Still no flush microSD adapter for Mx series…?

[nucl30us_m]

I thought I’d need Mountain, but it just stays connected and shows as internal drive in Disk Utility – interesting, that! With the previous card it was 1 GB per minute, now I took a few hours and the 1TB card is already half-full. Now, if someone could tell me why I have 148 GB of System Data… but that’s another thread on many other subforums

So it looks like 3 1TB micro SD cards that get decent write speeds with the BaseQI adapter are the Samsung EVO Select, the Sandisk Extreme (not Ultra, which has slow write speeds), and the Teamgroup Go Card. Any reason to choose one of these 3 over the others, such as form factor? If performance is about the same between the 3, I'm wondering which is the thinnest and won't be as likely to get stuck in the adapter or cause similar problems.

I'm planning on getting the adapter with a 1TB sd card to use with a refurbished M1 pro I'm planning on buying soon, so wondering which card to go with.

 

[navaira]

I just came back home after a week away and found this awaiting me – interestingly 303A is the older model, the 2015 MBP one, but clearly the packaging has been updated. I bought it from AliExpress. It wasn’t VERY easy to slide the card in – but then, I sort of prepared myself to expect the difficulty, so maybe it wasn’t all that difficult either, and I don’t intend to pull it out. Compared with the original Sandisk adapter, same speeds, 79 MB/s write, 90 MB/s read.

It’s silver and there was no other colour option (or I haven’t found it on AliExpress) but it’s not like I am going to spend a lot of time staring at the side of my MBP thinking “if ONLY it wasn’t such a wrong colour” – all I want is for it to not break. So far, so good. And so flush!

 

[kozz]

I have been using that adapter in my MBP for almost a year and a half and haven't had any issues with it. I also keep it in the machine most of the time rather than continually inserting and removing it from the machine.

I had it since my M1-M3 and only took it out when it failed to mount, one day in my M4 and it broke off. Luckily Apple was able to remove with no damage or cost…will never buy again.

Currently have the transcend jet drive lite…no issues so far.

 

[throAU]

Update 12/20 Received the BaseIQ adapter today and get the same results as from the Samsung adapter. So, 90mb read and 75mb write with a Samsung 512GB card.

View attachment 2464114

For comparison, if this was internal storage it would be approximately 6 GB/sec write and > 5 GB/sec read...

 

[jlc1978]

For comparison, if this was internal storage it would be approximately 6 GB/sec write and > 5 GB/sec read...

and you couldn't remove it from your machine and keep it in your pocket in case something happened to your main computer and you needed access to your files.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

and you couldn't remove it from your machine and keep it in your pocket in case something happened to your main computer and you needed access to your files.

Following this logic, nothing should ever be stored on an internal drive. I’d rather use the internal drive and follow a regular backup routine. Time Machine makes it a painless no brainer to perform backups.

 

[jlc1978]

Following this logic, nothing should ever be stored on an internal drive.

Not my point; my point is different storage media have different advantages and disadvantages.

I’d rather use the internal drive and follow a regular backup routine. Time Machine makes it a painless no brainer to perform backups.

Sure, TM backups are a good idea, multiple independent ones even better. But not everyone wants to plugin a HD everytime to do a backup, and TM backups are useless if:

• the backup drive is not with you
• your machine dies and you can't get Mac as a backup but can get a machine with another OS.

It's all about the felxibility to deal with different scenarios.

Having an SD card slot gives you the option to do regular backups in the background anywhere without having to attach an external drive.

In the end, having only one backup media is not a good idea since if it fails you no longer have a backup; having mutiple independent ones is a much more robust solution.

 

[throAU]

Yeah and I guess my point was that external microSD is cheap because it is very much not anywhere near the same.

Just in case less technical people stumbling into this thread as a new user think they can just add a future flush fitting microSD instead of buying internal storage without any significant trade off.

It’s not a 5x performance difference any more as it was 10 years ago. It’s 50-60x.

It’s bigger than the gap between floppy drives and hard disks back when they were a thing. Depending on what you’re doing, a modern external hard disk can be faster.

Sure if it is for backup or archive all good. But if you’re stretching to buy a MacBook Pro for performance and then expecting to work from SD storage to save money you’re likely better off buying an air and putting the dollars into storage.

Because the performance hit is 10x worse than it was a couple of replacement cycles (6-10 years) ago.

 

[navaira]

For comparison, if this was internal storage it would be approximately 6 GB/sec write and > 5 GB/sec read...

Not on the M4 MBP with its paltry 3,200/2,900 MB/s speeds It would also cost me €460.

I hope nobody reading this thread thinks that SD cards of any sort are as fast as even slow SSDs.

Currently have the transcend jet drive lite…no issues so far.

The reviews mention its short lifetime – that was my other idea. Review quote:

It isn't so much the speed of the card, but the total lifetime write/rewrites on these seem to be comically low and this early 2010's tech just does not work for how M1 and M2 macs write to the drives. These cards WILL die on you. The technology is old and only relevant now because the Macbooks prior to M1 did not have SD card slots. All Transcend did was put a "Compatible with M1 macs" sticker on decade old technology due to the SD slot returning to the M1 macs.

STRONG RECOMMENDATION TO AVOID, just buy a real SanDisk card to use for backups. I will update this if and when the replacement dies.”

Have you been using it for a while?

But hey, it’s blazingly fast

Still perfect for my storage needs. I moved my iPhone/iPad backups there and freed another 40 GB.

 

[jlc1978]

Just in case less technical people stumbling into this thread as a new user think they can just add a future flush fitting microSD instead of buying internal storage without any significant trade off.

The impact of the treoffs depends on how you are using the microSD.

If you are doing tasks that require a lot of read/writes, such as say video editing where you ar opening and saving large files, the speed difference can make a difference; and you should invest in more internal storage.

If you are storing older files, backing up files in the background, or eve opening and saving smaller files, the speed difference is pretty much inconsequential; in those use cases a microSD is a viable low cost solution.

Sure if it is for backup or archive all good. But if you’re stretching to buy a MacBook Pro for performance and then expecting to work from SD storage to save money you’re likely better off buying an air and putting the dollars into storage.

Sure, but there are other use cases where it works just fine as well. There is no one perfect solution, all have pluses and minuses.