Samsung T7 with Mini M1

[Matfarsan]

Waiting for my ordered Mac Mini M1 and was gonna get a external SSD to go with it but Im not sure what to expect with the ports.
Been looking at the Samsung T7 SSD that seems way faster than the T5.
On the spec of the mini it says USB 4 / Thunderbolt with support for USB 3.1 gen.2
Does that mean that I can not expect it to use the speed of USB 3.2 with the T7?
In this case do I get better speed with the T7 than with the T5?

 

[IowaLynn]

T7. 900MB/sec

 

[Fishrrman]

t7 should give you 900-960MBps reads.

I'm not certain, but I believe the "USB3.2" spec really is little different from "USB3.1 gen2".
Functionally, little or no difference.
And nothing I would be worrying about.

 

[Boyd01]

Don't know about the M1, but I have a couple 2tb T7's on my 2018 Mini and they are great.

 

[deksawyer]

Or buy a TB3 enclosure and an NVME SSD of your choice (some Samsungs no not play ball) and revel in the insane speeds on offer. I use an Orico APM2T3-G40 enclosure and a Sabrent Rocket 1TB (on a 2018 MM). This combo cost around £170 GBP.

 

[Dave_O]

Here's a screenshot of Blackmagic results for my M1 Mac Mini and Samsung T7 ssd.

 

[doboy]

I would buy a Samsung X5 (TB drive).

 

[QuietGamer]

Macsales (OWC) have a number of TB 3/4 external drives along with TB enclosures. I bought 2 Envoy Pro EX 480 & 1TB as open box items a year ago. https://eshop.macsales.com

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

Does the MP 7,1 have USB 3.2 to take advantage of the T7 speed or would I need to get the X5 TB3?

 

[mackiee]

These are my results with a brand new T7. All connections made with the USB-C to USB-C cable that came in the T7 box.

T7 connected to one of the Thunderbolt ports on the back of the Mac mini M1:

T7 connected to one of the Thunderbolt ports on the back of a LG UltraFine 4K monitor which in turn is connected to one of the Thunderbolt ports on the Mac mini M1:

T7 connected to one of the Thunderbolt ports on a MBP 13" 2018:

The T7 is much slower when connected to the Mac mini M1 compared to the MBP 13" 2018. Funny thing it's also considerably slower when attached directly to the Mac mini M1 compared to when it's connected to the monitor!

 

[Mistercharlie]

I get similar results. It’s fastest when connected to the thunderbolt port on my CalDigit ts3+ dock.

 

[F23]

Getting the 700 range on the M1 Mac Mini. Disappointing

 

[Fomalhaut]

I don't have a Samsung T7 but have similar differences with a SATA3 SSD in a USB 3.1Gen2 enclosure.

The M1 only gets about 75% of the speed of the same drive connected to my MBP16.

Interestingly, on one M2 enclosure, the M1 reports to USB connection as 5Gbps while the MBP16 shows it as 10Gbps.

USB speeds on the M1 Macs are a bit disappointing.

Not sure if a TB3 enclosure would yield better results - assuming it actually uses Thunderbolt and not the USB protocol?

 

[OSX15]

I can’t believe they advertise USB 4.0 in their marketing but no backward compatibility for the latest generation USB 3.x?? I am very disappointed with the suboptimal USB performance with external ssds.

 

[jlh22179tx]

Im getting the same results on the M1 compared to my 2019 base mbp 13". Cant get over 700mb on M1. I guess the answer is you have to go with thunderbolt 3. maybe samsung x5 or owc rugged

 

[OSX15]

if it is not a hardware limitation, it could be fixed with a firmware update. Apple has ultimate control over this hardware, I've also seen people get faster speeds when using a thunderbolt 3 hub --> T7.

Fingers crossed

 

[doboy]

Im getting the same results on the M1 compared to my 2019 base mbp 13". Cant get over 700mb on M1. I guess the answer is you have to go with thunderbolt 3. maybe samsung x5 or owc rugged

I wonder if you would get comparable speeds between M1 and Intel versions.

 

[sealos]

Just bought a T7 and wanted to partition for data and TM Backups.

For the life of me, I could not partition after I reformatted it. It wouldn’t even allow me to format it to APFS. Something about a GUID table.

Decided to just use it as a TM backup. Once TM reformatted it for its purposes, I went back to Disk Utility and saw that Partitioning was now not grayed out.

After that, I was able to do what I originally wanted to do. It’s unfortunate I had to stumble on this by accident.

Hope this helps others looking for a way to partition and/or reformat their T7 to apfs.

Speed wise, I’m seeing the same ~700Mb/s speeds.

 

[harriska2]

I have 5400rpm 10tb drives hanging off my usb hub that are plenty fast for what I need. What does the extra speed from ssd get you other than processing video (which I would do on my onboard 1tb then move to my data drive)?

 

[Boyd01]

I have a bootable clone of my 2tb internal Mini disk on a T7. If I ever have a problem, I can just plug that in (to the same or even another Mini) and be right back up and running. Good luck trying that on your 5400 RPM disk.

I have another 2tb T7 that I use for data that doesn't fit on the internal disk. Why should I be limited to a painfully slow hard drive for that? I work with a lot of very large geodata files as well as video. I also have three of the older Samsung T3 disks that have gotten a lot of use over the years.

Sure, I also have tons of hard drives, including four 5tb USB disks connected to my 2012 quad Mini which is a file and time machine server. I just try to choose the right tool for the job.

 

[IowaLynn]

Bus powered. Small. And silent. Moving 10GB in seconds.

 

[iAdamator]

Just got a Mac Mini M1 and already had a T7. Using Black Magic I only get about 600 Read/Write using the USB C to USB C cable. Is there anything we can do go get the full speed from the T7?

Is 600MB/sec enough to edit 4K off the drive?

 

[Fomalhaut]

Just got a Mac Mini M1 and already had a T7. Using Black Magic I only get about 600 Read/Write using the USB C to USB C cable. Is there anything we can do go get the full speed from the T7?

Is 600MB/sec enough to edit 4K off the drive?

That sounds a little on the low side for a T7 with the M1 Mini (I have both of these), and IIRC I get in the high 600MB/s range - I'd need to check again to be sure. Unfortunately I don't think there is anything you can do to improve it assuming you have good quality cables, although I did find that I got somewhat better speeds by going through my CalDigit TS3+ dock, which is connected to the Mac via Thunderbolt. I think it was about 60-80MB/s faster.

600MB/s should be fine for editing 4K video from the drives - I do this often and have never seen dropped frames due to disk speed. If you look at the Activity Monitor disk activity, or if you have an SSD monitoring tool like the one in iStatMenus, you can see the read/write speeds, and you'll probably find that they are well within this limit. Bear in mind that a lot of 4K video codecs are only using about 100-200 mega *bits* per second, or 25MB/s. Even with multiple streams of video most SSDs are capable of reading this for at least a short period.

One caveat is that most SSD manufacturers quote an ideal maximum throughput using a limited high-speed cache to get those high numbers. I think this is about 40GB on a 1TB Samsung T7. This means that for sustained transfers the speed will drop-off dramatically once the cached is used. This is why Black Magic Design doesn't approve the T7 for use with their cameras (but does approve the T5, which although slower, has a more consistent long-term write speed). That said, while this is critical for video capture (at least for long takes), it may not be such an issue for video editing if you are working on clips in a normal workflow.

 

[Boyd01]

Using Black Magic I only get about 600 Read/Write

Is 600MB/sec enough to edit 4K off the drive?

Look at the bottom of the Blackmagic test window under "Will it work".

 

[phrehdd]

There are faster external drives out there. Here is a quick read off a Sabrent 2tb SSD with their own TBolt cable. I use this as a work and storage drive while a Samsung T5 is used for Time Machine. (Both connected to CalDigit Element)

Mac Mini M1. 512/16. BenQ PD2700u monitor. CalDigit Element. PeachTree M24 powered speakers (via USB).