HDD or SSD?
December 2, 2023 6:26 AM Subscribe
I keep my Mac's photo libraries & music on an external drive, which I plug in whenever my laptop is sitting on my desk. My current drive, a 2 TB Seagate HDD is starting to fail (read/write errors, failing to eject) and it's probably time for a new one. Is it worth buying an SSD for this use case?
The main reason I'm considering the SSD rather than the HDD is that it seems like the Mac Photos app (which I use) is kind of persnickety about the drive format you use; APFS seems to be preferred, and I've read that APFS was designed for SSDs. The speed advantage might also help, since Photos often seems to invoke background processes (for cataloging photos and such, I assume) that last a while; maybe the faster data access times would help speed these processes along.
But it may just be the case that I'm piecing together a wholly inaccurate picture of what I should do from a set of half-understood facts that I've gathered while trying to nurse a dying drive along. So that's why I'm asking here!
(Suggestions on brands and models would be helpful as well, but the main question I'm looking for is whether the extra money for the SSD would be worth it in this case.
The main reason I'm considering the SSD rather than the HDD is that it seems like the Mac Photos app (which I use) is kind of persnickety about the drive format you use; APFS seems to be preferred, and I've read that APFS was designed for SSDs. The speed advantage might also help, since Photos often seems to invoke background processes (for cataloging photos and such, I assume) that last a while; maybe the faster data access times would help speed these processes along.
But it may just be the case that I'm piecing together a wholly inaccurate picture of what I should do from a set of half-understood facts that I've gathered while trying to nurse a dying drive along. So that's why I'm asking here!
(Suggestions on brands and models would be helpful as well, but the main question I'm looking for is whether the extra money for the SSD would be worth it in this case.
Best answer: It’ll certainly be faster, but whether you’ll notice the difference in this use case is perhaps debatable. For a boot drive it’s a huge difference, but access to your media may not be limited by IO speed.
posted by rd45 at 7:02 AM on December 2, 2023
posted by rd45 at 7:02 AM on December 2, 2023
Best answer: I must admit my first response to this was "They still sell HDDs?"
Percentage-wise the price difference between the two can look dramatic, but from a straight cost standpoint: $60 vs $120? Spend the extra $60. Get the speed, the lower power, the future proofing, the longer lifespan, and -- what the heck -- drop it occasionally.
Unless your budget is really really tight (or you want 20 TB or something) just get yourself an SSD.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:46 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Percentage-wise the price difference between the two can look dramatic, but from a straight cost standpoint: $60 vs $120? Spend the extra $60. Get the speed, the lower power, the future proofing, the longer lifespan, and -- what the heck -- drop it occasionally.
Unless your budget is really really tight (or you want 20 TB or something) just get yourself an SSD.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:46 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
Sidenote: Only HDs give you a (sometimes even acoustic) heads-up of hardware problems. SSDs will just fail. Hence, the backup . . .
posted by nostrada at 7:52 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by nostrada at 7:52 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sidenote: Only HDs give you a (sometimes even acoustic) heads-up of hardware problems. SSDs will just fail. Hence, the backup . . .
?
SSDs will tell you about the same read-write errors and any other I/O problems that an HD will. They only thing they won't tell you is if the drive head is starting to malfunction and that's because they don't have one.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:01 AM on December 2, 2023
?
SSDs will tell you about the same read-write errors and any other I/O problems that an HD will. They only thing they won't tell you is if the drive head is starting to malfunction and that's because they don't have one.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:01 AM on December 2, 2023
If you don't have a backup, buy two drives and make one. I'd probably do an SSD for daily use and an HDD for offline backup.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:54 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:54 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
In general SSDs are pretty good at warning about upcoming failure as they track how many cells are not properly writable and most SSD failures are slower and easier to predict than HD failures. In windows 10 or 11 it should pop up a window to warn you when it's becoming a problem, and you can manually check with Drive Health. I'm not sure how to check on Mac.
posted by JZig at 8:58 AM on December 2, 2023
posted by JZig at 8:58 AM on December 2, 2023
Best answer: Yeah, Apple Photos is very chatty, and a SSD will probably be noticeably snappier.
posted by credulous at 1:04 PM on December 2, 2023
posted by credulous at 1:04 PM on December 2, 2023
In the 2TB size range, an external SSD is cheap, small, and significantly faster than a HDD. Pickup a Samsung T7 or Crucial X9 and call it a good day. A 2TB drive is about $120 and 4TB is about $220 right now .
But the real question is this: how devastated would you be if the photos and music were lost due to a failure of the external drive?
If the answer is "MEH, I'd live" then get the single external drive and call it a good day.
If the answer is "I'd be devastated" then in addition to that external SSD, pay the extra to also store a copy up on some cloud storage system. iCloud+ (since you are on a Mac) is $9.99/mo for 2TB. You could also pickup a 2nd external drive and just copy stuff over. But whatever you do, don't store the backup in the same building as the original copy.
For those folks with larger storage needs, look at a Synology 923DS+ NAS with a pair of 12TB HDD in a mirror (About $1k) That would get you 10TB of usable space that can survive the loss of a disk, and the ability to easily expand it to 30TB. You can also use it as a TimeMachine backup target. Add in the Synology C2 backup option ($7/tb/mo) or Backblaze B2 to protect against fire, theft, etc.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 1:43 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
But the real question is this: how devastated would you be if the photos and music were lost due to a failure of the external drive?
If the answer is "MEH, I'd live" then get the single external drive and call it a good day.
If the answer is "I'd be devastated" then in addition to that external SSD, pay the extra to also store a copy up on some cloud storage system. iCloud+ (since you are on a Mac) is $9.99/mo for 2TB. You could also pickup a 2nd external drive and just copy stuff over. But whatever you do, don't store the backup in the same building as the original copy.
For those folks with larger storage needs, look at a Synology 923DS+ NAS with a pair of 12TB HDD in a mirror (About $1k) That would get you 10TB of usable space that can survive the loss of a disk, and the ability to easily expand it to 30TB. You can also use it as a TimeMachine backup target. Add in the Synology C2 backup option ($7/tb/mo) or Backblaze B2 to protect against fire, theft, etc.
posted by SegFaultCoreDump at 1:43 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: For what it's worth, I have a separate external drive (another Seagate 2 TB HDD) for Time Machine backups, and that one seems to be doing fine. The failing drive gets backed up there as well. So I'm not too worried about that.
posted by Johnny Assay at 3:26 PM on December 2, 2023
posted by Johnny Assay at 3:26 PM on December 2, 2023
Best answer: Using an SSD instead of an HDD is very much worth it to manage and index a library of large files (such as photos) on a Mac, even if it's 2x the cost. There will be substantial time and reliability savings, the SSD will be silent, and you generally won't have to worry if the SSD falls off your desk.
As others have mentioned, SSDs do still require backups, but it sounds like you have that covered.
I wouldn't hesitate to buy an SSD for this. There are the tangible advantages above, but also I think you'll experience a difficult to quantify sense of relief as things operate more quickly and smoothly. As long as you're comfortable with the extra $60 or so, there's literally no reason not to do it.
posted by eschatfische at 4:41 PM on December 2, 2023
As others have mentioned, SSDs do still require backups, but it sounds like you have that covered.
I wouldn't hesitate to buy an SSD for this. There are the tangible advantages above, but also I think you'll experience a difficult to quantify sense of relief as things operate more quickly and smoothly. As long as you're comfortable with the extra $60 or so, there's literally no reason not to do it.
posted by eschatfische at 4:41 PM on December 2, 2023
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But, no matter what kind of drive, make sure it's getting backed up, external drives are always a higher risk for data corruption. You can add external drives to Time Machine.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:01 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]