External hard drive setup for new iMac

Hey guys,

 

I've ordered a new 2017 27" iMac (i7/512SSD/8GB RAM) which will be arriving in a few weeks - note that I have an extra 32GB RAM from crucial waiting as well

 

Since my current computer is a 2010 21.5" iMac, I have never worked on a computer with an SSD. Now, I know I'll be in for a real treat with that, but with my internal storage being reduced from 1TB to 512GB, I'm wondering what I should be doing with my project files and samples.

 

I'm a podcast editor as well as a music producer, so I tend to keep client files for at least a year. Those can probably sit on a regular hard drive until I need them, but for my everyday production and various personal music projects I like to switch between, is there an optimal setup for where they should all live where I can still make use of the SSD where it's needed? Should I look into an external SSD or will a regular 7200RPM external hard drive be fine? What options do I have? I've only ever had the single internal hard drive so this is all a bit new to me.

 

Thanks in advance guys.

Edited July 19, 2017 by rjsounds

If you're doing basic audio and not plugin heavy projects with high audio track counts, then a USB 3 7200 rpm external HD should be good enough.

 

Check out the USB 3 enclosures at www.macsales.com as well as a Toshiba 6TB HD.

 

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3UHKIT0GB/

 

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Toshiba/HDWE160XZSTA/

When I'm working on music projects I do use a lot of 3rd party synth plugins, and eventually I am wanting to buy maybe EQWL Symphonic Orchestra or Hollywood strings. I'll take a look at the USB 3 enclosures, and probably 2-3TB size will be ideal for storage. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

With regards to projects files and audio samples, and given the smaller internal 512GB SSD, where should these files be living? On the internal drive? On an external? Or should I only be keeping active project files on the internal SSD? Problem is all of my project files (and so many unfinished songs) are already over 500GB in size.

Projects should all be on external HDs.

Really? In the 7 years I've had this iMac, I've just kept everything on the internal drive and only used an external as a backup. I guess this doesn't matter since this older iMac doesn't have an SSD.

 

And forgive me for clarifying once again as I'm trying to make sense of this, even though I'm probably beating a dead horse here - so all of my project files and audio samples don't have to be on the main internal SSD hard drive? I'm just trying to figure out where the performance gains will happen with the SSD drive and why some applications should be on the internal drive versus a standard non-ssd external drive. For reference, here's a screenshot of all of my Logic files:

 

http://oi65.tinypic.com/106x6pi.jpg

 

You can see in addition to the main genre folders there are many sub folders of many songs for a given genre. And of course all of these will have copied audio files from a large collection of audio samples which contain basically anything you can think of, drums, synths, sound effects, etc. Both of these main folder groups will be fine on the same external drive if I get a large enough capacity?

 

Thanks again for any replies, and I'm sorry if my questions seem silly - I just want my new setup to perform as best as it can.

If all your projects are self-contained, meaning that everything you created is in that project folder, then you can do a Save As, include audio files at least and save it to the new drive.

Then I would trash the original project, but not empty it yet, very important.

Then I would open that project from the external HD to check if everything loads correctly.

Yes, they are all self contained. All audio files belonging to any one project are in their respected folders. That would definitely be a time consuming project for a rainy day, transferring all project files to an external drive, but probably a necessary one. Thanks for the advice and I'll update this thread if I run into any problems.

Hey triplets,

 

Just wanted to say thanks for all of your advice over the past couple of months. You helped me with my decision to go with the 4TB toshiba X300 HD and OWC enclosure. I'm happy with how the system performs so far, but I was wondering if you have any advice on how to cope with the noise. The X300 is certainly a noisy little creature which is something I didn't anticipate. I have it in the OWC enclosure which is plugged into my iMac via USB cable, so it sits just behind my iMac but boy can I ever hear that fan (or spinning?).

 

Is there any way to dampen the sound, or possibly get a longer USB cable and keep the enclosure under the desk or something? It's currently about 3ft from my head when it's on the desk.

 

Oh, and also, do you know if it's OK to eject and power off the enclosure when you're not working on it? There are times when I'm just watching a movie and I don't need access to my projects, so it's ok to turn off the power when not needing access to that drive?

 

Thanks.

Yes, get a longer USB 3 cable.

And of course you can eject and turn it off.