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pjbarbour_rotor
Known Participant
February 1, 2022
Question

Switching from Windows Desktop to Macbook Pro M1 Max

  • February 1, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 643 views

So, I want to throw this question out there to what others are doing. I have been using Windows Desktop machines for the last six years along with Adobe Premiere, After Effects, and many plugins (Element 3D, Red Giant, Boris FX). The advice I got in the past for setting up my system was to have multiple hard drives:

 

C Drive - which contains operating system and Adobe software

D Drive - which contains video and audio files, as well as all Premiere Pro and AE project files

E Drive - that holds all cache (media cache, cache database, etc). 

 

But that I'm switching over to using a MacBook Pro M1 Max, I'm wondering what the ideal setup is for this? I only have one 2TB internal drive in the MacBook. My plan is to have multiple external hard drives that I'd be using effectively as my D Drive per the previous example. But where should I put my cache files to optimize speed, etc? Any other advice for setting up a system using a MacBook Pro M1 Max?Thanks!

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2 replies

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Steve Griffiths
Inspiring
February 2, 2022

Depending on how large your projects are I agree with Andy.

 

I use the internal drive on my current Macbook Pro (Intel chips - not M1) and it has a 4TB internal drive which has an average read and write speed of about 2400MB/s. More than enough speed to handle pretty much anything I throw at it.

I can keep current project on the Macbook and just offload to archive drives as projects are completed.

 

However if you don't have enough room to keep projects entirely on the internal drive then fast external drives are the go.

An external SSD would be ideal (or a RAID array), keeping in mond most external SSD's don't match the speed of the M.2's in a Macbook Pro ... so I might try keeping project media on the SSD and setting your cache and preview renders to the internal. That way you can regularly empty these to maintain internal space.

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pjbarbour_rotorAuthor
Known Participant
February 9, 2022

Thank you for your reply! I have a 2TB SSD in my new MacBook Pro. So, I generally concerned that I would fill that up fair quickly with my workload. But it's sort of sounding like the way to go might be to get one fast external SSD to hold my project media that can connect via Thunderbolt to the Mac, maybe keep the cache files on the internal Mac SSD, and then buy a cheaper mechanical hard drive to archive? That also begs the question of backup. What is everyone doing these days to backup? I'm always concerned about hard drives crashing. So, I just try to have a backup copy of all hard drives. 20TB of data (going back 6-7 years) isn't really going to fit nicely into a Cloud. 

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Andy 1968
Inspiring
February 9, 2022

You can get external hard drive enclosure that can use the inexpensive internal mechanical drives. They are hot swappable allowing you to get one enclosure but install hundreds of hard drives of your choice. You can see them towards the end of the video. They are also in the thumbnail image. 

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Andy 1968
Inspiring
February 2, 2022

If the M1 has an M.2 SSD you can put everything on it. The days of recommending 3 drives is long gone. A mechanical SATA drive will redraw the thumbnails just as fast as an M.2 SSD because the CPU is the bottleneck. Don't believe me? Watch the video below for the sad truth about Adobe Premiere Pro. Thumbnail redraws are the Achilles Heel of Adobe Premiere Pro. Having said that if you want to stay organized you can put the media content and cache files on the external drives provided they are fast enough. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er928vTLQ-o

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