That's literally the best video ever showing real impact of the disk speed from the developers perspective, thx a lot!

This are the kinds of videos that I support. Thanks Alex for doing the public a service. All the best

this is gold. you answered the big question with some actual real life testing. thanks for the work man!

I’m pretty sure you can create a symlink/hardlink where the vm swap files are stored and set it to use the internal drive only. There might also be a way to change the dynamic pager config to use a specific directory (which you can set to the internal drive)

Alex, I have seen a lot of iffy videos on how to do it, but you should make a video showing us what steps you took to clone the operating system onto the the Orico Thunderbolt drive, and then how you can make that your default disk drive so that we with the 8/256 M2's setups can use the bigger drive to get more done, on Ventura.... Thanks a lot, love your stuff!

You can always set up the external SSD to be mapped as your home/user directory + apps, and let the internal drive be just for the OS and swap - then just max out the RAM to reduce swap usage.

@D-One

Жыл бұрын

How do you do that? Symlink?

@wavesequencer

Жыл бұрын

@@D-One You search on google how to do it :) - I don't think symlinks are necessary - just settings. Always backup your data first to a separate backup HD.

@D-One

Жыл бұрын

@@wavesequencer -.- It's just right-clicking on the User profile under "User & Groups" in system settings and selecting "Advanced Options". Thanks anyway.

@wavesequencer

Жыл бұрын

@@D-One Cool - glad you found it - I don't have my Mac to hand and don't currently do it that way, but I would definitely move home folder off the internal HD if I got a Mac silicon based system.

@wavesequencer

Жыл бұрын

Also... moving home, doesn't move apps.. you have to do that manually.

This is my favourite channel. Didn't have much $ and decided to buy a M2 Mac Mini. But I chose 16gb RAM instead of choosing 512GB SSD. I'll just use an external SSD for less $. Thanks for all those tests.

@bennym1956

Жыл бұрын

Buy what you can't personally upgrade !

@adredy

Жыл бұрын

stupid prices even for 8gb ram :/ crazy company

@spencerrr9878

Жыл бұрын

@@adredy Too be fair its crazy fast RAM that is also soldered with direct access to the every component in the SOC since its all built together. Memory upgrades cost the same from others like Dell and HP so tbh it doesn't matter

@dadthelad

Жыл бұрын

@@spencerrr9878 Yeah, it costs the same as Dell and HP because those companies are copying Apple's insane ripoff prices.

@DerekDavis213

Жыл бұрын

@@spencerrr9878 Dell and HP will accept a dirt-cheap SODIMM memory module, that costs just a *fraction* what Apple charges. 8gb from Apple: $200 USD 8gb from Amazon: $15 USD

I have been meaning to try this, thank you so much for sharing!

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

of course:)

Thank you Alex, this video will help to begginers or pleople with a low budget, good video like always, keep doing it please, you help all developers with your videos.

You can allocate cache drive on machines with multiple volumes so love to see you retest using internal storage for this & see what difference that makes.

@entonal

Жыл бұрын

Oh wow I did not know you can set up a different drive for the cache, that would solve the issues with external SSDs

Really appreciated the wrost case scenario mention there.

Just ordered my first mac, the new mini. Did the upgrade to 16gb since it seems like the most reasonable upgrade path with external SSD options down the road. Will be interesting to see how I do on it since I'm so used to Windows.

Great video. I did get my M2 with 512GB drive but it’s great to see that the 256GB drives don’t completely hamstring the M2. I think these machines need more RAM out of the base machine. I maxed mine out with 24GB and I added a TB4 TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD. I’m completely happy with my M2 Mac Mini.

@DanHolland1

6 ай бұрын

I'm just wondering, how the drive performs when you run the entire OS from the drive. I'm interested in understanding how this would work. How does it perform when the system uses the main drive for cache?

I’m about to upgrade from a 2020 M1 mini and was deliberating on the options. Your video has help me tremendously👍👍

SSD speed is such an overblown issue for developers. Most benchmarking done by KZreadrs are done on video editing for which yes it makes a big difference during file export, etc. But for developers, 256GB already gives excellent performance, if you have to choose, the memory upgrade will have a much bigger impact on your day-to-day life. But seriously, I’d be really surprised same developer could tell both SSDs apart without timing builds. It’s not like we are sitting around watching the prompt to complete when building 😅 Well I hope so 😂

@scbond

Жыл бұрын

But at the same time, any professional video editor, which is literally none of these reviewers or forum lurkers criticising the 256GB model, would always use an external as a scratch drive.

Excellent video 👍👌 Precise, well explained and to the point

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

Glad it was helpful!

great video. very well thought and great advice. I think this topic deserves a 2nd video. Maybe there could be potential solutions for the swap slowdown....

Note you showed to cache potential right in the first external drive test, copy was from ram and not from internal hd (otherwise it would have been at internal [read] speed despite the faster external [write] speed)

Very interesting test AND results!

Thank you so much for this video🙌🏾

WOW great testing. And nice to see a very savvy user using the terminal.. luv it. 👏👏👌👍

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

Glad you liked it

@rondeangelis7384

Жыл бұрын

@@AZisk now i gotta think too hard for either another mini or go for the studio 🤔. I’m a retired hardware/software engineer so i think I answered my dilemma… studio. Only concern i have is all the talk about no more updates and support for the studio. But updating the studio to an m2 chip really going to make huge leap for the studio? Im a drummer so using chained electronic drum modules via midi to DAWs. And always compiling for addons and my 3d printer. Studio should last for a number of years. I have 2 old minis retired. 4k retina imac, older imac and MacBook air still using but its time to upgrade 👍

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

@@rondeangelis7384 studio sounds like a bit overkill for what you’re doing, but it would last you longer, esp if you develop a video editing hobby :)

@rondeangelis7384

Жыл бұрын

@@AZisk oh god not another hobby. Learning 3d modeling for 3d printing.. thats enough for now lol But will keep thinking on configurations for mini m2. 16gig ram, external ssd maybe thats the ticket 🤔 thankx for inputs

Hey Alex, it would be interesting to see how running a windows VM off the external drive performs on your base M2? Any chance of a video testing this?

Thank you 🙏🏼

Thanks for this great video

Hi Alex, this is important. You used in this test a 970 EVO model which has only a small amount of MLC memory for the buffer. For some transfer speeds all is ok but once the buffer is full the drive becomes the poor TLC NAND which all knows what speeds can produce. Try with 970 pro or 960 pro. The 980 pro and 990 pro are no better because they abandoned the NAND architecture for cheep manufacture. Redo the tests and you will be impressed. Waiting for feedback

Fun watching!

A lot of people are only looking at the transfer speeds. The internal sad is designed for low latency with the controller on the M2. Thus it will always be faster for swap. The point is you CAN get away with the small and “slow” system drive, by using two drives. Leave the internal drive for swap, system and basic app files. Then use the external drive for all your video, builds and plugins. When doing builds, encodings of renderings always write to the external drive. That way the internal drive is dedicated to swap only at high memory load operations. That’s the magic formula :)

Alex, great video! Superb information density, presented in an organized and easy to understand manner. I immediately subscribed. Thank you.

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

Welcome aboard!

Very good vid. Informational and unique information.

Great video. Wow! Thank you. You’re the first KZreadr I’ve seen who tested this.

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

No problem!

Thank You for this information and data! Subscribed. Best Regards and Best Wishes!

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the sub!

Excellent research video, and I really liked your solution, as well as appropriate use cases at the end. How well or not well would video editing do on the external drive? Just curious if you've tried that yet.

Under any circumstances, DO NOT use macOS on external drive. You'll lose out on firmware updates for your computer (they only work when macOS is booted from internal). AND performance of Apple Silicon SSD controller is so insanely high that it'll still beat any external SSD by a large margin. Sure, it may not have the best bandwidth, but response times and random read performance is blowing everything else out of the water. So please just keep using internal storage for macOS and applications, and use external for a data that does not require extreme storage performance (like photo library, music library, etc.)

@RSV9

Жыл бұрын

Couldn't you use the internal ssd only for OS and swap and install the programs and apps on the external ssd ?

@paulf3353

Жыл бұрын

Any proof links on that? Apple Silicon SSD controller is not any faster than any other top SSD controllers.

Audio is clean. Keep it up!

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

Thanks, will do!

I use a external thunderbolt 4 drive with a 1TB crucial SSD (1900MB/s read/write) as swap and as proxy for my MacBook Pro 16" base model with 512GB internal storage, I never had issues with the swap so far but i also barely use it, at maximum 2 to 4 GB are used in the swap since the 16GB Ram are mostly enough. For demanding stuff tho, i close unnecessary apps like the browser for example especially when its full with tons of tabs.

I tried the external enclosure with a 2TB SSD as my system drive on my Mac Mini (i7 / 128GB). It turned out to be too unreliable, sometimes the speed would drop to I ended up moving the 2TB to my gaming PC and get a Samsung T7. Yes it is only 800MB/s write / 900MB/s read, but it works as system drive with no issue at all. Maybe I was just unlucky with my enclosure unit, but to me it did not work as expected.

If you like the OWC TB-4 Dock, you should check out the Mini Stack STX. 3 TB Ports, 2 USB A ports, HDMI, 1GbE networking, 3.5mm audio. NVME M.2 blade for speed and a 3.5" HDD for capacity. (disclaimer, I work for OWC)

wow. thanks man

Love this video!

Great video Alex. Can I use that drive to boot on the another mac?

I think one of the few videos that actually hep , and not only critizice the slow ssd

Thank you for this video. I really like your work and how you explain things. If I am correct in my understanding, I connect an external NVMe SSD (with Enclosure) to the MAC, reboot to recovery mode and install macOS Ventura to that SSD drive. From then on I continue to boot from the external SSD with the result that I have significantly increased Read/Write Drive Speeds. This is very interesting considering the price Apple charges to upgrade internal storage is so outrageous. I have seen others reviewers suggest the same Orico Enclosure so that's the one for me.

@corvinyt

Жыл бұрын

Don't overlook the second half of the video where Alex shows the negative impact on swap with macOS installed on external drive.

@516cal

Жыл бұрын

My M2 Mini (16/512) will be delivered next week. I want to set it up to get the most out of it as is possible. Aside from mundane Word & Excel work I do a fair bit of image editing. Nothing that should be too taxing for this machine. Is the consensus set up to leave the OS on the internal SSD and put the home directory and applications on a TB4 NVMe drive? I’m a little concerned about apps and later app updates losing track of what’s where?

Perhaps the small 256 GB Drive can be used as a cache/swap/scratch drive? Always a good option for me.

I could only afford the base model - and it’s been great for me. Really good video - thanks!

I got Orico one as well that comes with builtin fan . I does up to 3600 ~ 3800 MB with WD SN580 drive . I saw on many manufacturer's guide , they recommend WD for M series apple silicon , weird but it performs better somehow

In rare cases it does help to have even faster SSD speeds. I know it is a premium to pay, but the larger drives in the newer Mac models exceed 6,000 MB/s. When working with huge sqlite files (lots of ram and SSD swapping?) it can be noticed.

Swapping to an external SSD does not use DMA. Samsung 970evo plus has one disadvantage in that scenario when more than 80% full the 990 Pro is the only drive that nearly does not go down in access time and transfer rate due to a changed timing of TLC and a better Controller. Having the thunderbolt drive as the main work drive but not the boot drive is fine. It takes the load and is easily replaceable or upgradable when used up. The only issue with those drives is they need good cooling, otherwise, they slow down when getting hot. So don't underestimate the contact with head transfer material to metal parts in the enclosure, they have to be well established to have a stable system. I use it as the main Finalcut Work folder, Download folder and VM image folder. Those folders have been linked to the normal System on the internal SSD. Works fine and is reliable.

Danke!

How about using internal disk just as swap disk and additional stuff that you'd like to do with, and using external TB4 drive for OS and everything else? I believe the overall results would be even better than using only internal disk for everything?

When they solder everything down, I think it's over.

Great channel :)

I’ve bought almost the same enclosure branded as Acasis and achieved the same speed with Samsung 980 pro 1tb and iMac 2020. I really impressed. I’m using it as a project storage and build drive.

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

im pretty impressed with these speeds. i moved 180GB in a minute or so.

@coox4546

Жыл бұрын

@@AZisk agree. Also tested the same way with your favorite time command ))) And temperature is also good. I’ve applied the thickest thermal pad from the kit and regular temperature is in range 37-43 celsius. The highest one is 56 degrees after 15 min benchmark test.

For example, my MacBook Air M1 with 1 TB of SSD reaches 3600 MB/s write, 2797 MB/s read. Funny story is that SSD are so fast these days that it really doesn't matter. Good video!

Did you try moving the swap location back to the internal drive when running off of the external SSD?

Very helpful video. Seems like the 200 IQ move would be to just max out the RAM with the smallest SSD and then boot from a decent M.2 in a Thunderbolt enclosure. Both Apple's RAM and SSD prices are insane, but at least we can get around one of them...

@DerekDavis213

Жыл бұрын

Or, the 200 IQ guy would choose a super-fast Windows machine instead. 90% of the world prefers Windows.

Any particular reason you didn’t try with the OS on external and swap on internal? Or does macOS not let you select the swap location separately?

Would it be possible to use the internal disk for swap and run the os from external? I would imagine lower latency if that could improve its performance maybe?

Thank you for this. I think I’m going M2 MAC MINI 24GB RAM and 256SSD. More Ram simply because I want to run and experiment with virtualization. Rather go overkill with RAM with an option to use external SSD when I need it in the future.

Nice technical video. I was looking to get the M2 Pro, but maybe the M2 is enough. Nice trick with the OS on an external. I do basic, video, podcasting etc. Not a programmer. Currently my desktop is an i7 Macbook Pro 2017 16RAM & 1T SSD, 16T HDD external. The savings with the M2 I could get more RAM and the needed bluetooth keyboard & track pad.

@ZhuJo99

Жыл бұрын

Problem is not external drive itself that much. Problem in Alex case was huge, abnormal swap which depleted SLC cache on the 970 Evo. With 16 GB of RAM, 980 Pro (which doesn’t drop performance as 970 Evo when cache is full) you shouldn’t have any problems at all.

Are you using a proper thunderbolt 4 cable? The one apple has vs some other brand that may not be full speed?

Can we use external drive as boot and internal as swap, i think that will produce the best results

Hi Alex, great video, what kind of card reader do you use or recommend. anything higher 100 mb/s ?

I think I read somewhere that in the mac mini, Apple limits the speed of external ssds on purpose, so using more expensive ssds doesn't make sense. Does anyone know anything about it?

Great video! Observation: I copied your Mac Mini setup to the letter including using a Samsung NVMe in the Orico enclosure as my boot drive on the Mini 256/16. To my surprise, the Orico enclosure gets very hot during even minimum use. Since it is my boot drive the heat makes me very nervous. Is this something you’ve run into? How much should I worry? Regards

Very nice and interesting video. Good job Alex! Planning to buy my first apple device this year, and it would be a Mac mini m2 (16gb/256gb). My use case is mainly everyday tasks, doing school projects (studying business IT) and in my free time I started to learn pentest, so I have to use Linux. @Alex: Would it be fine to use the above mentioned Mac mini with Linux in parallels VM? Right now I have a windows machine and I either use windows or VM, so this would be the same thing with Mac.

Hi love your channel, what if 2 external drives are plug into both the 2 thunderbolt outlets, one is use for mac os and the other is used to store files that are being use by different programmes, will the system handle better?

Hey, Alex plug your magsafe in you macbook pro and try moving the top of you hand through the macbook. Do you fell any thingling sensetion?

Great video, but I didn't understand why thunderbolt 4 doesnt allow you to get higher read write speeds, given that it has a 40GBps bandwidth.

this is how i run my m1 mini 16 ram with 256 ssd. i added a acasis tb4 enclosure with a nvme ssd running system off it for 2 years now. i only boot from onboard drive to update it.

Possible to use internal for swap but external for storage?

Can you make a video on how to install macOS on a SSD?

I wonder if there is any way to have the external as the main drive but the internal for swap.

Let's do it! Mac mini it's a kind of portable mini computer? Or a computer for small offices?

So my takeaway from this as a retail non-power user is get the base model with an external 1Tb NVME at 10% the cost of the apple upgrade, to boot from and I’m good. Thanks for your excellent video. I’ve been looking for exactly this. 👍

@toddahall

Жыл бұрын

I think this was unclear in the video....1TB drive ($400) added to base machine ($600) is $1000. Buying external 40gbps enclosure and 1TB NVME would be about $200 so this is 50% of the cost of the Apple upgrade. 2TB NVMe would be $150-$200 that that would be a much bigger saving over the $800 Apple charges for 2TB.

In this base mode, is there tons of space, so NVM disk, 4-6 can even handle :)

Could I still use the internal drive if I do this?

I have the M1 Max with 4TB and I'm getting those speeds (same as your 1TB M2 Pro/Max) - I wonder if the 4 or 8TB M2 Pros are even faster?

Same issue with swap was on the intel Mac mini, max amount of swap was double the ram installed. But if work from internal drive 16gb model can use 40gb of swap without any issues. And don’t forget that system uses almost 5gb ram

@njpme

Жыл бұрын

What the hell are u doing to make 40GB swap?

@ivanshevy

Жыл бұрын

@@njpme I’ve seen 58gb swap, and mostly it was lots of tabs in Firefox and Safari, Xcode,and music in the background )) maybe some memory leaks?

@njpme

Жыл бұрын

@@ivanshevy most likely memory leaks

Wow! It's great!

Who doesn't love this guy? I had one of my m.2's burn out from using an enclosure. I was using . MyDigitalSSD M2X Portable USB 3.1 Gen 2.

Can you set up a swap file on the external drive? Also, the Seagate Ironwolf 525 nmve ssd can support up to 70% of it's entire contents to be rewritten everyday for 5yr, and still be within warranty

Not a developer but I appreciate you giving us this information

What would be the probable reason why the swapping is slow on the external SSD compared to the internal SSD?

@skyemac8

Жыл бұрын

By design. They want you to upgrade everything ordering at a huge cost.

I have 2 of the OWC 4M2 Express enclosures and I love them. I also love my 2 Acasis enclosures. The latter get 2800 r/w with Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB and Samsung 980 PRO 2 TB. The former get 2500 r/w with Samsung 980 PRO 2 TB X 4 and 1900 read and 2300 write with Crucial P3 Plus 4 TB X 4. I should have gotten the less expensive SSDs like you did given the Thunderbolt 4 limitation of 2800! I am hooked on SSDs! My Mac Studio Ultra with 1 TB SSD gets 5700 r/w

@donross7820

Жыл бұрын

And thanks for a wonderfully didactic video!

Hi Alex, Is it possible to use the external SSD as boot; and use the internal SSD for SWAP!? Can you see the internal SSD while booted from external SSD?

So if I install macOS and apps on the external drive and boot from it, could I do video editing or make music? Since everything is soldered on new macs, this might prolong mac's lifespan possibly?

I suspect that the reason the external SSD slowed was that it was not running in parallel. The 1TB in the Mac Mini M2 has 4X256GB NAND modules, meaning 4X the faster cache in each module. Whereas the 1TB external drive will face the same issues as the one NAND 256GB drive, the bandwidth will be up to 4X less. What Max Tech got wrong was that swap speed is based on random read and write, not sequential speeds. Few of us need more than 3.2Gbps, as random reads and writes top out at around 800Mbps. So it was the fact that 1TB has 4 NAND drives rather than the 1 in the 256GB hence slowdowns in swap happens quicker on the smaller SSD. So, if running from an external system with 8GB of RAM, you would need multiple SSDs running in parallel. The clear moral of the story as I commented many times on Max Tech videos, is that using 8GB and lots of swap is inefficient. Buy what RAM you need, so 16GB minimum for semi-pro work, but the more the merrier. RAM is so much faster than swap, that it is inconceivable that if you want best performance, that you would cheap out when you know that 8GB will mean high swap usage.

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

thanks! great info!

@beelzzebub

Жыл бұрын

I'm confused though - whilst I agree a single 1TB non-parallel drive would be less efficient that a x4 internal parallel 1TB drive - this video shows that a non-parallel 1TB external drive was being massively outperformed in SWAP efficiency by the internal 256GB non-parallel drive. So in this case, the issue cant have anything to do with parallels, as Alex's memory pressure and SWAP usage was considerably better on the smaller, slower, still non-parallel drive. I'm confused as to what actually caused the SWAP slowdowns and memory pressure on the external drive?

@ZhuJo99

Жыл бұрын

@@beelzzebub I think problem lies in SLC cache of these SSDs. In reality, on Samsung 970 Evo it's SLC cache is only 6 GB - and this is where Alex saw drastical drop in performance. No, so called “intelligent Turbowrite“ isn't going to help. That and probably coupled with the enclosure - maybe overheating caused this too?

Sounds simple and the savings are off the scale. Base M2 with 16gb ram. fab and the savings are £400

CreE a program that uses the internal SSD for swap while using the external for os and everything else.

Great video Alex. I was wondering if the swap issue would also happen, even with the internal drive? Could you compare? Thanks!

@lovemakerbgo5394

Жыл бұрын

+1 my first thought

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

Ran the same tests on internal, didn't see the same problems.

@paulf3353

Жыл бұрын

@@AZisk Can you benchmark your internal and external SSDs for random Reads/writes on different QDs and compare, maybe that's the reason why external is slower. 970 evo is fast on sequential, but not particularly fast on random

What about swapping? Especially the models that have lower storage are usually coupled with 8GB of RAM for example. In that case you might be swapping a lot (which Mac OS is pretty good at). Wouldn't that be strongly impacted?

@OShackHennessy

Жыл бұрын

Yes you’ll be swapping a lot. They really dropped the ball on the base model. I wouldn’t touch anything with less than 16GB memory. Yes 8 will work but now you’re pressuring a garbage SSD. Oh and don’t forget you can’t replace any of it yourself when it fails! My wife’s M1 mini routinely uses over 8GB ram for basic office work tasks. I made her get the 16GB ram and 1TB SSD for the princely sum Apple charges though because I didn’t want to buy again in 18 months.

Can we use the internal storage as swap and external as home or main os? Like linux swap can be pointed to a different directory?

Hi Alex, will WD_Black™ SN850X 1tb work properly with M2 Pro Mac Mini ? or better to get samsung nvme for enclosure use? also did you get any problem while transferring file from internal to external vise versa , any connection problem, Thank you

If you run your MacOS from your external drive, is the internal ssd used at all? I imagine is external drive is now the system drive, memory swap will also happen there instead of the internal ssd.

Great video, just techy enough to understand for a non-developer. I’m thinking about getting the Mac Mini base model and only upgrading the RAM to 16gb. $200 to upgrade the storage from 256 to 512 is absolute highway robbery (friggin greedy Apple😠). I do mostly video editing, audio, and color using Premiere Pro, Resolve, Pro Tools, and sometimes After Effects and Photoshop. Would doing the OS to the SSD swap be ok for someone like me? The slowdown he encountered seemed to be from from heavy web-development type stuff, which I don’t think I would encounter doing what I do. Does this seem right?

Wow. Interesting finds señor. 🤔 🧐

@AZisk

Жыл бұрын

I know, right?

@pqsk

Жыл бұрын

@@AZisk I'm always amazed by how things work. When I was a kid I loved to disassemble things (especially reading the MS Basic code) so my mom bought me a book called *The Way Things Work* to this day I watch all sorts of videos and read books about just stuff. It's so fascinating. I guess I was born an engineer 😆

Hey Alex ...how about the issue with installing software and the drive not giving you the option to "ALLOW" the extension to be installed?..like Universal Audio Apollo Software on macOS Ventura any suggestions?

I still use my MacBook Pro 13” Mid 2010 4 GB RAM, It does what I need and I go heavy on the RAM when only using it. Never had a crash always giving me what I want. Mac OS is all about quality and longevity.. Cant wait to customize my Mac Mini Soon

Isn’t the thunderbolt 4 the fastest speeds we currently have? Shouldn’t it be able to handle the faster SSD’s?

I don't even do coding but I still come here to pick up bits and bobs of tips for other usages. I for example have a mactudio with three, 2tb Thunderbolt enclosures in a RAID 0 because, well, I can! But mostly because as a video person I am regularly copying files and my internal is only 512 so I thought this way I get an extra 6tb of storage running at just over 5000 and do my editing, caching,assets etc on the external but have the progg and things like titles and transitions on the internal that way I don't use the internal much, will hopefully extend its life cycle and have the 6tb of storage for £750 not the mad amount that apple charge and of course I can expand it to 12Tb or just swap out the drives. But look at that, Apple have me thinking that £750 is a good deal when I have 2, 4tb WD duo RAIDs for storage and backup that only cost me £65 each refurbished from WD. THey are Red drives so pretty slow, but in my head, £750 is a great deal, which it might be by comparison!! Anyway, love your content, enjoy your delivery. Top work.