CSchell

Thank you for your reply, Brian. I totally get your point about connecting via Thunderbolt vs any USB. I will not be connecting any external hard drive that I am working on via USB. To clarify my specific question: I am in the middle of a system upgrade. In my current system I work on a MacBook and do my photo work on a half-full 3 TB Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive that is basically connected via USB. It is really lagging now for obvious reasons. I am just trying to do this right this time (with the issue of the limited 512 GB internal drive on my new iMac)- "right" being creating a system that is quick. I recently purchased a 2020 27" iMac and it only has a 512 GB drive- not the optimal size according to what I've read in posts here. My question: would a 1TB External Thunderbolt SSD work well as a substitution for an 1TB internal HD for doing photo work? I am talking about a drive like this: https://a.co/d/cEvzciu or this https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-fx It looks like these drives read/write at nearly 9-11X the 230 MB/s speed of the Enterprise HDD G-Drive (if I am reading things correctly). I haven't even experienced 230 MB/s or 2000 MB/s, so I have no idea what that means in practical terms, but it seems like you are saying if you could get an SSD drive that connects via Thunderbolt that would indeed be the fastest. Additionally, about portability: I do see having to do editing away from home with my MacBook, so it looks like that is a double advantage to doing my work at home on an External SSD Thunderbolt- I can take my current work with me easily. I will however be getting the 12 TB G Drive HDD to keep my other files, backup the SSD, and archive my photos. It seems like I should get a second one to do a clone backup as well. Please let me know if my reasoning is ok and/or whether any of this is crazy. Thank you! Regards, Chris

Hi Brian, Brand new to this forum, and I really appreciate your direct and informative adviceI. I just purchased a 2020 27” iMac and extra RAM cards to bump it up to 128. The problem is I didn’t have a choice with this deal that it came with only a 512 GB SSD. I’ve been reading through the posts and reading reviews, etc., and it seems if I get a 2TB Thunderbolt SSD G drive, this would work faster as an external drive to work on than the Thunderbolt G Drive that is HDD, or is that an incorrect conclusion? I like the idea the SSD is bus powered and thus more portable for trips with my MacBook and that it appears to be faster. Second follow-up question: how would the speed of the external Thunderbolt SSD compare to using an internal SSD? 3rd follow-up: is bus-powered bad? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated! Thank you. -Chris