My order for a Batch 18 / Framework 16 has an empty main drive slot at the moment.
I’m looking to fill it with an 8TB m.2 2280 drive.
Has anyone done this and can report?
My very own, personal focus is that reliability is prime; speed should be at least average; price is an issue but I’m aware that 8TB is still unusual.
(It’s the main reason I’m finally ditching my Macs - lack of upgradeable and available storage).
There seem to be height issues, but from the threads I’ve found, it seems to be ok to get double-sided SSD for the 2280 slot, and depending on the height of the 2280-bottom-side, there may be issues using the 2230 slot.
I’m aware that I should get a drive without heat sink
I’m prepared to remove the 2230 I’ve ordered if needed, I’ll have to wait and see since none of the tech sheets for common SSDs seem to give reliable bottom side height data.
I’m also curious as to if anyone is using an 8TB drive. I didn’t even realise there exists some M.2 SSDs that support 8TB capacity! For high capacity SSDs, I usually just see enterprise drives that use U.2 rather than M.2.
I usually try to stick to SK Hynix / Solidigm or Samsung, but it looks like neither have 8TB M.2 NVMe SSDs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you want to go this route, keep in mind you likely will not be able to use a secondary 2230 drive in the framework 16 if you use a double sided NVMe 2280 drive, which for 8 tb, that is the only option you have right now.
See, that’s the good thing coming from two decades of Macintoshes - the personal base line for “bonkers” is shifted, so it doesn’t hurt quite so much
My main interest is working with a century and a half worth of family pictures, still and moving; plus some other data intensive hobbies. My working data set that I absolutely want on my primary storage is currently at about 5TB, so 8TB storage is vital.
Extending storage with external drives, their noise, power bricks, limitations on portability, and often just general flakiness has just proven to be a source of constant irritation that I just do not want.
Everything else and the backup goes to NAS.
Oh, and that is exactly the drive I have my eyes on
Another option might be a 10G thunderbolt Ethernet adapter connected to the NAS. That should make the NAS storage appear as fast as the local storage.
FW support have already told me that thunderbolt ethernet adapters should work although I don’t yet have my FW16, so cannot test.
Yet another option would be to investigate the proof of concept dual m.2 PCB that FW have published on Github. It fits in an expansion unit where the dGPU would go (so you wouldn’t be able to have one of those) and uses the PCIe ports that the dGPU would otherwise use.
Then fitting 3x4 +2TB would give you a total of 14TB, and have the OS link them all as a single logical drive.
The NAS is spinning rust and there is no real need for speed with the tens of TB there. It saturates the Gigabit Ethernet, and frankly it’s fine for that. I don’t have faster than Gigabit between floors, and the NASes are in the basement where they don’t bother anyone.
As I wrote, the 8TB needs to be internal so that it comes with the laptop when I take it with me. No cables or power cords to sort. The rat’s nest of cables is bad enough as it is.
Photo and especially video editing workloads can quickly fill up drives, especially when you want to work with uncompressed data until the final export step to achieve maximum quality. Raw uncompressed 4k 60 fps video straight from the camera can take up multiple terabytes per hour and most projects have many many hours of footage.
Personally, I have a 18 TB NAS for my data and a friend of mine carries around a whole collection of multi-terabyte external SSDs to store just the projects she’s currently working on. If you regularly need your data on the go, having all that internally sounds pretty useful.
There are two “success stories” of 8TB SSDs here: https://community.frame.work/t/nvme-fitment/46609
TL;DR: ryanpetris is running a 2TB WD Black SN770M plus an 8TB Corsair MP600 PRO XT and I am running a 2TB Western Digital SN740 (the model sold by Framework) plus an 8TB Corsair MP600 PRO NH.
