I want to get a external hard drive for doing 4k video but with all the choices for other solutions I'm finding it hard to pick between. Can I use a USB-C 3.2 ? I know my iMac says 3.1 just hang a hard time finding one that could do 4K. Any Help would be appreciated
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.6
If you are going to keep active 4K video projects on external drives – as opposed to just archiving projects once you are finished with them – I would suggest that you look at something faster than a mechanical hard drive.
Your Mac has four USB-A (USB 3.0) ports and two USB-C (Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 Gen 2) ports.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support
Your options for drives – from slowest to fastest – are, roughly:
I'm not sure, offhand, which type of SSD to recommend – but I think you definitely would want to edit your projects on SSDs, and only move them to HDDs for long-term storage.
If you are going to keep active 4K video projects on external drives – as opposed to just archiving projects once you are finished with them – I would suggest that you look at something faster than a mechanical hard drive.
Your Mac has four USB-A (USB 3.0) ports and two USB-C (Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 Gen 2) ports.
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support
Your options for drives – from slowest to fastest – are, roughly:
I'm not sure, offhand, which type of SSD to recommend – but I think you definitely would want to edit your projects on SSDs, and only move them to HDDs for long-term storage.
Something you may not realize is that
USB 3.* names follow one of the following patterns:
Up to 5 Gbps
If you see "USB 3.1" by itself or "USB 3.2" by itself, this probably means that the other numbers are "1"s (and thus the speed is the same as USB 3.0), but that the vendor doesn't want to call your attention to that fact.
Up to 10 Gbps
Up to 20 Gbps
Macs don't implement this mode, so if you connect a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 device to your Mac, things will fall back to a lower speed (USB 3.1 Gen 2 on your USB-C ports, or USB 3.0 on your USB-A ports).
Thank You . All the external ssd’s I see mostly are usb-c 3.2 trying to find a decent ubs-c 3.1 with at least 4Tb and able to handle 4K video shot on iPhone
Thank You . I feel better about pulling the trigger on my options
External hard drive recommendations for 2017 iMac 27 inch 3.8 Quad core i5
