External SSD benchmarks

[dimme]

I have a late 2015 5K iMac 24 GB ram i5 3.3 Ghz, 2 TB fusion drive which is filling up. I needed two more drives for different setup of OS X and one for VMdisks. Here are some benchmarks.

samsung 500GB - 850 EVO in a seagate go flex TB case. Black Magic Speed Test reports
340 write 386 read

samsung 500GB - 850 EVO in a Inateck FE2010 case. connected directly to the iMac. Black Magic Speed Test reports
415 write 427 read

samsung 500GB - 850 EVO in a Inateck FE2010 case. connected to cal digit TB docks usb 3 port. Black Magic Speed Test reports
327 write 489 read

I surprised the segate is not faster, but it is fine for my needs. I was hoping thunderbolt would be a good better as with my backup drives I am out of usb ports.

 

[hfg]

The Seagate GoFlex (and BackupPlus) TB sled is a nice interface, but it is optimized for hard disk use as that is all that Seagate made for the GoFlex system. They never released a SSD module for that system, so although they are very convenient, they are not the fastest TB interfaces you can get for SSD use.

You can neaten up your installation by checking eBay for the companion empty drive shells to mount your SSD in while attached to the GoFlex interface. They have an internal magnetic grip with the interface sled to maintain a solid physical connection.

Don't be too concerned with the Black Magic Speed Test as it is designed for video storage testing and doesn't actually show the "user experience" with smaller random file access found in normal usage. I have used both TB and USB 3.0 external SSDs and hard disks and find that, for my usage, the Thunderbolt interfaces were more stable and trouble free with no disconnects, trim support for SSDs, and no drive unmount failures on system sleep.

I have used the Inateck FE2002 and FE2006 with backup / clone hard disks with satisfactory results as well.

 

[Fishrrman]

dimme wrote:
"I surprised the segate is not faster, but it is fine for my needs. I was hoping thunderbolt would be a good better as with my backup drives I am out of usb ports."

So are a lot of other folks, who continue to believe that (for a single drive) thunderbolt is supposed to be "faster than" USB3 (in the right enclosure).

It ain't necessarily so.

This will change even more with the coming of USB3.1 later this year.