iMac 24" external storage advice

[ps-saini]

Hello guys, I ordered the new 24" iMac in the 16GB unified memory + 256GB SSD version.
It will take time before I get it (estimated delivery date is mid-june) so in the meantime I'm in search for an external storage solution.
The external storage will be used for all kind of things (music, photos, videos, programming projects, basically a work disk) except applications that will be on the internal iMac's SSD.

I have come up with these options:
- UGreen USB-C 3.1 gen 2 SATA SSD enclosure ( link ) + Samsung 870 EVO 2TB ( link ) > this will cost me around 250€ and read/write speeds should be around 500MB/s
- Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 enclosure ( link ) + Sabrent Rocket 2TB ( link ) > this will cost me around 400€ and read/write speeds should be around 1500MB/s

The option I'll like to go for is the cheaper one as I do not need that thunderbolt speeds but I'm still trying to understand whether macOS does support TRIM over the USB-C 3.1 gen 2 ports or the support is only available over the thunderbolt 3/USB-4?
If the support isn't available over the USB-C ports I'm worried about performance degradation of the external storage.
I have searched on the internet but I didn't get an answer to my question.

 

[Fishrrman]

My advice:

First, don't bother with a 2gb SSD -- too much money.
Unless you really REALLY need 2tb of space, I'd suggest 1tb instead.

Having said that, the thunderbolt enclosure/nvme drive will be about 4x as fast as a 2.5" form factor SATA SSD.

BUT... seems I've been reading that some folks are having problems with the thunderbolt enclosures and m1 Macs. Not everyone, only some.

A compromise approach:
- get a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure in the "nvme form factor".
- get an nvme blade SSD (again, I'd suggest 1tb)
- put the two together and use that.

It should give you reads in the 700-800MBps range.
Cost-effective, too.

 

[ps-saini]

My advice:

First, don't bother with a 2gb SSD -- too much money.
Unless you really REALLY need 2tb of space, I'd suggest 1tb instead.

Having said that, the thunderbolt enclosure/nvme drive will be about 4x as fast as a 2.5" form factor SATA SSD.

BUT... seems I've been reading that some folks are having problems with the thunderbolt enclosures and m1 Macs. Not everyone, only some.

A compromise approach:
- get a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure in the "nvme form factor".
- get an nvme blade SSD (again, I'd suggest 1tb)
- put the two together and use that.

It should give you reads in the 700-800MBps range.
Cost-effective, too.

Actually I do need the 2TB of storage, on my current windows pc I do have 1TB HDD that is almost full so I need to expand storage capacity and all of the stuff is backed up periodically to an external 2TB HDD, and I want the external storage to be SSD so no more noise from spinning disk.

As for your advice, if I go with the NVME enclosure solution the 2TB NVME SSD is 299€ and M2 NVME enclosure is around 30/50€ so the total is 350€ which is almost like the thunderbolt option I mentioned.
In this case thunderbolt will be a better solution I think, or not?

But the main problem is the TRIM support over USB-C, do you know aniything about it?
I can get a SATA SSD or NVME one, but if TRIM is not supported over USB-C I think I'll get performance degradation (on the write operations on the disk).

 

[EntropyQ3]

Actually I do need the 2TB of storage, on my current windows pc I do have 1TB HDD that is almost full so I need to expand storage capacity and all of the stuff is backed up periodically to an external 2TB HDD, and I want the external storage to be SSD so no more noise from spinning disk.

As for your advice, if I go with the NVME enclosure solution the 2TB NVME SSD is 299€ and M2 NVME enclosure is around 30/50€ so the total is 350€ which is almost like the thunderbolt option I mentioned.
In this case thunderbolt will be a better solution I think, or not?

But the main problem is the TRIM support over USB-C, do you know aniything about it?
I can get a SATA SSD or NVME one, but if TRIM is not supported over USB-C I think I'll get performance degradation (on the write operations on the disk).

Which is a good argument for more storage, so that you avoid a ton of paging in and out of a small free area of an almost full SSD.

If I bought an iMac, I’d duct tape a 2TB SSD on the back of it day one. Refuse to pay Apples upgrade prices for storage. Costs a port though, and forces storage management I would prefer not to have to deal with. But I have better things to do with my money than give them away to Apple share holders. They seem to be doing fine anyway. 😀

 

[ps-saini]

Which is a good argument for more storage, so that you avoid a ton of paging in and out of a small free area of an almost full SSD.

If I bought an iMac, I’d duct tape a 2TB SSD on the back of it day one. Refuse to pay Apples upgrade prices for storage. Costs a port though, and forces storage management I would prefer not to have to deal with. But I have better things to do with my money than give them away to Apple share holders. They seem to be doing fine anyway. 😀

That's why I went with the 256GB model and decided to upgrade the storage with an external solution.
2TB from apple is 960€ and 2TB thunderbolt 3 is 400€, half the price.

I think if I cannot find infos on TRIM over USB-C I'll go with Thunderbolt that do support TRIM

 

[EntropyQ3]

That's why I went with the 256GB model and decided to upgrade the storage with an external solution.
2TB from apple is 960€ and 2TB thunderbolt 3 is 400€, half the price.

I think if I cannot find infos on TRIM over USB-C I'll go with Thunderbolt that do support TRIM

And it allows you to upgrade in the future if need be. I think a lot of us are in the same boat, we obviously want to migrate our data (and a bunch of apps) to our new system. Hell, even my non-computer using daughters would easily fill up 256GB with their iPhone videos and images alone.

 

[Stephen.R]

I have a USB-c and a tb3 m2 downstairs, I’ll check trim status for each shortly.

 

[ps-saini]

I have a USB-c and a tb3 m2 downstairs, I’ll check trim status for each shortly.

oh that would be great. thanks

 

[SuperMatt]

Hello guys, I ordered the new 24" iMac in the 16GB unified memory + 256GB SSD version.
It will take time before I get it (estimated delivery date is mid-june) so in the meantime I'm in search for an external storage solution.
The external storage will be used for all kind of things (music, photos, videos, programming projects, basically a work disk) except applications that will be on the internal iMac's SSD.

I have come up with these options:
- UGreen USB-C 3.1 gen 2 SATA SSD enclosure ( link ) + Samsung 870 EVO 2TB ( link ) > this will cost me around 250€ and read/write speeds should be around 500MB/s
- Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 enclosure ( link ) + Sabrent Rocket 2TB ( link ) > this will cost me around 400€ and read/write speeds should be around 1500MB/s

The option I'll like to go for is the cheaper one as I do not need that thunderbolt speeds but I'm still trying to understand whether macOS does support TRIM over the USB-C 3.1 gen 2 ports or the support is only available over the thunderbolt 3/USB-4?
If the support isn't available over the USB-C ports I'm worried about performance degradation of the external storage.
I have searched on the internet but I didn't get an answer to my question.

This drive has 2000MB/s… the only question would be if the USB4 support means that a usb 3.2 device will work? The support for usb 3 seems to go up to usb 3.1 (10gbps), but the usb4 is 40gbps, so I guess you’d need to test it and find out:

SanDisk 2TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2

Buy SanDisk 2TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2 featuring 2TB Total Storage Capacity, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C, Up to 2000 MB/s Read & Write Speeds, Bus Powered, 256-Bit AES Hardware Encryption, IP55 Dust & Water Resistance, Carabiner Loop for Easy Transport, Aluminum Chassis with Silicon Shell...

www.bhphotovideo.com

Still, for the speed and size, pretty good deal compared to what you’ve listed.

Or you could wait for more USB4 drives to hit the market.

GigaDrive Thunderbolt 4 & USB4 External SSD - Newsshooter

The GigaDrive Thunderbolt 4 & USB4 External SSD is a series of fast, water, dust, and shock-resistant NVMe M.2 drives that coming capacities up to 4TB.

www.newsshooter.com

 

[ps-saini]

This drive has 2000MB/s… the only question would be if the USB4 support means that a usb 3.2 device will work? The support for usb 3 seems to go up to usb 3.1 (10gbps), but the usb4 is 40gbps, so I guess you’d need to test it and find out:

SanDisk 2TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2

Buy SanDisk 2TB Extreme PRO Portable SSD V2 featuring 2TB Total Storage Capacity, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C, Up to 2000 MB/s Read & Write Speeds, Bus Powered, 256-Bit AES Hardware Encryption, IP55 Dust & Water Resistance, Carabiner Loop for Easy Transport, Aluminum Chassis with Silicon Shell...

www.bhphotovideo.com

Still, for the speed and size, pretty good deal compared to what you’ve listed.

Or you could wait for more USB4 drives to hit the market.

GigaDrive Thunderbolt 4 & USB4 External SSD - Newsshooter

The GigaDrive Thunderbolt 4 & USB4 External SSD is a series of fast, water, dust, and shock-resistant NVMe M.2 drives that coming capacities up to 4TB.

www.newsshooter.com

I will look for it, but price wise here is 371€, so same as the thunderbolt option.

 

[Stephen.R]

oh that would be great. thanks

Ok so now that I'm actually thinking about this, I realised that I can't actually test this for you, specifically. My two M2's are both NVMe, so they don't use TRIM (which is a SATA thing).

I do have two SATA SSDs in a TB3 enclosure - but they also report TRIM as disabled, I'd guess because they're in a software RAID0 setup.

However this also jogged my memory and I went looking and found this post, which confirms that trim over USB doesn't work: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-ssd-trim.2034608/post-24348110


So, if you're concerned about the longevity of the SSDs, you need something where macOS will recognise their native protocol, which means you need something that's connected via TB3 (as it'll just use the PCIe lanes - either a SATA adapter or an NVMe adapter).



On the internal storage debate, keep one thing in mind - they get a lot faster as they get bigger.

 

[jdb8167]

Which is a good argument for more storage, so that you avoid a ton of paging in and out of a small free area of an almost full SSD.

If I bought an iMac, I’d duct tape a 2TB SSD on the back of it day one. Refuse to pay Apples upgrade prices for storage. Costs a port though, and forces storage management I would prefer not to have to deal with. But I have better things to do with my money than give them away to Apple share holders. They seem to be doing fine anyway. 😀

Double-sided tape is more elegant. If the external SSD is fast enough, you can just move your home directory to the SSD and just leave the internal for boot and system.

There is a variety of different solutions referred to in this stackexchange post. The easiest one though is to just use the System Preferences->Users & Groups advanced option of moving individual user accounts.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

G-Technology do 500gb USB-C SSD G-Drives for around £130. They're extremely fast, rugged, well-designed and look nice too.

 

[ps-saini]

Ok so now that I'm actually thinking about this, I realised that I can't actually test this for you, specifically. My two M2's are both NVMe, so they don't use TRIM (which is a SATA thing).

I do have two SATA SSDs in a TB3 enclosure - but they also report TRIM as disabled, I'd guess because they're in a software RAID0 setup.

However this also jogged my memory and I went looking and found this post, which confirms that trim over USB doesn't work: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-ssd-trim.2034608/post-24348110


So, if you're concerned about the longevity of the SSDs, you need something where macOS will recognise their native protocol, which means you need something that's connected via TB3 (as it'll just use the PCIe lanes - either a SATA adapter or an NVMe adapter).



On the internal storage debate, keep one thing in mind - they get a lot faster as they get bigger.

thanks for the infos, but I think TRIM is also a NVME thing.

Anyways it looks like thunderbolt is the best solution

 

[Stephen.R]

thanks for the infos, but I think TRIM is also a NVME thing.

From Wikipedia:

The NVM Express command set has a generic Dataset Management command, for hinting the host's intent to the storage device on a set of block ranges. One of its operations, deallocate performs trim. It also has a Write Zeroes command that provides a deallocate hint and allows the disk to trim and return zeroes.

I don't see any mention of "TRIM" on either the internal SSD or a TB3/NVMe SSD.

 

[ps-saini]

From Wikipedia:



I don't see any mention of "TRIM" on either the internal SSD or a TB3/NVMe SSD.

Isn't deallocate the TRIM of NVME SSD's?

One of its operations, deallocate performs trim.

I think they do the same thing, maybe.

 

[Stephen.R]

Isn't deallocate the TRIM of NVME SSD's?

I think they do the same thing, maybe.

Right, it sounds like that's the equivalent functionality, but if it's always supported, it's possibly never reported as enabled or not, was my point.

 

[ps-saini]

Right, it sounds like that's the equivalent functionality, but if it's always supported, it's possibly never reported as enabled or not, was my point.

yeah that is also an option.
Anyway maybe I'm just exaggerating with this TRIM support thing, I'll just choose the cheaper option and see how it will work.

 

[Sarpanch]

I have 2 x 2TB Crucial MX500 SSDs connected to 2018 Mac Mini using USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosures. As macOS does not support TRIM over USB, I used to put them in a Lacie Thunderbolt enclosure from time to time to run the TRIM command.

But I’ve realized that over the past few several years, the need to TRIM SSDs has reduced due to better controllers and garbage collection. As long as the SSD has 10-15% free space it should function perfectly fine.

As for M1 Macs, you are better off with NVME external storage. This is because most USB SATA enclosures are connecting at only 5GB/s link speed instead of 10GB/s resulting in 20-25% reduction in speed.

For my M1 Macbook Air, I opted for the new Sandisk Extreme SSD V2. It connects at 10 GB/s link speed and maxes out around ~780MB/s sequential speed tests. I went with this option instead of DIY enclosure/SSD because a) 5 Year warranty from Sandisk b) The enclosure is sleek and the SN550 SSD controller is customized for external usage, and c) most external enclosures can be tricky to pair with the correct drive (Realtek ones seem to be stable)

If your requirement is for higher speeds, then it is best to purchase a Thunderbolt drive or enclosure.

Hope this helps

 

[jdb8167]

I don't see any mention of "TRIM" on either the internal SSD or a TB3/NVMe SSD

It looks like the internal M1 SSD controller supports TRIM. From the macOS Big Sur System Information on my M1 MBA:

 

[LuisN]

Deleted

 

[Stephen.R]

It looks like the internal M1 SSD controller supports TRIM. From the macOS Big Sur System Information on my M1 MBA:

View attachment 1780244

Well I am an idiot. Or blind. Or both. I looked again at the Sys Info window and they do in fact both show it (internal, and TB3 connected M2). I blame the inconsistent ordering:

 

[ps-saini]

Well I am an idiot. Or blind. Or both. I looked again at the Sys Info window and they do in fact both show it (internal, and TB3 connected M2). I blame the inconsistent ordering:

View attachment 1780481View attachment 1780480

ok, so the internal one has not TRIM enabled and the external thunderbolt one has TRIM enabled.
Did you touch the internal one settings or it has TRIM disabled by default? a little bit weird

 

[Stephen.R]

No sorry the two nvme (internal mini and external tb3 m2) both have it enabled

the disabled one is a 2.5” SATA ssd in a tb3 SATA multibay enclosure. I’m not sure why it’s not enabled, it’s in a software raid so that may contribute to it.

 

[ps-saini]

No sorry the two nvme (internal mini and external tb3 m2) both have it enabled

the disabled one is a 2.5” SATA ssd in a tb3 SATA multibay enclosure. I’m not sure why it’s not enabled, it’s in a software raid so that may contribute to it.

oh ok, thanks for your time.
Now I have a clear situation on the storage options that I can choose from.

Probably I'll go with the USB-C SATA SSD enclosure + SATA 2TB SSD and, if needed, I'll do TRIM it occasionally by placing it in my old netbook and using a linux live USB.