When I went to IBC 2023, I talked to OWC sellers. I asked them about my current storage, 4m2 (from Netstor), to see if there was any way to go faster. This is because mine seems to be limited by Thunderbolt 3’s max speed.
They introduced me to this product, which seems to be compatible with a Mac Pro M2.
With this, you can achieve speeds up to 26,000 MB/s (because it’s a PCIe SSD) as opposed to 2,500 MB/s with a 4m2 RAID.
What do you think about this product ?
Is this Overkill ?
What image format would require such a thing? And if you are using something that is currently TB3, I assume Mac, then really, if you do need more than 2.5GB/s, shouldn’t you go with a vastly more powerful Linux machine?
Don’t get caught up on specs. Look at the real world.
Sometimes I composite shots from RAW using 6K footage, let’s say with 3 to 4 sources. I don’t really know if I’m experiencing lag from my M1 Ultra studio or from storage.
Sadly, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to use a Linux workstation. I’m thinking about using one in the future, but it seems to be complicated when you start with no knowledge, I will in the future.
If your mac has two Thunderbolt busses, you can stripe across two enclosures and nearly double the speed. Look in your system report to see how many busses you have.
I wouldn’t use SoftRaid for the striping. Better to just go into the Disk Utility and stripe it there.
The block size of the stripes will have a dramatic effect on performance. From memory, 128k blocks was good. But test them all and choose the fastest.
To test the speed, use test disks in flame preferences under storage. Autodesk doesn’t read a drive the same way Blackmagic and Aja do. While testing the drives alt-tab over to the Activity Monitor to double check what the software is telling you.
I haven’t used the Netstor, but it looks pretty similar to the one I have…
While I haven’t used those particular cards, I have used Highpoints on Mac and Linux. Some have complained about them on the Mac side, but I’ve had zero issues with mine over the past few years and I’ve got 3 of them cookin…the SSD7101a and the 7540 if memory serves me right.
I use encryption sometimes and the added speed has made that solid.
If you want to see the entirety of how to setup Linux, we’ve got a Logik Live on building Linux, and I just released a ZFS framestore build on Logik Academy Pro.
I am super interested in these cards, and they are just about the only reason I’m considering getting a MacPro over a Mac Studio. I absolutely love the idea of having nothing plugged into my Mac.