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I really need to upgrade storage of my Mac Mini M1
- Thread starter Sovon Halder
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Not really. I had a 13" 2017 MacBook Pro 256GB. Because there is absolutely NO fan noise now, the sound of HDD seems twice as loud these days. And every time the HDD freezes Finder when waking up from sleep - makes the otherwise super snappy m1 computer useless. I've had enough of that HDD; no more.
See if you can get a good price on the new Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD V2. They use a customized WD SN550 SSD inside a compact and durable enclosure. Plus you get 5 years warranty compared to 3 years on Samsung T7. I purchased a 1TB version for M1 Macbook Air and get 700-800 MB/s in Sequential Speed tests. The new WD Passport SSD is the pretty much the same NVME and controller but with a different enclosure (many color options)
Buying a branded external SSD like Samsung/Sandisk/WD is most likely going to have less firmware issues compared to a la carte NVME in a USB enclosure.
As for prolonged usage of SSDs in external enclosure, I have used Crucial MX500 in a Cable Matters enclosure for over 2 years without any issue. It always stays connected to my 2018 Mac Mini.
Buying a branded external SSD like Samsung/Sandisk/WD is most likely going to have less firmware issues compared to a la carte NVME in a USB enclosure.
As for prolonged usage of SSDs in external enclosure, I have used Crucial MX500 in a Cable Matters enclosure for over 2 years without any issue. It always stays connected to my 2018 Mac Mini.
I have one of those in a Inateck enclosure and have used it for all kinds of purposes: media drive, running macOS, running Windows, and just moving large amounts of data from one machine to another. It's a great drive but I don't use it much now that I just move everything around on the network. I have spare SSDs from 120 GB to 500 GB and I really don't look at anything under 1 TB. Everything new is at least 2 TBs.
Thank you for all the information. This is very interesting. I don't want to hijack the thread either so I'll ask one more question and done.
This gigabit Ethernet switch, will you lose the network speed using it (compared to original router like says your router is in the attic in the first place)?
@matrix07 No, there is no loss in network speed using a gigabit switch....in fact it improves it in a huge way for the way I have it set up now.
Every device in my house (and I mean every device) that has an ethernet port on it......is connected to the internet using ethernet to a switch......which leave only true portable devices using wifi, so that is phones, tablets, laptops etc as the only devices using wifi..... everything else is ethernet connected, so makes for a much more stable and faster network.
So for me, I have 30 ethernet connected devices and a minimum of 14 wifi devices at any time in the house......obviously the 30 ethernet connected devices are not all on at the same time (xbox's, ps5, smart tv's, desktops computers etc).
Every device in my house (and I mean every device) that has an ethernet port on it......is connected to the internet using ethernet to a switch......which leave only true portable devices using wifi, so that is phones, tablets, laptops etc as the only devices using wifi..... everything else is ethernet connected, so makes for a much more stable and faster network.
So for me, I have 30 ethernet connected devices and a minimum of 14 wifi devices at any time in the house......obviously the 30 ethernet connected devices are not all on at the same time (xbox's, ps5, smart tv's, desktops computers etc).
I rip 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays so super fast local is still pretty handy for my workflow. First I rip as encrypted ISO (optical drive bottlenecked). Then I sometimes do multiple ISO to MKV rips using MakeMKV (storage bottlenecked) while I decide on what titles/streams to keep. Only after that do I offload both ISO and final MKV to NAS.
I got a couple of 2TB MX500s when Amazon had their daily deals and they were $180 each on sale.
Always a good deal when you can get under $100/TB in a large form-factor. I'd love to get some 4 or 8 TB SSDs but the prices rise exponentially. I don't have any use for that much storage but I could consider backing up to SSD instead of HDD.
Got the delivery of a 1TB T7 this morning.
Despite connecting via 10Gbps (should allow up to 1280mBps), getting around 700mBps consistently.
I assume this is the same issue people have been talking about lately.
It's ~300mBps less than advertised speed.
If anyone wants me to do any tests, please let me know.
Thanks again to everyone who commented on my post.
Despite connecting via 10Gbps (should allow up to 1280mBps), getting around 700mBps consistently.
I assume this is the same issue people have been talking about lately.
It's ~300mBps less than advertised speed.
If anyone wants me to do any tests, please let me know.
Thanks again to everyone who commented on my post.
I have T7 and a Samsung Evo Nvme in an enclosure. They both work well. The Nvme enclosure is larger, faster, and throws off considerably more heat. The T7 shorter by wider and runs cool.
Yes, that's what being discussed in the other thread. Realistically, with overhead, that drive should get about 950MB/s read/write. Unknown if Apple will improve upon this with software.Got the delivery of a 1TB T7 this morning.
Despite connecting via 10Gbps (should allow up to 1280mBps), getting around 700mBps consistently.
I assume this is the same issue people have been talking about lately.
It's ~300mBps less than advertised speed.
View attachment 1704704
View attachment 1704705
If anyone wants me to do any tests, please let me know.
Thanks again to everyone who commented on my post.
Got the delivery of a 1TB T7 this morning.
Despite connecting via 10Gbps (should allow up to 1280mBps), getting around 700mBps consistently.
I assume this is the same issue people have been talking about lately.
It's ~300mBps less than advertised speed.
View attachment 1704704
View attachment 1704705
If anyone wants me to do any tests, please let me know.
Thanks again to everyone who commented on my post.
Even with the issue of not getting full performance, I hope you are still happy with the huge boost over a hard drive, and the fact that it is silent. Satisfied for intended use?
It's fine for me. I can move a 25GB file to the SSD in less than a minute. That's cool. Thanks for asking.
But the device doesn't run cool. It's really quite hot to the touch. Specially after writing files big files in it.
I disabled finder eject button.
Hid the external drive in sidebar & in desktop.
Changed the default download location of Safari & Transmission to this Samsung T7 Blue.
Replaced the native "Downloads" folder in sidebar with it.
Made "New Finder Window" to open the folder "Blueberry" by default.
- So far so good. Just had to connect one cable & done. High speed storage expanded. No fuss no muss. Simple.
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Good stuff. Especially removing the eject button...too easy to hit accidentally.
Did you format HFS+?
As for heat...two ways to look at it. Some older cases (especially plastic), are good insulators. So the outside stays cool, but without some sensors and software, who knows how hot the drive actually gets? A good aluminum case should also be a good heat sink, and draw the heat away from the drive. So...the warm case is doing its job. That does not guarantee a cool enough drive, but it helps.
Didn't think it was necessary. I'm not sure though, so please let me know if I'm missing anything here. It came with MBR / ExFAT. And since ExFAT is the only format that I know of which gets recognised by mac & windows alike, I kept it. I just deleted the "Samsung Portable SSD Tool" that came within the drive (40MB or something) and started using it.
Are there any benefits to using a different partition scheme or file system format in the T7?
Also why is the "Date Added" column empty "--" in the ExFAT external drive?
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Different formats have pros and cons. Performance can vary a bit as I recall. It has been my experience that FAT formats seem a bit less robust, with occasional problems, compared to preferred platform formats...but that could be coincidental or anecdotal.
Sounds like you already have data on it...otherwise, it could be interesting to bench a couple of different formats and see if there are any substantial performance differences.
Let's see if others have more insight into format pros and cons.
Sounds like you already have data on it...otherwise, it could be interesting to bench a couple of different formats and see if there are any substantial performance differences.
Let's see if others have more insight into format pros and cons.
Got the delivery of a 1TB T7 this morning.
Despite connecting via 10Gbps (should allow up to 1280mBps), getting around 700mBps consistently.
I assume this is the same issue people have been talking about lately.
It's ~300mBps less than advertised speed.
View attachment 1704704
View attachment 1704705
If anyone wants me to do any tests, please let me know.
Thanks again to everyone who commented on my post.
You may want to test it with ATTO, which could provide a slightly better idea of how much read and write performance could be impacted by transfer size. If you can run it on an Intel Mac this could be pretty telling.
Edit - as you increase the file size, you should also be able to see the impact of thermal throttling as well as cache depletion (the former of which has a substantial hit on performance.)
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That's the price you pay for high performance at small size. The 2.5" SATA III SSDs run much cooler even when loaded.
"Date Added" does not work on this ExFAT file format (Tested on Big Sur 11.1 @M1 Mac Mini)
Thank you for asking. I found the answer to my question. It's ExFAT. And here is the test results for various partition schemes / file system .. (I triple checked the numbers after posting and I tested the one with APFS many times over to be sure)
I'm definitely going to use the GUID-APFS. It's clearly fastest and also because "date added" works on anything but ExFAT.
mbr-exfat
mbr-extended journaled
apple partition map - extended journaled
GUID-apfs
Yeah, I've been kind of seeing what you mean. It's thermals. That old thing.
I just moved a folder of 10000+ items sizing 64GB under 1 minute to an external drive. It's nuts.
I would take a faster drive any day, given the heat doesn't start to break the device.
It could also be cache depletion if you are writing very large files. IIRC the cache is only like 10 or 15 GB on the T7. After you saturate that cache, write speeds can flatline as is the case with many of the consumer grade external SSDs.
None. All drives can die, including the one inside your machine. Use backups. If you're concerned about warranty terms, the biggest point of concern should be how reliable they are about replacing that drive with a working one. A lot of these companies replace drives with refurbished drives. Apple might do this too. Refurbishment processes vary in quality, so you should check the typical consensus regarding these if you might ever use it.
Don't ever plan a purchase on the basis of using a drive 6-8 years. That is just completely ridiculous. These things can die in that time. Standards and connectors can change. Don't plan on a 3 year horizon when it comes to financial decisions on these things, even if you might use them longer.
Many of them won't last that long, regardless of what you purchase. On the other end of things, how are you using this? Unless you're loading big files all the time, you won't notice much difference in SSD speeds. Small reads are typically latency bound. GB/s do not tell you anything about latency. They indicate throughput, which is what you care about on big reads, not small ones.
That's an issue of power settings. It's spinning down the drive whenever possible, and your machine is waiting for a response, which requires spinning it back up.