I only have a few 1TB and a few 2TB Samsung T5s. But I literally transfer files that are hundreds of GB and have not notice it drop below 500 MB/s.
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I really need to upgrade storage of my Mac Mini M1
- Thread starter Sovon Halder
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Not quite that simple.
M.2 NVMe 1000-3500 MB/s > ~500 MB/s SATA III SSD > ~150-200 MB/s 3.5" SATA HDD > ~80-120 MB/s 2.5" SATA HDD
There's a range of performance when it comes to NVMe and typically, the 1-3.5GB/s are just burst speeds. You can find NVMe drives with good burst performance (great for OS and apps) that are worse than SATA3 drives when it comes to sequential.
Running apps, video editing, dealing with a bunch of small files, etc, yep absolutely go with a good SSD.
For static storage of MKV rips, etc., HDDs still offer better $/GB plus recovery is easier.
SSDs can lose charge and data recovery is more difficult if not impossible. I'd still trust HDDs more for storage/backup of large static data. For video playback/streaming (4K tops at what, 150Mbps or 19MB/s?), HDDs are more than fast enough.
As I mentioned, 1TB+ 3D TLC SSDs can easily saturate/max out SATA3/USB3 without needing to rely on pseudo-SLC cache. Translation, they can do ~500 MB/s sustained for the entire SSD capacity.
That really wasn't clear. Saturate could mean only for X GB then it won't be saturated. The QVO for example can saturate SATA3 until a certain limit, then it goes to that 80MB/s you mention. Could be I was just not making the connection with your statement, sorry!
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Please note that on the post you replied to, I mentioned 3D TLC NAND and not SSD. I was referring to the performance/properties of the actual NAND and not the SSD as a whole. 2TB QLC NAND doesn't even saturate SATA2.
Controllers, DRAM, SLC caching, etc. can give you high burst speeds even with QLC NAND (e.g. Intel 660/665 NVMe). Sustained performance though, that's highly dependent on NAND type.
For 2.5" HDDs I've found it's cheaper to buy externals.
Heck, if one needs cheap, high capacity internal storage for a laptop or something, it's actually cheaper to shuck externals than buy 2.5" SATA HDDs. Granted, you do lose out on warranty.
Of course, it wouldn't give you SSD performance and most of the new 2.5" drives use Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). Frustratingly slow when you deal with workloads with a lot of random, small block read/write.
I'd be perfectly fine with this too.
A lot of people in here are recommending him NAS setups and other ridiculous solutions when he's clearly not a techie, just a guy who wants to plug in a drive and have it work.
@LordeOurMother I was one of the folks suggesting a NAS setup, a simple one at that...nothing difficult about them.
I thought the OP just wanted to store media and things like that for viewing whenever he wants, which a NAS would do very easily and MUCH cheaper than some of the options being mentioned for the storage size difference.
However the OP has purchased something now and seems happy with it.....although I am still not really sure what type of workload he actually does...but not to worry. lol
I thought the OP just wanted to store media and things like that for viewing whenever he wants, which a NAS would do very easily and MUCH cheaper than some of the options being mentioned for the storage size difference.
However the OP has purchased something now and seems happy with it.....although I am still not really sure what type of workload he actually does...but not to worry. lol
It's not difficult for you, or me.
Try getting your grandma to set up and/or maintain a NAS vs just plugging in an external HDD or SSD.
It's not worth it when he clearly just needs another TB or two to store photos and stuff. A NAS is something that if you need it, you'll know you need it/know what it is. He wouldn't have made this topic if his needs were exceedingly technical.
This forum has been more than generous to me with suggestion over the years.
I thank you all for commenting and I really did weigh the pros and cons before pulling the trigger.
When I need storage for a lot of data, 10+ TB I'll definitely go for NAS.
I already have a couple of empty 2TB HDDs collecting dust and a 3TB external Seagate drive (half full). Bulk storage wise, I'm set for the time being.
Again I want to mention, I wanted to expand my storage, replicating the quality/speed of internal ssd, as much as possible, under my budget, emphasis on the budget. HDD was never in question. Even if I got an NVME stick, the enclosures available in our (Indian) market are all 10gbps. Buying thunderbolt 3 or importing would not come under my budget. Logical options seemed 10gbps enclosure+nvme stick OR external nvme ssd like passport or t7. I chose the latter.
I work mostly on Adobe XD and Adobe photoshop and adobe lightroom and adobe illustrator but edit videos also in final cut pro sometimes. I worried too much about the heating issue. On idle the t7 remains cold, and connects/opens instantly from finder sidebar unlike my hdd. And gives me a burst of speed 750 MB/s which is enough.
I thank you all for commenting and I really did weigh the pros and cons before pulling the trigger.
When I need storage for a lot of data, 10+ TB I'll definitely go for NAS.
I already have a couple of empty 2TB HDDs collecting dust and a 3TB external Seagate drive (half full). Bulk storage wise, I'm set for the time being.
Again I want to mention, I wanted to expand my storage, replicating the quality/speed of internal ssd, as much as possible, under my budget, emphasis on the budget. HDD was never in question. Even if I got an NVME stick, the enclosures available in our (Indian) market are all 10gbps. Buying thunderbolt 3 or importing would not come under my budget. Logical options seemed 10gbps enclosure+nvme stick OR external nvme ssd like passport or t7. I chose the latter.
I work mostly on Adobe XD and Adobe photoshop and adobe lightroom and adobe illustrator but edit videos also in final cut pro sometimes. I worried too much about the heating issue. On idle the t7 remains cold, and connects/opens instantly from finder sidebar unlike my hdd. And gives me a burst of speed 750 MB/s which is enough.
I just wasn't making the connection from what you were saying in terms of saturation the USB/SATA bus. However, I do have a QVO and on very small files of a few GB, it does have transfer speeds of ~500 MB/s which still saturate my USB 3 port. It does drop after a certain amount though.
There are 2 presumptions here:
1) MKV/video rips would be stored by most users on some sort of networked storage - NAS or a shared drive.
It would be unusual for someone to use a large USB spin drive attached directly to an ultrabook for mass video playback.
Even if no NAS, very few people would like to carry around a 2 or 4TBs of videos with them while travelling and it is reasonable to presume that most such users would already have a couple or more such legacy drives with them already
2) Majority of users in need of storage above 512GB on a local drive would need it for something that would benefit from high speed access - could be 4k videos for editing , or really large document sets or large image collections / image archives
With 1 and 2, safe to say that barring a few odd case, a spin drive with an ultraportable is not exactly advisable.
Coming to SSDs , any decent nvme will be considerably faster than a Sata SSD in almost every scenario - burst or sequential.
The only bottleneck with a nvme would be the (assumed usage of ) USB 3.1 bus as TB enclosures are still pretty expensive.
But even with USB 3.1, the performance of nvme will be better than sata in practically all scenarios.
Just that With the nvme, you would be saturating the USB bus while with SATA the bottleneck would typically be the drive itself
Considering the price diff between SATA and a decent nvme (970 Evo or A2000 if you want something slightly cheaper) is very small now , A nvme with a USB enclosure (or TB if price is not a constraint) is the appropriate choice for the vast majority of folks looking for additional storage with a MBA/MBP
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That;s a good choice..Maybe alll you need to do now is to get a NAS enclosure (or build your own) for those bulk storage drives to act as a backup.
And thanks for the pointer on the T7- If I do need additional portable storage, I too would prefer a readymade solution with known performance than taking a gamble with an external enclosure
As you mentioned, those are presumptions. Those aren't always a given. I help a lot of non-techies so my first question when they ask for advice is what do you need to do and how much is your budget?
Honestly, apart from myself, I don't know anyone IRL who has a NAS at home. I do know several whose only computers are laptops and use bus-powered portable HDDs to store their torrents.
As for NVMe SSDs, not everyone is familiar with which ones are good/decent and which ones to avoid. There's a lot of folks who buy the Intel 660/665 or Crucial P1. Fine for majority of use cases (OS, apps, games). Go past the SLC cache though and your sequential writes drop to HDD level.
Over the holidays, the Samsung T7 1TB and 2TB SSDs were $150 and $250 respectively so you were better off buying that than going DIY. Seems like there can be chipset compatibility and overheating issues when going the DIY route.
Apple used to sell the Airport Extreme and you could just hang a USB hard drive off of it for NAS. I've run into non-technical people do it. I don't know if they still sell the Airport Extreme but we could just hand a disk off of it if we wanted to. You could also hang a printer off of it and I'd guess that it would require more sophistication to have a network printer than a NAS. Yet people managed to do it.
ocw on macsales , i just order their 4tb 2080 enclosure and it works good.
If you want to save money you can go for the 2TB enclosure from orico.
If you want to save money you can go for the 2TB enclosure from orico.
Most people I know just use the crappy combo modem/router that their ISP installs for them. Granted, that's been changing with more and more switching to the app-driven Google Nest/Wifi or Eero mesh networks.
I'm not saying installing a NAS is hard. Just saying I don't know anyone IRL who has one. I think it's far more common to see users buy direct attached storage than a NAS. A single-bay NAS without any drives is already $50-200 by itself whereas you can buy a 2TB portable for $50.
I'm guessing there are probably plenty of folks who would buy a base M1 MacBook Air or an inexpensive laptop and then pair it with a $50 2TB external as a cheap storage upgrade instead of paying Apple, etc. $200+ for storage upgrades. Of course, the Apple SSD is faster.
Comcast loves these people. They pay about $9/month to rent the modem/router when you can buy one for $150 and recoup the investment in 17 months. My manager had been renting one for a decade and complained about her ISP bill. I suggested that she buy her own modem/router and she did.
To the astute among you, I have a technical question.
Despite formatting with GUID - APFS, why does the T7 SSD have this microsoft dos fat32 formatted EFI volume?
Despite formatting with GUID - APFS, why does the T7 SSD have this microsoft dos fat32 formatted EFI volume?
It's fine that it's there. I was wondering why, what purpose does it serve and how is fat32 related to apfs?
Well if it wasn't there, you'd never be able to reformat the drive to a Windows compatible format and you wouldn't have been able to format the drive to a Mac compatible format in the first place. All drives maintain certain data to allow OSes to format and reformat the drive. They don't ship completely blank.
Internal drives kinda do ship blank, though. You'd need to initialize them as MBR or GPT/GUID. Can't recall if EFI partition is mandatory for all GPT drives or if it's just required for boot drives. Pretty sure it's optional when dealing with MBR.