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Managing Multiple External SSD’s - hopefully as 1 Drive.

I currently have 6 external 1TB SSD’s on my iMac. My current plan is to use 3 of the 1TB as data storage for photographs (I designate these as IMAGE VAULT 1, 2, 3, etc) . Three identical SSD’s are back-up copies to those designated BACKUP 1, 2, 3, etc).


Each SSD is filled by date. So as one is filled, another is added. I will rarely need access to older hard drives, but the images on them will be cataloged in my Master Lightroom Catalog. LR needs access to all IMAGE VAULTs.


A 500GB SSD will be used as a scratch disc


Right now, when I boot the iMac, the internal drive, plus 7 external SSD’s mount on the desktop. I don’t need to see the back-up SSD’s unless I need to restore a file from it. And I don’t need to see the scratch disk, but Painter, Photoshop, and Lightroom need access to it. There must be a better way of managing all these without populating the desktop with them. I have had RAID systems in the past, but I would prefer an option through the OS X rather than a third party controller.


Is there a way to have these appear as a single drive on the desktop? Or is there a way to better manage so many SSD’s? As future needs arise, I plan on adding other SSD’s — and probably larger capacities as they becomes less expensive.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Aug 23, 2020 9:14 AM

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Posted on Aug 31, 2020 8:27 AM

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/create-a-disk-set-dskua23150fd/mac

explains RAID setups.

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2 replies

Aug 31, 2020 8:41 AM in response to hgporter

What's your primary goal here?


Is it to create a RAID system using the drives so that you have a single location for all your data, rather than multiple drives?


Or is it to get the drives off your desktop?


If the latter, just go Finder -> Preferences - General and turn off the option to show External Drives.


Now the drives will be connected, but not displayed on the desktop (they will, however, still appear in Open/Save dialogs).


If you want to go the RAID route, you can do that via Disk Utility.app - create a RAID set using multiple external drives. Bear in mind that this will erase the drives so make sure you have your backup handy.

Managing Multiple External SSD’s - hopefully as 1 Drive.

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