With the release of the new MacBook Pro and Mac Studio, more and more people are looking for even higher speed storage options. In this article, we explore how this has come about, what technology is now available and suggest some options for solutions for your new studio computer.

This article came about as a result of a question posed by team member Nathaniel Reichman…

“As part of the preparation for the arrival of my new Mac Studio Ultra, I began thinking about high-speed storage. One of the problems with my current Mac Pro 6,1 system is that I’m still using a combination of 3.5” spinning hard drives and small USB 3.0 SSDs. The spinners usually deliver 160MB/sec to 240MB/sec. depending on the model, and the USB SSDs top out in the 300-400MB/sec. range. For my biggest sessions, I have to spread audio and video media out across three spinning hard drives. Possible, but inconvenient and not very portable. To make this a real upgrade, I wanted the following features in a storage system:

1. Speed: at least 1000MB/sec so the session audio, Atmos audio and video could all come from one drive.

2. Size: at least 6TB single volume size (without resorting to exotic software RAID solutions that group smaller volumes together).

3. Silence: so I could use this storage in the same room as the Mac Studio and not be forced to run long cables into my basement machine room.

4. Portability: so I could take projects on the train to a destination studio, or to a hotel room with my laptop.

I am having the hardest time figuring out which external SSDs or NVMes are professional, don't throttle under heat conditions, and cost less than a zillion dollars. This is not like the old days when I could rack a bunch of SATA Seagate spinners and call it a day.”

Although Nathaniel is looking for a solution that will work well with his new Mac Studio, the growing need for high-speed storage is not restricted to just the new Studio computer from Apple, or even the other M1 Pro and M1 Max Apple computers, the developments in data interfaces in computer technology are available in many other computers, both Mac and Windows. 

Before we look at solutions, to help understand what is possible we are going to look at the technology behind these advances and how we can take advantage of them.

Not All SSDs Are Equal

We already have a broader article SSDs And Storage Drives For Your Studio - Everything You Need To Know. In that article, we cover all kinds of drives from HDDs (spinners) to SSDs (solid-state drives). However, as we explained in that article, there are SSDs and SSDs.

There are now effectively two types of SSDs. Both what we call SSDs and NVMe (non-volatile memory express) drives are solid-state drives, in that the data is stored on chips. The key difference isn’t the form factor but how they interface with your computer and it is this that gives NVMe drives their improved performance. The other factors are that NVMe drives use a lot more power than SSDs (more on that later) and they are more expensive than SSDs.

As you can see from the table above, the SATA (or Serial AT Attachment) computer bus interface that’s typically used to connect drives to the computer’s motherboard has a limit to how fast the data from a drive can be routed to the computer processors. If we want more speed and bandwidth than SATA can provide, we need to look at a different route from the drive to the processor and that is PCIe. In the context of PCIe connected drives, we will find references to NVMe and M.2 drives. Interestingly M.2 and NVMe aren’t interchangeable terms.

Are M.2 And NVMe The Same?

So far we have mentioned NVMe drives as being super-SSDs, but you may have also seen the term M.2 drives used in this context.

NVMe

NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express, and it refers to the way in which data is moved, rather than the shape of the drive (form factor). NVMe drives communicate with your computer’s processor using the PCIe interface and as we have shown this sidesteps the speed and bandwidth limitations of the SATA buss. Depending on who makes your NVMe drive you can expect to see speeds as much as five or six times faster than a SATA-based equivalent.

M.2

The M.2 form factor (also known as the Next Generation Form Factor, or NGFF) is a more modern type of internally mounted expansion card that replaces the previous mSATA (Mini-SATA) standard. Unlike standard HDDs and SSDs, M.2 drives aren’t connected to a motherboard via a cable, they’re instead plugged directly into the motherboard using a dedicated M.2 connector slot, making M2 a form factor rather than a drive format. 

Other computer peripherals like wi-fi cards can come in the M.2 format and use the dedicated M.2 connector slot, but the most common use for M.2 is SSD data storage, so you can get NVMe drives in the M2 form factor.

If you want to know more you can read this article M.2 and NVMe SSDs: What are they and how do they benefit your PC?

Does PCIe Mean I Need A Tower Computer?

With all this referencing to PCIe, you might be wondering if it means that need a tower computer with loads of PCIe slots to take advantage of NVMe drives. There is no need to worry, even though computers don’t have PCIe card slots doesn’t mean that they can’t support PCIe communication protocols. Thunderbolt can deliver PCIe buss communication over cables. This is how Pro Tools users can use Thunderbolt enclosures to house their HDX cards and simply connect the enclosure to the computer with a Thunderbolt cable which effectively routes the PCIe busses out of the computer to the enclosure.

How Does All This Relate To The New Apple Silicon Computers Like The Mac Studio?

It is our understanding that the M1 Max SoC has four Thunderbolt 4 controllers on the chip and is able to feed up to four TB4 ports. When it comes to the M1 Max powered MacBook Pro, this means that each of the three Thunderbolt 4 ports has its own controller offering a dedicated 40 Gbps per port. With the M1 Max powered Mac Studio, there are four TB4 ports using all four controllers on the M1 Max chip.

Moving onto the M1 Ultra SoC, available in the Mac Studio, being effectively two M1 Max chips put together gives 8 Thunderbolt controllers each with 40 Gbps of bandwidth feeding the six TB4 ports on the M1 Ultra powered Mac Studio. 

Thunderbolt 3 Or Thunderbolt 4?

Now you might think that Thunderbolt 4 would be better than Thunderbolt 3 and it is in some areas but strangely not in others and these differences matter especially when it comes to PCIe support over Thunderbolt because when it comes to PCIe support, which we need for NVMe drives, you need to use TB3 devices to get 4 lanes of PCIe bandwidth. 

Check out this video from Sonnet in which Robert Farnsworth, Founder and CEO of Sonnet Technologies explains why Sonnet’s high-performance Pro products use Thunderbolt 3 instead of Thunderbolt 4. He outlines the similarities and differences between TB3 and TB4. Most importantly, Robert reveals how TB3 supports PCIe across four lanes, whereas TB4 only supports one lane of PCIe. 

So yes you can have computers that have Thunderbolt 4 outputs, but when it comes to Thunderbolt peripherals, if you need access to all 4 PCIe lanes over Thunderbolt then you need to use Thunderbolt 3 peripherals to give you full access. 

More Power = More Heat

NVMe drives consume a lot more power than conventional SSDs and so produce a lot of heat and so if you are planning to use NVMe drives you will need to consider how to keep them cool, whether that is passive using heatsinks or active cooling using fans. This is especially important if you are going down the DIY route to put together your own NVMe based storage solution.

If you are looking to push performance to the limit then you are more likely to need to go for a fan-based solution because at peak performance we understand that when these drives and their onboard controllers get hot they can start to throttle performance.

When it comes to portable solutions, passive cooling is the order of the day. We recommend that you consider an M.2 drive fitted into a well-designed aluminium case with the ability to dissipate the additional heat. Think of CPUs with big heatsinks designed to dissipate the heat and help with cooling.  Also, consider whether the enclosures you are planning to use have a good thermal bond with the NVMe cards to get the heat away as effectively as possible. As a result, we recommend you steer aways from solutions that don’t have features like internal thermal pads and heatsinks.

Precious Few Dedicated Solutions For Studios

Currently it would appear that there aren’t a lot of great options out there for large external NVMe SSD solutions designed specifically for use in studios. Now that we have computers with multiple Thunderbolt controllers offering a lot more bandwidth, maybe manufacturers will start to develop NVME based storage in form factors that better suit the studio market especially in the 8TB plus range. With that in mind, let's see what is currently available and what DIY solutions we can put together to take advantage of this additional bandwidth to give us even faster storage for either portable or transportable applications.

Portable Solutions

This is one area where they are some dedicated solutions with products. In our research, we came across the following…

• Samsung Portable SSD X5 Thunderbolt 3 1TB

• Glyph Atom EV NVMe SSD

• Glyph ATOM PRO NVMe SSD

• Western Digital SanDisk Extreme Pro® Portable SSD

• OWC Thunderblade

With these portable solutions, which depend on passive cooling, remember that excessive heat will cause throttling and you won’t get the expected performance. When choosing a portable solution you need to satisfy yourself that the manufacturer has taken the appropriate steps to cool the power-hungry NVMe drives.

Back to Nathaniel’s journey. Ideally, he wanted a portable solution…

“With the advice of colleagues, I looked at the landscape of available NVMe Thunderbolt drives that don’t require PCIe slots or a PCIe chassis. Glyph Technologies makes two 8TB bus-powered NVMe drives. They’re silent, expensive and fast. 

The Atom EV model runs at 1000MB/sec. and is compatible with USB 3.0. This looked like a perfect fit because it would run on both my existing Mac Pro 6,1 and my new Mac Studio. 

Unfortunately, there’s an obscure incompatibility between this drive’s USB 3.0 implementation and the Mac Pro 6,1. Glyph’s engineers worked with me on this and came to the conclusion that it would never work properly on a Mac Pro 6,1. 

This was a big disappointment to me, especially since this drive is completely silent. For those of you who try this yourself, you’ll have to do an SMC reset on your Mac Pro 6,1 to resuscitate the USB ports, which is a big headache.”

Studio And Transportable Solutions

This is where prebuilt solutions become much rarer and we currently will need to turn to DIY solutions and build our own.

These solutions are based on the combination of a PCIe Thunderbolt enclosure with PCIe NVMe cards inside. But be aware that it would appear that not all PCIe chassis are the same when it comes to how the PCIe lanes are handled. Some split one lane across multiple cards, reducing access to the available bandwidth. You need to make sure that all of the PCIe lanes can be directed to all of the cards in the enclosure to maximise speed and bandwidth, otherwise, your investment in fast NVMe cards may be wasted.

So let's look at some specific solutions that various people have put together…

Darryl Ramm

In the External SSD/NVMe recommendations thread from the DUC Darryl shares that his current preference for a high-performance solution would be to use a “well regarded” NVMe M.2 card in your own portable enclosure. 

“And by portable enclosure I mean a PCIe slot chassis where you can install the right PCIe to M.2 adapter cards, esp. cards with PCIe switches on them to get efficient speed out of the drives. 

I'm running mostly Samsung 980 Pro M.2 drives in different external Sonnet Thunderbolt 3 expansion chassis-old Sonnet GPU chassis or an Echo Express 3 slot chassis with multiple PCIe to M.2 cards in it.”

If he was building new desktop Thunderbolt storage with M.2 drives, it won’t be dissimilar to what he already uses, but he would go for a larger Sonnet enclosure and a mix of NVMe drives. When it comes to a PCIe enclosure he suggests…

• 1 x Sonnet Echo Express SE IIIe 

• 3 x Crest M.2 adapter card 

Moving onto the NVMe drives he recommends that you pick any from the following list…

• Samsung 980 Pro 2TB (might as well get the model with heatsink)

• Western Digital Black SN850 

• 2TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus but he notes that you get a slightly lower performance from these. 

Dave Marsden

In the DUC thread, Migrating VI's from old Mac Pro to Mac Studio Ultra Dave shares that he has a Sonnet M2 4x4 PCIe card for his samples, which has a fan for cooling, and for his Pro Tools sessions he uses a single NVMe drive on a ‘dumb’ adapter card, an Aquacomputer kryoM.2 evo PCIe 3.0/4.0 x4 adapter for M.2 which can be found on Amazon. 

If he were building a system now Dave would suggest the fanless version of the Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card (Silent) “especially as the Sonnet M.2 4x4 is now fanless, not that I’ve ever heard the fan in my older version that has a fan”.  

Alternatively, if you want a complete enclosure Dave recommends the Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock “You’re maxing out NVMe performance over Thunderbolt and it’s also a lot cheaper!”

Michael Carnes 

Michael covered his chosen solution for his Mac Pro 7,1 in his article Mac Pro 2019 & Trash Can Processing Power Available Compared - Mac Pro 7,1 & Mac Pro 6,1 Go Head To Head in which he listed the Sonnet M2 4x4 PCI card with four 2TB Samsung EVO 970 M2 cards for VIs. He configured this as an 8TB RAID-0 drive, which has given him speeds of around 6575 MB/s write and 7997 MB/s read. Using a Mac Pro, Michael didn’t need a PCIe enclosure, but it does show the kind of performance you can get from this technology.

Forest Walker

Commenting on our article New Mac Studio Announced - The Machine Studios Have Been Waiting For Forest said…

“I bought two Sonnet Dual Echo NVMe Docks - one for virtual instrument samples and one for Pro Tools sessions. Seems to work quite well. They're $300 USD each and you have to populate it with NVMe's - I used Samsung 970 Evo PLus NVMe's. They are NOT cheap!!!! I'd say if you're on a budget just use the main drive and do a lot of backups just in case.”

Jamey Scott

Jamey uses the Sonnet 4x NVMe PCIe cards. He has one in his Mac Pro 7,1 with four 2TB NVMe drives and another with four 2TB NVMe drives in his transportable rig inside a Sonnet Echo III enclosure. Jamey explains more about his portable rig which has two computer systems…

“Each computer has a Sonnet Echo III chassis attached and together they are configured side by side in the DuoModo housing. 

The first chassis houses 2 HDX cards and a Sonnet Fusion Dual U.2 SSD PCIe Card with 2x 8TB SSD drives for my sound library and project data. 

The second chassis houses the Rednet PCIeR card, a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card with 4x 2TB NVMe drives and a Blackmagic Intensity 4K card.

I use a combo of Samsung 980EVOs and WD Black for everything on multiple rigs and it all just works great.”

Nathaniel Reichman

So what next for Nathaniel?

“Sacrificing silence on my list, I decided to order a Sonnet Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Dock and an OWC Aura P12 NVMe drive to put in it. The Sonnet does have a fan and a giant wall-wart power supply. But I was pleased to find out that even under load, the fan stays pretty quiet. The unit makes a faint buzzing sound that is quiet enough to have in a control room if you put it behind your computer monitor (it’s actually quieter than my ageing Mac Pro 6,1).

Compatibility is excellent. Sonnet claims that it will work with any generation of Thunderbolt (from 1-4). It mounted on both my Mac Pro 6,1 and MacBook Pro 16,1 without needing drivers. Performance has been good so far. Using AJA System Test, the Aura P12 NVMe drive can sustain long read and writes of big files at 1200-1250MB/sec. When starting a new activity, the drive will occasionally drop to 500-700MB/sec., and then a couple of minutes later, ramp up to its usual 1200MB/sec. Not sure why this is happening. Based on my reading, I would have thought that thermal throttling would have caused the opposite problem, fast reading to start with, and then slower. But even after copying 4TB of data onto the drive, it didn’t appear to be thermal throttling at all.

It’s worth noting that the Sonnet has two drive bays, and I’m currently only using one. So it’s possible that heat could be an issue if both bays were in use, but I don’t have two drives to be able to test this and find out one way or the other.

Pro Tools and SoundMiner are snappier on this drive. I am hopeful that this setup will work well as a primary work drive. Given how expensive it is compared to spinning hard drives and USB SSDs, it had better last a long time.

There are solutions from companies like OWC and Sabrent that I haven’t had a chance to test. But reviews suggested that their similar products suffered from heat-management issues and unnecessarily complex software.”

What About OWC?

You may have noticed that virtually none of the people we have featured has chosen to use an OWC product. We were surprised at this as OWC has a very good reputation for so many Mac and Storage related products.

The lack of takeup of OWC products, when it comes to NVMe storage, may be explained by some of the negative comments we came across in our research. For example, In the External SSD/NVMe recommendations thread from the DUC, when someone asked about the suitability of the OWC Express 4M2 Daryll Ramm replied saying…

“They lack a proper PCIe switch internally and split one PCIe lanes internally to each of 4 daughter cards, so you get a fraction of the performance possible in many cases… but they have a niche with in-box upgrades of Mac cards, and I *love* much of other OWC stuff.”

Also, Nathaniel above mentioned OWC, saying…

“There are solutions from companies like OWC and Sabrent that I haven’t had a chance to test. But reviews suggested that their similar products suffered from heat-management issues and unnecessarily complex software.”

So we reached out to OWC to ask them to clarify the situation regarding how they allocate the PCIe lanes. They replied saying…

“The fastest that Thunderbolt 3 or 4 will actually move data at is around 2800MB/s for data reads. This is due to the reserved bandwidth for video.

The Express 4M2 is indeed a non-switched unit that provides only one lane for each M.2 blade, so in a non-RAID environment, the 700MB/s range would be correct. In a RAID 0, 4, or 5 environments the speeds will increase, but not to the 2800MB/s range. RAID 0 should be in the 2200MB/s range for reads. The Thunderblade will approach saturation speeds as a RAID volume, but again if run as a single blade, the speed is reduced.

The reason it is set up to one PCIe lane per drive bay is because of Windows. We could update the design to use a PCIe switch, as in the Accelsior 4M2, allowing each drive to get up to four PCIe lanes of performance. The downside is that Windows does not support PCIe switches over Thunderbolt. Some PCs can; many cannot. Until you try it out on your PC, there is no real way of knowing.

The best solution for a multi-blade system is our Helios 3 paired up with the Accelsior 4M2 PCIe card. This allows full bandwidth to each blade whether it is in a RAID configuration or not. For single blade use, I would highly suggest the Envoy Pro FX or the Envoy Pro SX, these take full advantage of the available bandwidth.”

So if you want your NVMe drives to access all four PCIe lanes for maximum performance then the advice from OWC is to go for the Accelsior 4M2. It appears to have heat dissipation provision with the sizeable heatsink included on the card, designed to disperse the heat from the NVMe drives.

Back in 2020, we reviewed this PCIe card in our article OWC Accelsior 4M2 - PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD Storage Solution Tested - Load Your Sessions And Sample Libraries Even Faster James Ivey tested it on his Windows HP Z840 workstation. In his conclusion James said…

“Installing the OWC Accelsior 4M2 PCIe card into my system has given me two things. It has given me a faster working disk that is twice as fast as my current solution. Video playback within Pro Tools and my video NLE is much improved and I am now able to have over 15 channels of 4K video running at the same time from the same drive.

It has also allowed me to move nearly all my instrumental samples and libraries onto a drive format that is over 10 times faster than my current system. My orchestral template now loads in just under 60 seconds. And there I was, about to go and make another cup of tea.”

In Conclusion

With the advice and experience from people like Daryll, Jamey, Dave and Nathaniel, it looks like Sonnet have the solutions for both PCIe cards and complete enclosure solutions, although OWC appear to have some approropiate solutions. When it comes to NVMe drives Samsung and Western Digital are both very well respected.