Internal Vs External SSD - New best Practice For FCP ?

I am an editor with 17 years of experience.

I have always edited off external SSDs (and use cheap spinning discs for back ups / archives)
Currently I am editing off Samsung T5s and T7s on my 2019 specced up i9 imac (its still working really well)

I am just about to get a Mac studio machine.

Did people start editing off the internal SSDs while I wasn't looking? The speed is insane (7.4 Gb/s) off these and an internal 2tb SSD option on the machine is within budget.

Or

Should i stay old school and get the 512GB SSD machine and keep using external SSDs?

it is rare for my edit projects to be over 350 GB - more like 150- 200 gb - and i am often working on 3 projects at once.

Has the game changed? And would i be missing performance by NOT going with the more expensive internal option

I just moved from a Hackintosh to a Mac Studio (w/ M1 Max 10C 32C 1TB)

My main issue has been that the Mac Studio seemed iffy when working with external drives, got quite a lot of spinning beachballs etc.
And measuring the drive speed using Blackmagic Speed Test, the same drives were 100mb/s slower (400 instead of 500mb/s) on the Mac Studio than on the Hackintosh!

Then I discovered that if the drives are connected via the usb-c ports on the front or even via the usb-c ports on the Studio Display they are just as fast as on the Hackintosh. So apparently the Thunderbolt4/USB4 ports on the back are somehow slower using USB3.2 drives for some reason!

Second discovery was that it was most likely the new 2-drive enclosure that somehow was a bit unresponsive (it kinda needed time to wake up like old HDDs need), when I moved my editing drive (Samsung EVO 860) back to my previous enclosure it seemed to solve everything!
And I can now play back 11 streams of mixed FX9, FX6 and A7SIII 4K footage in the angle viewer from the drive! 

This was a very long way to say that I think you'll be absolutely fine using an external T7 drive. But be aware that the speed of the drive might vary depending on which port you plug it into! And if you get the M1 Ultra there are no usb-c ports so maybe all ports on that machine are limited, but as I don't have one I can't verify that)

I am on a 16 in Macbook M1 MAX 1TB 64 GB.  For processing FCP files, I assembled a Samsung 980 PRO in an Acassis enclosure. Some speed comparisons:
HDD - better ones like WD Black up to 140 MB/s
SSD - Samsung T7 - 1050 MB/s
SSD Samsung T5 - 500 MB/s
SSD Samsung 980 pro in Acassis enclosure 2700 to 2800 MB/s - with Thunderbolt 3 USB C connection you can get 40 Gbps and those cables cost $20-30
MBP Max M1 - internal can go up to 7000 Mb/s
Processing 8K Raw from R5 has been smooth on the 980 PRO, no proxies needed, and ProRes exports just take a few minutes.

I think FCP really likes SSD's.
Best speed is with the Apple built in once.
Next best speed is with SSD's connected via Thunderbolt 3 or 4 (same speed I think)
Next in line are SSD's via USB3

As you can't upgrade after you bought the Mac Studio I would put in as much SSD as you can afford. You can still of course also use your existing SSD's. Down the track you can expand storage requirements with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 SSD's and they will get cheaper over time.

Thanks for the advice - my concern is that raw internal SSD speeds are nice to see and in THEORY work well


BUT


the ssd is also operating the system and simultaneously writing and reading for other processes that are happening in the background - and maybe working the internal SSD so hard with constant video reads and writes isn't a great idea? 


So is it still a good idea to edit off the internal drive at all? My gut still tells me no!

Certainly the historical best practice is not to use internal -but people are seduced by the speed.  2800 Mb/s external ssds perhaps look like the best middle ground - but it would be interesting to hear from an experienced pro who knows. 

Am not a pro user although I have been producing my YouTube videos for the nine years. Have a 2013 MBP with 1 TB SSD and always put all the FCP files on the internal drive. Current project is around 650 GB leaving me with about 200 GB free on the internal SSD. The balance is programs, files, system, etc. I occasionally open other programs as need while running FCP and close them when I am done with them. Have had no problems and plan to use the same process on the Mac Studio when it arrives.

I appreciate all the info on SSDs.

I think the old rule about not using the internal drive for media only applies when running of slow spinning disks. With current speeds of internal or Thunderbolt 3 SSD's I don't think you'll ever notice a difference.

Thank you everyone for your feedback  and input.

I am going to go for the basic first upgrade to  a 1 TB internal SSD - which will have around 300 GB of system files on it  - and I will lean in to the remaining 500 gb for small to medium projects (keeping the never go beyond 80% full rule) and keep using my current  T7s (1000mb/s )

and look into getting some fast external SSD Samsung evo 980 etc  pcie / nvma enclosed externals (for up to 3000mb/s )  as well. 

I am looking forward to some speed gains on the Studio M1 max.  

The rules have changed with the new ultra efficient and fast Apple CPUs and internal SSD. I now edit exclusively on the 4TB internal SSD of a MacBook Pro M1 Max to take advantage of the speed. I import footage to an external RAID NAS, which is no slouch at 900-1000 BM/s, then copy the footage to the internal SSD for editing as needed. When I am done with the footage, I delete it to make room for more footage from the NAS.

Thanks for that- how was the speed boost coming from an external SSD workflow to an internal one? in terms of perfomance that you notice on the edit timeline / renders etc

To be clear, I am not using an external SSD. Not practical as I need the highest capacity and speed. I am using a 10G NAS RAID achieving 900-1000 MB/s read and write. Compare this to the 5000-7000 MB/s read write of the internal SSD of the MBP M1 Max.

Editing with media on the internal SDD provides noticeable improvement in UI and timeline responsiveness. Switching workspaces, resizing the timeline, toggling audio waveforms and clip view, etc., all definitely snappier. Timeline scrubbing is much smoother, almost no, if any, frame skipping, even scrubbing very fast. The SSD performs these tasks silently, without the clicking noise of HDDs reading and writing data.

Apple has created a true mobile editing workstation in the MBP M1. I no longer need to haul around an external storage device and tether it to my MBP to edit remotely or on the go. I load up the internal SDD with media and I am good to go.

Reflex Films wrote:

Thanks for that- how was the speed boost coming from an external SSD workflow to an internal one? in terms of perfomance that you notice on the edit timeline / renders etc

Having been researching drive options to back up my sabrent rocket, and then it's back up crucial ssd drives... I've come to realise that these speed tests DO NOT tell the real story for us final cut editors.

There are a bunch of real world tests on YT now showing that as long as the SSD can handle around 500 each way... it doesn't matter how fast your external SSD is... the renders, exports and playback results are almost identical.

It's all down to the CPU and GPU.

I was going to buy the acasis and 980 pro but now I figure I can save half the cost and get something that will be equally as fast for editing and not a whole deal slower for copying files *in the real world of letting it run and grabbing a coffee from the kitchen/ snack etc.