Thunderbolt 2 SSD

[zalle]

Hi guys, I own a 2015 27" iMac, and I'm using an external SSD drive through usb 3.

It's got thunderbolt 2, which is supposed to be 4x faster than usb3.

Can I use an external thunderbolt ssd with the system and boot it from there? Ideally I want a 2TB SSD.

I don't seem to find such devices for sale, only thunderbolt 3, which has a different connection.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Juicy Box]

Can I use an external thunderbolt ssd with the system and boot it from there?

Yes. Even if speeds were identical, there are actually benefits of using TB over USB as your boot drive.

TB SSDs have TRIM support on MacOS, something that USB SSDs do not. Having TRIM will extend the life of the SSD and keep it running at full performance for longer.

Most people do not have issues with USB SSDs, but you do occasionally see a TRIM, or a lack of TRIM, related issue on the forum.

The biggest reason people use USB over TB for SSDs is that USB is much cheaper for a decent enough speed.

I don't seem to find such devices for sale, only thunderbolt 3, which has a different connection.

There are hardly any TB1 and TB2 SSDs out there, and the ones that are out there are very pricey.

I have purchased a few TB1 HDDs over the years, and pulled the HDD out, put in a SATA SSD. This probably won't get you the faster speed you are looking for though.

It requires a TB3 Dock or a TB3 Drive that has its own power source, but you can use TB3 SSDs, such as a NVMe SSD, on TB1 and TB2 Macs. It require the expensive bidirectional adapter that Apple sells. You can sometimes find them for half the new price for a used one on eBay. You need a TB3 Dock or a drive that has its own power source because the power to run TB3 devices will not be available via the TB1/2 port.

It is expensive and requires the extra equipment (dock, bidirectional adapter), so not worth it to most when a USB SSD is usually a decent improvement on older/failed internal drives, which is why most people use the external boot drives.

I don't have TB2 Mac so I can't test it, but on my TB1 Macs, I am able to get over 900MBps sequential speeds using a TB3 NVMe SSD in the Samsung X5 drive.

It's got thunderbolt 2, which is supposed to be 4x faster than usb3.

It totally depends on the SSD Drive you are using. A NVMe over TB2 would probably will be faster, although, maybe not 4x. Probably 2.5-3 times faster.

 

[zalle]

Hi, thanks for your detailed answer.

I was thinking about a nvme SSD + a casing.

Do you know what casing would be suitable? Where/how to find it? I'm in Europe.

I'm getting just over 400MBps read/write over usb.

 

[ovbacon]

Hi guys, I own a 2015 27" iMac, and I'm using an external SSD drive through usb 3.

It's got thunderbolt 2, which is supposed to be 4x faster than usb3.

Can I use an external thunderbolt ssd with the system and boot it from there? Ideally I want a 2TB SSD.

I don't seem to find such devices for sale, only thunderbolt 3, which has a different connection.

Thanks for your help.

I have a 2015 5K iMac and it is running off a external 2TB ssd through usb3. As you I tried to go the tb2 route but couldn't find any normal priced cable to go from tb2 > tb3 (external ssd). Anything tb2 seems to be extremely pricy and the few I've seen that used it were unimpressed by results.

I just made sure the cable I had for my ssd enclosure was very good and I get 400mbps r/w which is good enough for this machine. I just don't restart it very often since that seems to take a really long time... everything else once running seems pretty good.

I do not use it as my main as I have a new mini M2.

 

[zalle]

The Lacie rugged thunderbolt drives wouldn't de any faster. Would they?. The bottleneck would be the SATA 500MBps, wouldn't it?

 

[ovbacon]

The Lacie rugged thunderbolt drives wouldn't de any faster. Would they?. The bottleneck would be the SATA 500MBps, wouldn't it?

nope they wouldn't be... If you really want to make that iMac fast again you kinda need to replace the internal hdd (fusion drive) with an ssd. That seems to really work for people but it comes at some risk. My iMac has screen damage and so it wasn't worth replacing the internal fusion with an ssd and have a brand new screen put on.

And like I said I have no experience with connecting an external ssd through tb2 but the arguments that I have seen here on MR seem to not indicate a massive speed increase.

 

[Juicy Box]

I was thinking about a nvme SSD + a casing.

Do you know what casing would be suitable?

I don't know of any new NVMe enclosures for TB1/2.

Transcend makes a TB2 enclosure that is a package deal with their NVMe (JetDrive 855), so maybe that could be used with other brands' NVMe SSDs, but I don't know for sure.

Even if it does, Transcend doesn't advertise the speeds of their enclosures, just the NVMe that comes in the enclosure. Plus they are really expensive, you might as well just go the TB3 NVMe option or just stick with the USB3.

just don't restart it very often since that seems to take a really long time... everything else once running seems pretty good.

I know about weird boot issues.

I have a lot of iMacs, two are 27" Late 2012 and two are 27" Late 2013 iMacs. Of those four, three have/had Fusion Drives, and one with a HDD.

All had the HDD fail at least once, one more than once.

I noticed that they all had slower than normal boot times when running on an external drive. It didn't matter if the external drive was USB or TB. They would run fine after the boot was done.

The iMac with only the HDD actually had the worse boot times when booting externally, it would seem to hang at the very beginning, only to slow boot, then run great after booting.

When I installed Catalina on the HDD iMac (again, on an external, the internal HDD totally failed), the boot times got really bad, but would run great once booted for about 15 minutes then I would a kernel panic and auto restart.

This didn't happen on the same model, just with a failed Fusion Drive instead of a failed HDD.

Used the same external to boot into the Mojave partition, and it was less slow and no Kernel Panic.

BTW, replacing the internal HDD with a SATA SSD corrected all the goofy behavior.


But, I think the boot issues are being caused by the boot loader trying to find drives that are not working.

The Lacie rugged thunderbolt drives wouldn't de any faster. Would they?. The bottleneck would be the SATA 500MBps, wouldn't it?

I am not sure how it would be on TB2, but I have a LaCie Rugged TB1 enclosure that original had a HDD in it, and I swapped it for a SATA SSD.

On TB1, it is on par with USB3. The upside is that it has TRIM.

Another upside is that it works great on older Macs with only USB2, but has TB1, such as the Mid 2011 iMac, which I have two of them.

 

[HDFan]

Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter

Effortlessly connect your Mac to a Thunderbolt 2 device with the Apple Thunderbolt 3 Adapter. Buy now at apple.com

www.apple.com

 

[Fishrrman]

Where are you going to FIND a thunderbolt2 drive now?

"I was thinking about a nvme SSD + a casing"

I doubt you're going to find one of these (at least in tbolt2) anywhere.

My advice:
Keep using the USB3 setup you have now.
Put any money you would have spent towards a new Mac -- the 2015 is now 8 years old, going on 9.

 

[SaSaSushi]

I've been using a Delock 42510 Thunderbolt 2 enclosure for almost 10 years now and it's still going strong.

I originally used it to boot my Late 2013 iMac. I loved it so much I bought Apple's overpriced TB3 to TB2 adapter cable to keep using it with my 2017 iMac and am still using it to this day for daily CCC clone backups.

It is still out there. You can get one here:

Delock 42510 Thunderbolt External Enclosure for SATA 6Gb/s 2.5-inch SSD and HDD, Synchrotech

Synchrotech manufactures, distributes, and supports PCMCIA, PC Card, ExpressCard, Memory Cards, FireWire, USB, PCIe, and X25 technologies.

www.synchrotech.com

If you don't mind a beaten up box you could save $15 on eBay.

Delock Thunderbolt External Enclosure for SATA 6Gb/s 2.5-inch SSD HDD 42510 Open | eBay

Delock Thunderbolt External Enclosure for SATA 6Gb/s 2.5-inch SSD HDD 42510.

www.ebay.com

 

[rlsx]

I don't have TB2 Mac so I can't test it, but on my TB1 Macs, I am able to get over 900MBps sequential speeds using a TB3 NVMe SSD in the Samsung X5 drive.

Sorry, arriving late to the discussion.
Thank you for your very detailed explanation.
Question: How is your Samsung X5 drive connected to your older Mac, and getting "over 900MBps sequential speeds"

 

[rlsx]

One last contribution:
Delock makes a (fairly expensive) NVME enclosure with a possibility of an external power supply.
DELOCK 42015:
https://www.amazon.com/DeLOCK-42015-storage-enclosure-external/dp/B0BV8H9MVG/
So, in theory one could use: TB2 —> Apple converter cable —> DELOCK 42015 (with power brick)
I haven't tested this, given the price of the enclosure.
It may be available at a lower price elsewhere.

 

[PaulD-UK]

@rlsx Read the previous para to the one you quoted from @Juicy Box:
"It requires a TB3 Dock or a TB3 Drive that has its own power source, but you can use TB3 SSDs, such as a NVMe SSD, on TB1 and TB2 Macs. It require the expensive bidirectional adapter that Apple sells. You can sometimes find them for half the new price for a used one on eBay. You need a TB3 Dock or a drive that has its own power source because the power to run TB3 devices will not be available via the TB1/2 port."

So plug a TB2 cable into the iMac (or other TB1/2 computer) and plug the other end into the TB2 socket on the Apple adaptor.
Plug the other TB3 end of the adapter into the upstream (Computer) TB3 port of the dock.

Plug the Samsung X5 (or any other bus powered TB3 SSD) SSD cable into the other (downstream) TB3 port of the dock.
Connect the dock to mains power.
Switch everything on, and you're good to go...

USB bus powered drives can be connected to any 10GBps USB port on the dock.

Any cheap previously owned Mac compatible TB3 dock will do, you don't need a new expensive one

EDIT: Yes that DeLOCK enclosure should work. EDIT EDIT: Ignore this, see later post.
iMac>TB2 cable>Apple TB2>TB3 adapter>DeLock 42015>external PSU.

 

[ignatius345]

My advice:
Keep using the USB3 setup you have now.
Put any money you would have spent towards a new Mac -- the 2015 is now 8 years old, going on 9.

100% this. Even an M1 machine is going to feel a million times faster than that old Intel Mac.

 

[rlsx]

Plug the Samsung X5 (or any other bus powered TB3 SSD) SSD cable into the other (downstream) TB3 port of the dock.
Connect the dock to mains power.
Switch everything on, and you're good to go...

USB bus powered drives can be connected to any 10GBps USB port on the dock.

Any cheap previously owned Mac compatible TB3 dock will do, you don't need a new expensive one

Thanks for your reply. Which TB3 dock are you using in your setup?

 

[PaulD-UK]

I've retired my TB1/2 computers nowadays, but any TB3 dock will work the same way (except some by PC manufacturers made for their own systems).
A £50 one from eBay works as well as my Glyph TB3 and WD D50 TB3 docks.
Both the Glyph and the WD are higher cost (but bought at sale prices), and have an NVMe M.2 slot inside them, so they act as daisy-chainable TB3-speed self-powered external enclosures + USB ports etc.

 

[arw]

So, in theory one could use: TB2 —> Apple converter cable —> DELOCK 42015 (with power brick)

No, it won't work.
In your setup, the Apple TB3 > TB2 adapter needs a Thunderbolt controller at the USB-C end. The DeLOCK 42015 only has a USB 3.2 controller.
You need an enclosure like this: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...inject-power-into-usb-c.2436402/post-33398713
Or as mentioned, a TB3 dock in between.
I now come to realize, the linked thread is kind of a duplicate of this one.

 

[rlsx]

Just stumbled on this item on eBay, a Thunderbolt 2 NVME enclosure:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/235699106301
Described as:
Thunderbolt 2 M.2 NVMe External SSD Enclosure For iMac No disassembly required
The item is no-name, and the description ends with the following strange statement:
"This device only supports Kioxia and WD M.2 NVMe SSDs"
The seller proposes as well the enclosure with NVME inside 500GB -> 2TB.
PS: Sent from Wuhan, China.
I found out it's also sold on Amazon US. Amazon ASIN: B0DHLB1YMN.

 

[steve123]

Thunderbolt 1 2 M.2 NVMe External SSD Enclosure For iMac No disassembly required | eBay

External Thunderbolt 2: 8XXMB/s. The External Thunderbolt 2 speed was tested on the late 2015 A1419 model. External USB 3.0 SSD: Around 400MB/s.

www.ebay.com

Seems slow for TB2. Should be around 1400. The listing does not show the side of the pcb with the controller so I cannot determine which controller is used.

 

[rlsx]

Seems slow for TB2. Should be around 1400. The listing does not show the side of the pcb with the controller so I cannot determine which controller is used.

Indeed, it seems slow. About twice as fast as using USB3. The convenience is the main point, but it's not cheap.
Do you understand why "only supports Kioxia and WD M.2 NVMe SSDs"?

 

[steve123]

Do you understand why "only supports Kioxia and WD M.2 NVMe SSDs"?

Without knowing which TB controller is being used it is hard to understand why this limitation exists.

 

[rlsx]

Without knowing which TB controller is being used it is hard to understand why this limitation exists.

Their statement is very vague. Are all generations of WD M.2 NVME's similar?

 

[PaulD-UK]

"Their statement is very vague."

Maybe:
If there are problems with other NVMe manufacturer's NVMes, Blue Ant have tested their enclosure to find ones that do work?

Kioxia (Toshiba) and WD have at least heard of Apple, and tested to make their products compatible with Apple.
Apple has bought storage products from Kioxia and WD, and will have been in development with them in the past, so have a relationship to solve problems, and make their products mutually compatible.

Whether your beloved Kingchuxing, Weijinto, Kootion or Xraydisk NVMe SSDs (to take 4 at random from AliE's 1st search page) perform with a TB2 chipset? That's is anyone's guess?

Would I throw my toys out of my pram because "Thunderbolt is a 'Standard' and any SSD should work?"

Spoiler alert:
No. Buy from a manufacturer that develops their products to be compatible with Apple.

My guess as to the low speed of the enclosure is that Intel's TB2 'Falcon Ridge' device controller doesn't easily integrate with NVMe to allow higher speeds?

Here's a quote from a discussion about external NVMe enclosures with a 2013 Mac Pro:

1. The MP Falcon Ridge TB2 bridge is showing capabilities = negotiated speed = 4 lanes x 2.5 Gbps = 10 Gbps;
2. The OWC TB4 hub Goshen Ridge controller is showing capabilities = negotiated speed = 4 lanes x 2.5 Gbps = 10 Gbps;
3. The SSD enclosure TB3 Titan Ridge controller is showing capabilities = 4 lanes x 8 Gbps = 32 Gbps and negotiated speed of 4 lanes x 2.5 Gbps = 10 Gbps.
4. So, it appears the Falcon Ridge TB2 bridge has not been configured for 20 Gbps for some reason. The good news is I think the issue could likely be fixed with an update to the EFI. The bad news is an engineer at Apple would have to make the update because it involves the EFI.

 

[steve123]

Their statement is very vague. Are all generations of WD M.2 NVME's similar?

No. The most obvious difference is PCIe. Different generations of SSD often have different generations of PCIe. Generally, the more recent versions support the more recent, and faster, versions of PCIe. There can be other differences as well due to differences in the controller used on the NVMe SSD which generally also changes with each new generation of SSD.

What we can likely expect is the TB controller used in the device is circa TB2 and is not something that was designed to bridge to TB3 or beyond. Such a device would probably be limited to PCIe gen 2. Gen 2 could provide up to 20 Gbps using 4 PCIe lanes but it is possible the controller only uses 2 lanes.

Also, TB2 does not tunnel PCIe. So, the TB controller in the enclosure must enumerate as a storage device. This may be the reason the enclosure's controller only works with certain SSD's. That is, the firmware running in the enclosure's controller might only support certain types of SSD's and might not have been updated.

 

[rlsx]

I don't know of any new NVMe enclosures for TB1/2.

Transcend makes a TB2 enclosure that is a package deal with their NVMe (JetDrive 855), so maybe that could be used with other brands' NVMe SSDs, but I don't know for sure.

Even if it does, Transcend doesn't advertise the speeds of their enclosures, just the NVMe that comes in the enclosure. Plus they are really expensive, you might as well just go the TB3 NVMe option or just stick with the USB3.

I just got an empty Transcend Jetdrive 855 NVME enclosure (Thunderbolt 2).
* https://www.transcend-info.com/product/internal-ssd/jetdrive-855
I put inside an SK HYNIX P31, 1 TB disk, using a Sintech-like adapter (Kalea-Informatique).
Connected to a 2012 Macbook Air, the speeds are: 750 Mbs — read / 700 Mbs — write [Blackmagic].
Not fantastic: Probably the limitations of the Transcend Jetdrive chipset?
I have yet to test it as a boot drive, connected to an iMac 27, 2013.