Save Your Footage and Your Money: SSDs and Backups for Creators Explained

[@TheSmartWoodshop]

I agree that the 8TB internal on the MBP is way too expensive, but I sprung for it, and it has been nice. I have 4 to 5 TB empty and use it for video. Once I am done with the video, I offload it to an external RAID. I keep my LR catalog and photos on my MBP so I have all of my photos with me at all times. I also have (2) Time Machine backups of my MBP, so data is reasonably safe, though I still need to add an off-site backup. I have been so satisfied with the 8TB onboard that I plan on adding it to my next MBP. I am still running an Intel MBP, but getting close to pulling the trigger on an M3 Max. It is great to see your workflow and hardware as I go forward.😎🤙

[@JakeSloan]

nice to have when you need it though! You'll be blown away by the m3max compared to intel!

[@madrivermediaeddooley5084]

Thanks for taking the time Jake! A couple of things, one, you keep saying Megabits (Mbps, small b) per second for their speeds. It's actually Mega*bytes* (MBps, capital B), 8 times faster than Mega*bits*! There was a guy on YT who hasn't posted in over a year, Kevin Ross, who did similar testing of DIY SSDs and enclosures. Some of the recommendations have been superseded by newer models, of course. I bought an Acasis 40Gbps M.2 NVMe USB 4 Thunderbolt 3/4 SSD Enclosure and a Fledging Shell Thunder - Intel-Certified Thunderbolt 3 SSD Enclosure based on his research. With a 1TB WD 750 blade in the Fledging I got 2,700MBs R/Ws, but in the Acasis I only got 800MBs Writes and 1,200MB Reads. With a 2TB WD750 I got 1,200MBs R/Ws in both enclosures. More recently, with a 4TB Samsung 990Pro in the Fledging case I get 2,600+MBs R/W, but in the Acasis I only get 1,200+MBs R/Ws. According to Kevin Ross' research, although the NVMe blade itself makes a difference, the main difference is the controller each enclosure uses. The Fledging uses an Alpine Ridge 6 Gen TB3, while the Acasis uses a dual-chip design: Intel® JHL7440 Thunderbolt™3 with REALTEK® RTL9210B, the main control chip is Intel® JHL7440 Thunderbolt™3. Neither case has a fan, and they both get hot, but in the edit I just finished yesterday, 3.7TB on the 4TB SSD and 1.6TB on the 2TB SSD, I never had a slow down. Bottom line, tests like yours, using various blades in various cases, can really help folks decide. Another thing that seemed to make a difference, on my 16" M1Max Macbook Pro at least, was which TB port the drives were plugged in to. Currently, I have both SSDs going through an OWC hub. For archiving I use dual internal 12TB HDDs in a dock. Everything gets backed up to the 2 mirrored HDDs, very cost effective. I have 2 HDDs for each of my main clients and simply switch out the drives (literally just push in and pull out, no connectors to remove). One last thing, my 2TB Samsung T7 Shield, which I use on my Panasonic S5IIX, and currently has 1.3TB of video on it, is getting 740+MBs Writes and 670+MBs reads.

[@JakeSloan]

Interesting on your tests. And yes I constantly say that wrong lol

[@DeeNimmin]

Great video, Jake! I've been looking for some new SSD drives and youtube did its thing. Are you manually copying the footage to two drives, or are you using software to auto-copy the files to the 2nd drive? Always looking for ways to speed up my workflow and have been doing that manually. Thanks!

[@JakeSloan]

Thanks Dee! I use a program called Hedge (hedge.video) to make sure everything transfers properly when offloading camera cards etc.

[@BasicFilmmaker]

Awesome and perfect timing - my drive on my PC just craps out. :)

[@JakeSloan]

Thanks Kevin

[@PrestonGladd]

You can get a housing for the EVO series (and all other internal SSDs) to mount the SSD into that turns it into a USB-C external drive. This fixes the issue with the brittle connection possibly breaking. Some of the cases even have a quick function to pop the top off, slide out the EVO and pop it into a dock. On a side note we just got orders to Fairbanks Alaska, so we will be there in a few months!

[@JakeSloan]

thats a great Idea, I hadn't thought of doing that lol. Let me know when you get here!

[@ksa8483]

Very informative video. Probably won't end up being your most viewed, but I appreciate the breakdown and learned a lot. Thanks Jake! I actually had a Sandisk 4TB fail on me and lost a ton of footage. Switched to all T7s afterwards. I also plan on getting an HDD for more long term backup as well.

[@JakeSloan]

Thanks! the T7s are great not sure why mine is struggling so much with speeds but normally they are quite fast

[@mikebrewington1425]

Good presentation Jake. My current setup is the M1 Max Studio sitting on a Hagabis (Quizlab) hub sporting a 1TB 7200 spinner for Time Machine and a 2Tb Hynix M.2. Plugged in the TB4 ports are an Acasis Pro with a 4Tb Samsung 990, an Acasis with a 4Tb WD 850 Pro, and a 14Tb 7200 Hitachi for storage after processing. I’ve also got a couple 1Tb Sandisks and the 4Tb Sandisk which are rugged and portable. Speeds range from 2800 for the Samsung and WD 850 to 900 for the Hynix and snail speed for the spinners we used to think were fast. You are so right about Apple memory pricing.

[@JakeSloan]

NICE Setup!

[@mikebrewington1425]

6 months ago I was a lifelong PC guy so this setup has really made photo and video processing fun again. Love the speed but will admit it’s been a bit of a learning curve. I turned the old PC on yesterday and it took a bit to get back in the game. @@JakeSloan

[@ScottBalkum]

If you reconfigure to SHR with a single failure and then add 1 more drive, you’ll get 900MBs. Double protection isn’t a bad idea but double data is typically better. I use UNRAID as a copy of the NASs. You can throw in any size spare drive you have into it and just keep expanding. I edit 8K footage every day from my NASsesesses..

[@JakeSloan]

OOOHHHH interesting!

[@MrEddieNunez]

I am going to consider the enclosure route for my next SSD. Great in-depth video explaining all the difference.

[@JakeSloan]

Thanks Eddie!

[@justaschmidt]

Hi Jake, first of all thank you for this video - but i must disagree in an important point. The read / write speed you showed e.g. for the t7 shield is wrong. It is much much higher. Maybe you should try different cables? My "old" mac mini m1 reaches up to 900 MB/s read speed for this drive. So please try to check the cables! Best regards

[@JakeSloan]

I did try some different cables but I’ll test some more. That was interesting to me too because in the past I had gotten better speeds as well

[@justaschmidt]

Thank you for your reply. Because of your video i tested it today with black magic disk speed test. Result vor T7 Shield was: Write Speed 1240.3 MB/s and Read Speed slower (why ever) around 650 MB/s but this is far faster than your speedtest... best regards@@JakeSloan

[@madrivermediaeddooley5084]

@@justaschmidtI thought the same thing about slower read than write speed when I tested my T7 Shield yesterday, that's not typical. As I wrote above, I got 740+MBs Writes and 670+MBs reads

[@cheeef]

A very timely video for me, Jake. Thanks very much for this info.

[@JakeSloan]

Glad it was helpful!

[@GearFocus]

Another great video with fantastic real world advice!

[@JakeSloan]

Thanks so much!

[@rivieramacro5240]

Great video as always ! I have used many Samsung SSDs in the field under very harsh condiitons, never had an issue. As for the Sandisk 4Tb, only some serial # had issues, you can check it on their web site I believe. Mine has been good. In addition to the SSDs, in the field I do a double backup on an ADATA 5Tb HDD. Slower but cheap and ADATA drives are super tough and reliable

[@JakeSloan]

Good to know and you’re right.

[@jeremiahis]

Great video - was looking at that OWC but it wasn’t ready to ship. Probably my next drive.

[@JakeSloan]

Good choice!

[@mikej9564]

When I travel, I rarely carry a laptop or other computer. I have card readers for my R5 media with usb c. I haven’t found a simple solution to backup media to an ssd (sata or nvme) without a computer or a phone. Do you know of any such solution? Great channel, beautiful content!

[@JakeSloan]

There aren't any solutions currently, the most promising one was the gnar box but they never really developed it as far as I was hoping

[@bizpixvegas7651]

Great video Jake. Thank you for going over the options. For my SSDs I have a Sandisk V1 2TB (380-420 R/W), Also have Acasis case with fan and a WD Black 850 2TB (2,500 R/W) and most recently bought a 4TB Samsung T9 (850-900 R/W). Happy with all of them with no failures. For backup I use a removable EXOS 16TB drive and use Time Machine to do regular backups all my SSDs and my internal drive. I do need to get into a NAS type set up but that could get expensive in a hurry. What capacity is your NAS? How do you back up the NAS? Thanks.

[@JakeSloan]

I have 128tb total on my NAS. For my backup I have an off site backup for now

[@benmenashe]

Love the X9 Pro, really good value for money and awesome to pair with the iPhone 15 pro max too for the ProRes Log footage.

[@JakeSloan]

Nice!

[@BugBobsWildWorld]

Nicely done, Jake. Thank you.

[@JakeSloan]

Thanks!

[@pslaathaug]

I have been running the Asustor MVMe version for the last few months. It supports 10GB eithernet and 12 Mvme drives up to 8 GB, I think.

[@JakeSloan]

Nice!

[@ScottBalkum]

Oh man, don’t get me started on NAND flash…. :). Great video.

[@JakeSloan]

hahahahahaha

[@johnpftd]

This was very informative Jake. Thank you.

[@JakeSloan]

Glad it was helpful!

[@olabergvall3154]

Very interesting! Now, I am on a budget, so my solution for storage and editing footage is to have 2 x WD Elements 5TB drives (identical copies), because they are cheap. When editing, I use proxies. Apart from the extra transfer time to the HDD:s, and the wait time for proxies, are there any downsides to this budget friendly setup?

[@JakeSloan]

not really and it will work overall

[@stkuj]

I use a combo of T5's & T7's on my Mac. I was wondering if you've done a video on how to offload files (SD > SSD) without a computer. I'm going to Vietnam for a month. I plan on lots of photos & videos (mostly off Pocket 3). I was thinking of using a USB-C hub and my iPhone 15 to manage the file transfer from SD > SSD. Any thoughts and/or recommendations?

[@JakeSloan]

NICE, I have not and to my knowledge there really isnt a way to do that, at least not yet

[@HM6699]

what about NewQ Filehub AC750 Travel Router? have you ever tested this one? during the trip, with this one, you no longer need any laptop to backup from SD cart to SSD hard.

[@JakeSloan]

Oh I haven't tested that one but I will look into it!

[@michaelpoczynek]

Thanks, Jake. Great info. I have 3.1 and 3.2 ports, but it is also a very high-end server motherboard. Interesting. 😀

[@JakeSloan]

yeah and while many people have 3.2 1x1 ports not almost nobody has the 3.2 2x2 ports.

[@michaelpoczynek]

@@JakeSloan It was a very good point most people would never consider. It's great that you mentioned it. Have a great day, and keep up the great work as always!

[@stefanexplores]

Another valuable video, Jake! Thank you :)

[@JakeSloan]

My pleasure!

[@RonaldBrown59]

Interesting information, thanks for sharing.

[@JakeSloan]

You bet

[@pslaathaug]

"this enclosure is FAN-Tastic." lol

[@JakeSloan]

Lol