You may also need to run the trim force command to get TRIM working on external TB drives, depending on which version of MacOS you're using. To really complicate matters some USB/Thunderbolt enclosures are really a USB drive interface with a Thunderbolt socket added. Having said that, Disk Utility's first aid function can run TRIM on a drive so maybe putting an SSD in a cheap USB3 case and once in a while swapping it into a TB enclosure and running Disk Utility on it might negate or at least minimise the effect of TRIM not being run on it all the time. A drive that's mostly written to, such as one for samples, may not notice TRIM's absence so much. How much TRIM matters is nowadays a subject of some debate, but personally I'd prefer it to be operating on any SSD especially one that has data erased from it regularly - TRIM helps the drive sort out which blocks have been deleted and without it write speeds can suffer.
One thing to watch is that TRIM commands can not currently be sent by a Mac to an SSD over a USB interface, only Thunderbolt. I do know that speed tests show my 2014/15 MBPro's 256GB internal drive has over twice the speed of my external SSDs, which seems to indicate that for sheer performance a TB3 enclosure loaded with M2 memory would take some beating.
I went for empty drive enclosures and used drives I already had from a PC with a failed motherboard, so I don't know how the lacie ones compare. Also raid 1 would give me piece of mind here.Īny advice on this matter would be most appreciated. This is extra bulk but again it's fine because I go to gigs in a car with a shed load of mobile gigging kit. To add a layer, I would be holding my iTunes library on this external hard drive and would need to take the hard drive with me for Dj'ing purposes. I would be looking to install Ableton prog and plugins on the Mac internal hd and everything else on the ext drives including projects. This would probably mean the 256gb would be enough because I run a very lean computer with just Ableton, its plugins and VDJ. However, I was wondering whether to keep it and move to an external hd configuration and perhaps get an enclosure that allows me to run raid 1 for security purposes. This is hassle and risk but not something I am unwilling to do to get where I need to be. So I was pondering whether to go through the whole hassle of selling the Mac I just bought and buy another used one. I have since bought a newer Mac which is quicker but only has a 256gb internal SSD. It worked well and had a 500gb SSD internally so it had decent space and was quick. However, to apply some context - my Mac broke last week and it's not repairable, not by me anyway. I have read that it is preferable to use ext hard drives for some elements of Ableton?