[Matthew Michael]

Hi Neil,

Thank you so much for the reply! You know, I’ve been in the business for 20 years and I honestly never did research on hard drives until now. Maybe because SSD’s weren’t a thing a little as 10 years ago and I just bought the best hard drives for editing at the time (Thunderbolt) and the WD MyBook Duo’s. I guess I got lucky back then!

I’m doing my homework this time around, learning about the pros and cons of all the different options out there.

Now the market is blowing up with SSD’s and the speed is so attractive. But the price, not so much. Doing more research the past day or so, I’ve even become more enamored by OWC’s ThunderBlade drives (https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-thunderblade). They simply look like the best of the best available… and for a 32TB drive, it can be had for $6500. All my eggs would be in one basket though with something like that… not very keen on it in that regard. Two 16TB units would be better… but then we’re talking 8k… ugh.

Just so much money! At the same time, probably a good investment considering my scratch drives are at the heart of my business.

Not sure I’m ready to pull the trigger on them yet though… I’d image in a couple years they’ll be half the price (or even better options available).

Your sentiments about the LaCie is reassuring. I guess if the noise was an issue, I could opt for four 8GB drives instead of two 16’s. But the cost of the 16 is just too good to be true , $650 vs. $450 for the 8TB model. You get twice the storage for just a couple hundred more.

I think I can live with the noise of the 16, for sure.

Worse case, I stick with these 16TB Lacie’s for a couple years, then, hopefully, something like the ThunderlBlade comes down in price to where it makes sense to finally jump into large capacity SSD externals. I could then use the Lacie’s as archives and not scratch disks.

In my line of work, portability is everything. We film over 100 wedding and events each year, with many of the events taking me all over the country. I’m at a conference right now, cameras rolling, while I sit here and edit some weddings from the Lacie 16GB. Very impressed with it’s performance. No lag, at all… very smooth editing. The plug and powerbrick is a bit awkward and cumbersome, but I can also deal with that given how well this drive performs.

Thank you, again, for your insight. I certainly appreciate it! Your comments reassure I’ve likely made the right choice in new HDD drives.

Cheers,

-Matt