Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

rondocap

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
542
341
I tried a Red Mini-Mag reader, USB C, and transfer speeds were really low to the MacBook Pro M2 16 inch. Same with a Samsung T7. These work fast on other systems.

I did try to format the Samsung drive to Mac OS friendly, and that seems to have helped, but I can't with the Red Mini Mag reader - why is the speed slow? Anything I can do about it? Doesn't make sense that I can't transfer camera files!
 

Svetlin

macrumors newbie
May 19, 2021
24
89
If your system is new there is a Chance it is still indexing the drive and lowering performance. You can check that by opening spotlight and under the search bar it will display "indexing" with a status bar.
There also are reports that the base config M2 pro chip 16/512 has a single nand chip thus making performance on the drive worse, that might be the case if thats your config.
 

Kazgarth

macrumors 6502
Oct 18, 2020
318
834
What config is your M2 MBP? If it's 5125GB then the transfer rate is slow because the SSD is running at half the regular speed.
 

Burnincoco

macrumors regular
May 6, 2007
132
133
What config is your M2 MBP? If it's 5125GB then the transfer rate is slow because the SSD is running at half the regular speed.
Lol, not half speed
E0069A20-8ECD-47D3-98DB-C6AC952D68D3.jpeg
 

cassmr

macrumors member
Apr 12, 2021
58
62
This is hard to answer without numbers. What is slow? What speed are you getting?

What config is your M2 MBP? If it's 5125GB then the transfer rate is slow because the SSD is running at half the regular speed.

It may be half the speed, but its still 3,000 mbps, twice that of the m2 macbook air and m2 mac mini with this issue. Its still a very fast drive, just not insane like the 2 chips models.

Now a quick google, shows that the max read speed of redmag mini is like 300MB/s, so no this is not the cause of the issue they are experiencing. The SSD write speed of 3000mbps (although benchmakred speed is a bit higher) is about 375MB/s

Indexing is much more likely, without more information.
 

cassmr

macrumors member
Apr 12, 2021
58
62
Lol, not half speed
View attachment 2147752
True but its half the speed of the other models of m2 pro, which are getting in the 6000s.

I agree its not the cause of this issue. And likely a complete non-issue for everyone, as it the m2 pro chip may not actually be capable of really saturating the drive at 6000mb in any real world applications.

3000mbs is still a very fast drive, and I'm doubtful anyone would notice in practice.
 

Spitzie

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2023
1
0
I am facing similar issues with my new M2 Mac mini. Here the stats:

For Comparison here the data from my MacBook Air M1:
Copy from USB: 200 GB (100.000 files): about 7 Minutes
Copy to USB: about 7 Minutes

Mac Mini:
Copy from USB: 200 GB (100.000 files): about 8 to 15 hours! (gets slower with each attempt)
Copy to USB: about 7 Minutes !

Disk Speed shows no issues though. Could there be a problem with thunderbolt?

UPDATE: In my case it was actually the cable connected to the USB-SSD. When I used it with the MacMini I had to bend it, for use with the MBA not. A friendly supporter from Apple gave me the advice to change the cable and although I was skeptical due to the results before, he was right ;)
 

Attachments

  • Bildschirm­foto 2023-01-27 um 10.18.17.png
    Bildschirm­foto 2023-01-27 um 10.18.17.png
    233.8 KB · Views: 100
Last edited:

lcubed

macrumors 6502a
Nov 19, 2020
540
326
Make sure your cable is actually rated for usb 3.x and not as usb 2.0. These sound like usb 2.0 speeds

Usb 2.0 c style cables are plentiful. Usually for usb-c style charger cables
 

lvleleven

macrumors member
Oct 25, 2022
39
37
If it’s getting around 100MB/s or less and slows progressively it could be a Ventura bug.

Could be the external SSD issue that reared its head when Ventura first got released. What’s your OS version? I heard the latest might fix it?

When I had the issue on my M1 Max MacBook Pro, only a full wipe and reinstall would fix it permanently. If it’s new I’d ask for a replacement.
 

fakestrawberryflavor

macrumors 6502
May 24, 2021
423
569
I have no issues moving files from USB Drives (Samsung T7 & SanDisk Extreme USB 3.2) to M2 Max 2TB SSD. Super fast, we're talking seconds not even minutes depending on the size of things. Super large files (.ISOs and VMs) or small files (MP4s and JPGs) tested just to test.
 

fakestrawberryflavor

macrumors 6502
May 24, 2021
423
569
I tried a Red Mini-Mag reader, USB C, and transfer speeds were really low to the MacBook Pro M2 16 inch. Same with a Samsung T7. These work fast on other systems.

I did try to format the Samsung drive to Mac OS friendly, and that seems to have helped, but I can't with the Red Mini Mag reader - why is the speed slow? Anything I can do about it? Doesn't make sense that I can't transfer camera files!
What SSD size do you have in your M2 Pro?
 

HobeSoundDarryl

macrumors G5
There is objective evidence that Silicon ports do not operate at their implied speeds. Read this for some eye-opening analysis. So if OPs disappointment stems from what he expects from ports implied to work at typical speeds, perhaps it is as simple as the horses are either not actually there... or Apple needs to do some things in port management software to realize their full potential.

Due to other issues with "works fine on even pre-Big Sur Macs but not on Big Sur or newer Macs" situations, I've become near completely convinced that there are bugs in macOS port management software resulting in a very mixed bag of experiences ranging from "works perfectly" to "doesn't work at all" for U(niversal)SB devices.

Apple fans will- of course- shift blame to user, cables, third party enclosures, third party drives, user settings, etc, typically ignoring the reality that it works fine with PCs and even Macs running macOS before Big Sur using the same cable by the same user with the same enclosure and same drive. Why? Apparently, Apple can make no mistakes and/or they know there are problems but prefer to play the redirection game for presumably free for some unknown reason.

OP should certainly do the easy things like trying a different cable (just in case). However, if the same cable + enclosure + drive is plenty fast on other computers, it's not hard to grasp the unique variable(s) in the "too slow" scenario.

My advice: If OP wants near full speed, do what others are doing to try to work around the likely bugs in macOS: start trying a variety of enclosures until you find one that works faster than the one you have. This is fully hit or miss and not brand or age (of enclosure creation) dependent, meaning one product from a brand may work well and another won't... and assuming age is the culprit somewhat misses the point of the U in USB (verified in my own testing which included digging out some long retired USB enclosures to try to find a solution. For my issues, some of the oldies worked better than some brand new enclosures).

OR, accept it as it is and hope that Apple will eventually get around to debugging & refining their Silicon Port management code because it seems there are clearly some issues to improve there. Anyone with any doubts should do some searches for Silicon USB issues to find what seems like a near countless number of threads both here and elsewhere. If you really dig in, you are likely to find that most of the issues begin with Big Sur and are not a Silicon-only issue, implying macOS is the key player here. In many cases, all of the stuff "it could be" (that dodges pointing the finger at Apple) clash with it working fine on the same Mac BEFORE Big Sur (through same cable, by same user, with same user settings, etc), so the lone change was Big Sur or more recent macOS version upgrades.
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.