab the 4 SSD cartridges and beat a hasty retreat.

-Chris
I just happened on to this thread, and this Blackmagic sounds interesting. Does anyone know ... in an emergency, you can pluck the SSD drives out of their bays and run off, you don't have to take the Blackmagic unit which might be installed in your rack, is that right?
Jim Stamper
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