What speed portable hard drive?

Hello.  I'm looking for a portable hard drive that can efficiently handle photo editing on my MacBook Pro M1 with 32gb of RAM.  I've used an older LaCie Rugged for years and that thing is slow compared to the newer models.  My workflow is Capture One Pro, Photoshop and Affinity and my file sizes can get into the multi-GBs.  Speed with my old LaCie isn't great so I'm hoping the newer drives will make a massive difference.  

I really want a 4TB drive.  The SanDisk 4TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2 is 2000 MB/s read/write.  Next month SanDisk is releasing the Professional 4TB PRO-G40 SSD Thunderbolt 3, which is 3000 MB/s read and 2500 MB/s write.  The new model will be about $100 more.  In the real world, and in consideration of my workflow, do you think I'll see a meaningful difference in speed between these two drives?  

Or, is there potentially a better/faster portable (bus-powered) option I should consider?

EDIT: I also should have asked if I should expect to be able to adequately use two of these drives with one containing my Capture One Pro catalog and the other containing the photos that the catalog references?  I'm assuming that would work just fine.  I say that because I currently have my catalog on that old LaCie I mentioned and my photos are in a very old Drobo with 7200 rpm SATA drives.  I'm not the smartest with computers but I *think* both of the SanDisk drives I mentioned would actually be faster than my current setup.  Am I right?


Thanks in advance.

I suggest reading the reviews first. As many one star ratings as five star.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products ... 1-4T00-G25

Joe

I own two Sandisk Extreme Pro V2 SSDs, a 2TB and a 4TB.  Both have performed flawlessly for me and I think that the Extreme Pro V2 which is now on sale for great prices would work well for you.  Presumably the new drives with Thunderbolt will be an improvement, but I don't know how much that will be realized in actual use.  Given what you have worked with to date I think that the Extreme Pro V2 would be a clear advantage to you.  

I use these on a 14" M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of memory.  

SantaFeJoe wrote: I suggest reading the reviews first. As many one star ratings as five star.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products ... 1-4T00-G25

Joe

Yikes.  The reviews on the WD site are much worse than B&H Photo.  Thanks for the heads up.  

Mark L wrote: I own two Sandisk Extreme Pro V2 SSDs, a 2TB and a 4TB.  Both have performed flawlessly for me and I think that the Extreme Pro V2 which is now on sale for great prices would work well for you.  Presumably the new drives with Thunderbolt will be an improvement, but I don't know how much that will be realized in actual use.  Given what you have worked with to date I think that the Extreme Pro V2 would be a clear advantage to you.  

I use these on a 14" M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of memory.  

Thanks for the info.  That's reassuring to read that you have two and yours are working fine after reading some of the reviews on the WD site.  Your experience is consistent with the B&H reviews.  

I also own a number os Samsung portable SSDs and have been happy with them.  They are somewhat less expensive, but also somewhat slower versus the Sandisk Extreme Pro.  My workflow uses Adobe and Topaz software, so it is not identical to your case.

DOglesby wrote:

SantaFeJoe wrote: I suggest reading the reviews first. As many one star ratings as five star.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products ... 1-4T00-G25

Joe

Yikes.  The reviews on the WD site are much worse than B&H Photo.  Thanks for the heads up.  

As you can see in comments, there was an issue with firmware which now has been addressed with firmware update.

Andrew_5488 wrote:

DOglesby wrote:

SantaFeJoe wrote: I suggest reading the reviews first. As many one star ratings as five star.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products ... 1-4T00-G25

Joe

Yikes.  The reviews on the WD site are much worse than B&H Photo.  Thanks for the heads up.  

As you can see in comments, there was an issue with firmware which now has been addressed with firmware update.

That's a good reason to avoid the new one coming out soon. Who wants to be a guinea pig with important images.

Joe

Indeed. That crossed my mind. I ended up getting an OWC drive that had good reviews. Spent more than I wanted to but wanted to ensure reliability. What I really wanted was the latest LaCie 4TB Rugged. Super fast but also $1,000...

I have a windows laptop with a USB C port that accepts and/or is compatible with Thunderbolt. However the Thunderbolt external hard drive case that accepts SSD drives works, but not at Thunderbolt speeds. In fact it is slower than my USB 3 port. I have tried to download any needed driver, but I have given up.

If you go the Thunderbolt way, just try and make sure it "works" as expected.

Joe

I also use the Sandisk Extreme SSDs with 2000 MB/s read and write, I have both 2TB and just got a 4TB that was on sale. No problems so far.

Beware of the Sandisk's https://petapixel.com/2023/08/08/sandis ... 33NQ6K0wIs

Sandisk seems to be having a lot of problems lately. Their CFExpress cards seem to be slow as molasses as well compared to the competition:
https://photographylife.com/fastest-nikon-memory-cards

Doug, I am in the same boat as you in that I am NOT a tech wizard (AT ALL!)

I have also been looking for a smaller SSD portable drive recently so I googled "Best portable SSD Drives" and there are a bunch of reviews out there.  I generally try to choose about 5 or 6 of the reviews and see if one model is mentioned as an excellent choice in multiple different reviews.

Here are several of them:

Tech Radar Pro review

PC Magazine reviews

Tom's Hardware reviews

PetaPixel reviews

CNET reviews

Wired reviews

Wirecutter reviews

Tech Advisor reviews

I hope this helps more than it confuses the issue.

Bill