Out with the old laptop

[TimMc]

Needed to replace my travel laptop ( with great hope we will be travel this year) and discovered my iPad Pro will load files from a SD or an XQD card and either (or both) load the photos to Lightroom on the iPad and/or to a SSD that then can store the trip photos and drop them on to my computer . The iPad is a much nicer travel companion.

Only accessory I needed to buy was a $24 multi port hub . Acodot from Amazon was up and running in minutes.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Tim, how interesting! That sounds like a great alternative. Can post the link to Amazon for the accessory?

 

[TimMc]

Hopefully this works

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HQW98TH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[TimMc]

The other discovery in this search was how well SnapBridge works. Just ignore the bluetooth connection and use the wifi option. At least on a Z7 and a Z50 the transfer is easy and fast. Transferring raw was no problem.

 

[sweetgrass]

This thread is perfect timing, as I just pulled the trigger on a new 13" MBP. Been having issues with my 9 year old enthusiast built Win10 Workstation, and today was the turning point! So I decide to go back to the MAc Eco System. Would this work as a docking station? I am leaning towards this solution: https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Thund...935-20&ascsubtag=01nBQAl0fYAnWcUtJl90Wqt&th=1. Its a bit more on the spendy side but I've used Belkin with great success for many years.

 

[AlanLichty]

This thread is perfect timing, as I just pulled the trigger on a new 13" MBP. Been having issues with my 9 year old enthusiast built Win10 Workstation, and today was the turning point! So I decide to go back to the MAc Eco System. Would this work as a docking station? I am leaning towards this solution: https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Thund...935-20&ascsubtag=01nBQAl0fYAnWcUtJl90Wqt&th=1. Its a bit more on the spendy side but I've used Belkin with great success for many years.

Yes it will work fine as a docking station. I have been running a similar Thunderbolt 3 dock made by OWC for the last 4 years now with my 2016 15" MBP. I have been running a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 environment for my external drive array, gigabit ethernet, audio link, and a 4K monitor through the Thunderbolt 3 hub.

 

[sweetgrass]

Yes it will work fine as a docking station. I have been running a similar Thunderbolt 3 dock made by OWC for the last 4 years now with my 2016 15" MBP. I have been running a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 environment for my external drive array, gigabit ethernet, audio link, and a 4K monitor through the Thunderbolt 3 hub.

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup, what are you using for external drive array?

 

[AlanLichty]

Sounds like a pretty sweet setup, what are you using for external drive array?

OWC Thunderbay 4 - I have 1 x 4TB, 2 x 3TB, and 1 x 2TB drives in it at the moment. I am running them as JBOD the 4TB and 1 3TB drive for my images (one primary drive and one backup) and the other 2 drives acting as repositories for other content. I run a backup program from Bombich software that clones each of the primary drives onto their respective backup volumes. There is one volume in the array that is a bootable clone of the internal SSD system drive.

 

[sweetgrass]

OWC Thunderbay 4 - I have 1 x 4TB, 2 x 3TB, and 1 x 2TB drives in it at the moment. I am running them as JBOD the 4TB and 1 3TB drive for my images (one primary drive and one backup) and the other 2 drives acting as repositories for other content. I run a backup program from Bombich software that clones each of the primary drives onto their respective backup volumes. There is one volume in the array that is a bootable clone of the internal SSD system drive.

Very cool! I tried to look at the Soft RAID XT user guide but got a 404. How do you go about configuring RAID? Have you ever had to contact support?

 

[AlanLichty]

Very cool! I tried to look at the Soft RAID XT user guide but got a 404. How do you go about configuring RAID? Have you ever had to contact support?

I don't use RAID at all. Before retiring I spent 37 years working IT in systems and network administration. I have no recollection of how many disk drive failures I have seen through those years but the given is that they will all die and the only question is when.

If you have ever had to recover from major system outages due to RAID controller failures (I have had to do this on more than a handful of occasions) you would run the other way too. I run my disks as standalone drives that are cloned every night on a schedule so that during the day when I am using the computer there are no system tasks that could corrupt the backup volume while I am handling files from the primary drives. Mirrored drives that update in real time can leave you open to such a failure and I have seen corrupted mirrored drives.

If you need faster speeds than you can get from a standalone SATA drive you should strongly consider SSDs instead of spinning disks. When I built my current configuration SSDs were still on the expensive side for TB+ sized drives but the prices are waaaay down from where they were in 2016. SSDs in an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure will match the speed of a motherboard mounted SSD and RAID won't make this run any faster.

My basic rule is keep it simple. You will thank yourself when (not if) you have to recover from from hardware failures.

 

[sweetgrass]

All good points Alan, and you and I share a very similar IT background. I've been working system/network admin and engineering for 20+ years. Currently I support an enterprise level NetApp storage solution with over 2.5PB of data as well as support a FS security auditing solution. Although the environment has gotten better we still experience drive failures in a RAID 10 config. But we are talking many disk shelves in an 8 node cluster, so lots of spinning disks.
I was just curious as to how you interface with the enclosure and why I brought up RAID as it looked like it may have NAS capabilities? Right now I just copy over multiple disks kinda like you do. I really dont need the complexity, I just like to know how things work. SSD has gotten much cheaper and right now I am running SSD for my OS drive and an additional SSD along with a few spinning disks. Plan is to continue running the Win10 boxen as a network file server

 

[AlanLichty]

I do have the ability to run various flavors of RAID with my enclosure but I configured things for JBOD and run them as independent drives. The enclosure has it's own USB-C port on my laptop and the OWC thunderbolt dock has another. The OWC enclosure includes a gigabit ethernet port which I have connected to my house network as my laptop link.

I built this setup in 2016 so the current generation of thunderbolt enclosures have a lot more options now including NAS. Both my enclosure and the thunderbolt dock weren't into production yet when I got on the waiting list to buy them. OWC was one of the first companies to market for externals after Apple introduced the 2016 15" MBP with only USB-C/Thunderbolt ports so I had pretty limited choices.

 

[sweetgrass]

Cool, thanks for the info Alan! I just ordered the OWC dock and a new Dell Ultra Sharp 43" monitor.