Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

[lecureuil]

In most cases, it’s not the enclosure, that matters, but nearly always the SSD-stick you put into the enclosure. A good place to start is here:

The Inland Performance Plus 2TB SSD Review: Phison's E18 NVMe Controller Tested

www.anandtech.com

Note, that when you plan on writing large amounts to an SSD, it is really important to look into the write performance. If you use BlackMagic and other test programs, you only get “sprint info” (few megabytes written). What you need is to look into “Marathon distances” for write, let’s say several hundred gigabyte in one go, if you edit video and other large size projects.

If you look in this table, you clearly see, that some SSD’s in many respects are “write once read many” types, where copying/saving/writing large amounts of data can reach DOWN to the same level, as rotating rust (HDD):

https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16636/fill-last16.png

Compare the performance of Samsung 970 Pro (which I use) and Corsair MP600, and it’s easy to see the real life differences.

Note, that these measurements are performed internally on desktop computers. If you mount them in an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, you’ll typically reach read limits of 2700-2800 Megabyte/second and around 2200-2300 megabyte/second for the absolute best SSD’s (give or take a bit). Aaand only, when you move really large files (hundreds or thousands or more megabyte apiece); if you move a lot of small to tiny files, SSD’s also slow down, just like HDD’s.

These figures are ONLY realistic, if you connect the enclosure directly to the machine via a good cable (usually included with the enclosure) and with sufficient cooling (cooling pads not always included or too thin, but a few spare/extra pads bought at the same time, doesn’t cost much).

If connected via an external dock, especially write speed will suffer. The dock has a maximum of 40GBit/sec, and if you also have a hi-res monitor or two connected, as well as networking and other paraphernalia, throughput will suffer. Just like a six lane freeway may be congested, if lot’s of cars is trying get through at the same time, and speed suffers.

Notebooks with four thunderbolt connections are obviously better suited, than notebooks with only two or especially limiting one, if power via USB-C is also taking place. In addition to that, it pays to look at standard usage. Example:

If I copy a huge file-set from one Thunderbolt enclosure to another, directly connected to the same notebook, I get around 1 GByte per second on my Asus EliteBook B9450FA (Intel) - two ports, for copy the power supple cannot be connected - compared to 2 GByte per second copying the same files from/to the same SSD/enclosures using the same cables on my Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2018, Intel, four ports). The first has two ports, the latter has four, but that’s NOT the limiting factor here. The Asus cannot sustain both writing and reading to different thunderbolt 3 ports at the same time. The Apple can, and it does not matter, if the ports are on different sides or on the same side. It’s the actual motherboard hardware design - both use Intel chips - that makes the difference. Whether NTFS, ExFAT or APFS is used has nigh to zero influence on performance.

Both machines deliver roughly the same, high read and write results, when using standard disk speed test programs. That’s the shocker in this example from real life.

In the big picture, the enclosure and cable seldom has a big influence (most use near identical chipsets and electronics anyway). The quality of the actual computer, the environment planned for use (direct connection or via dock) and most: The actual quality of the SSD - reaching from superb and expensive to downright lousy, but cheap.

That’s my view.It’s not popular amongst resellers of low cost SSD’s ;-)

Regards

you are right but still, all the enclosures are not the same, depending on the performance and qualité of the PCB and the chipset, each SSD will react differently

One must find the best combination between enclosure and SSD

 

[UltimoInfierno]

you are right but still, all the enclosures are not the same, depending on the performance and qualité of the PCB and the chipset, each SSD will react differently

One must find the best combination between enclosure and SSD

Come on…

Don’t buy unless you are allowed to return the goods.

Do not even contemplating handling enclosure, PCB’s and SSD’s, unless you are familiar with antistatic procedures (most are not, and a few even manage to damage cast metal enclosures and still insist “I didn’t touch anything” with their fingerprints clearly visible on the casing ;-)

There are - meaybe - “bad” enclosures “out there”, but really…

Just, that there are also high performance SSD’s - like the Samsung 970 EVO Plus (I have a 2 TB version), that are incompatble with most, if not all, enclosures on the market (write speed cannot get past 1100-1300 MByte/second under any circumstances, even though far, far higher values are possible, when mounted internally on a computer motherboard). Many, if not most, enclosure manufacturers specifically warn against using this specific SSD type, and I have the same experience with four combinations of different designs, manufaturers and generations of Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 enclosures.

No amount of enclosure quality can remedy bad or badly designed or generally badly performing SSD’s, severely limiting, what is actually possible in modern enclosures. Or clumsy, incompetent users, for that matter ;-)

What you’re after is fine tuning, but then… why’re you looking for external Thunderbolt 3 SSD enclosures? That’s contrary to maximum performance (compared to internal use). In the SSD-world, even a singular, exclusively used Thunderbolt 3 40 GBit connection is a significant limitation on performance on top level SSD’s.

Compared to that, differences between enclosures using same cable, same data on same machine and same SSD is minute - in the region of a single percent or two under extremely optimized test conditions with a “clean”, empty and freshly TRIM’ed SSD. Conditions, you practically never experience anywhere in real life In ordinary use, with all the differences in daily data composition in transfers alone.

With the copy differences like between my Asus B9450 and my MacBook Pro 13, anything else completely pales, just to mention what really matters (like an open hand crashing down in a bowl of soup, compared to a slight sneeze ;-)

Regards and a big smile

 

[Ifti]

I just tested a new Orico TB4 drive - really impressed with it!

 

[masotime]

I just tested a new Orico TB4 drive - really impressed with it!

It's a $170 though - some 2TB NVMe drives are the same price - it's a bit hard to swallow.

 

[UltimoInfierno]

It's a $170 though - some 2TB NVMe drives are the same price - it's a bit hard to swallow.

That's not really expensive for this flexible enclosure (both Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbit) and USB-C (10GBit) can be connected. A really top level 1TB (max capacity version) Samsung 970 Pro SSD is around 270 USD.

Quality combined with performance has never been cheap. You can get a cheaper Orico or Yottamaster or... or... for less, if you decide, you do not want the extra USB-C capability for connecting to gear without Thunderbolt 3 connection.

 

[UltimoInfierno]

I just tested a new Orico TB4 drive - really impressed with it!

I have it to, and it really is an interesting product. It's a tiny bit faster, than the normal Orico Thunderbolt only enclosure, I have, when connected directly to the same M1 via Thunderbolt 3 cable. The standard USB-C - 10 Gbit - built-in capability really comes handy, when you want to connect to a modern smartphone or other USB-only gear.

Remember, that Thunderbolt SSD NvME enclosures, are counting on up to 15W sustained power availability (or at least for long stretches of writes), when connecting to "normal" USB-only ports (whether C or A).

I have experienced several cases of up to severely "flaky" connections, when NOT connected to a "grown up" powered hub/dock. If that happens during write, chances are, that the SSD file system may be damaged - not only the file, you're trying to write. Instability is a given, when connecting to ports, that do not have the required "umpfhh" in real life.

Some USB-C hubs only reserve 15W for their internal use, and this includes this drive. That will not really work well in real life, so test your USB connections/gear thoroughly, before relying on the use on travels, where a capable USB-C hub may not be easy to find (I didn't write cheap, but "capable" - biiiiig difference ;-)

Filling the drive completely in one, huge sustained and complete capacity write/copy, is a reasonably good test of stamina of the USB port you connect to. If you plan on use powerbanks too, it pays to test real life requirements, when both USB-C hub and this drive are used, and - maybe - the controlling smartphone is also requesting power.

Regards and a big smile

 

[masotime]

That's not really expensive for this flexible enclosure (both Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbit) and USB-C (10GBit) can be connected. A really top level 1TB (max capacity version) Samsung 970 Pro SSD is around 270 USD.

A 1TB 980 Pro has gone as low as $160 about a month ago - $270 for an older version 970 Pro is really price gouging.
More recently, the 2TB SN850 has gone as low as $270.

I really can't recommend any 1TB NVMe drive for more than $200 now - along the same lines, I feel like an NVMe enclosure isn't going to be worth it if a top-tier 2TB NVMe drive can be obtained for < $300 if the enclosure itself is more than half that price - except maybe if it can reach NVMe 4.0 speeds of more than 4 GB/s read and 4 GB/s write speeds.

 

[UltimoInfierno]

A 1TB 980 Pro has gone as low as $160 about a month ago - $270 for an older version 970 Pro is really price gouging. [….cut]

No it actually isn”t, if you require the absolute maximum sustained write speed on external media. The “old version” is far more potent, since it uses MLC chips (and they are expensive to produce compared to TLC or QLC chips), and that IS the reason behind the sustained write speed for ANY write size up to full capacity.

The modern TLC and even worse, most QLC chips, are simply not able to hold the speed, when handling sustained writes exceeding the size of the internal SLC cache (some low cost SSD’s come without write cache at all, and their write performance is absolutely horrible for writes of any size).

Your use case or preferences may not need maximum write performance, and that is absolutely fine with me. I cannot use your recommandation as anything other, than an unqualified opinion, and that does not “move gigabytes at speed” ;-)

Regarding SSD’s the old “no holes barred” approach in using MLC chips is the whole point behind these products still existing in the high performance market.

Many people don’t need this kind of performance. Some believe, that “old” equals ”slow”, and most people more or less ignore anything but price. SSD’s are NOT created equal, as this simple image shows:

https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph16636/fill-last16.png

Some of the cheapest SSD’s have sustained write speeds, that are in nearly the same (low performance) league as 3.5” 7.200 rpm 12-14 TB rotating rust drives. My preferred SSD reaches write speeds, that are actually around a factor ten bigger, than the ones at the bottom of the list.

That matters to me!

You may value cost higher, or gigabytes per cent or whatever pleases you.

Regards

 

[lecureuil]

I was wondering…

The lifespan of a SSD is based on the quantity of data written.

The faster a SSD runs, the shorter would its lifespan be ?

Btw I have been comparing enclosures prices in Europe and they almost all in the same price range, so the Orico might be the best solution so far ?

 

[UltimoInfierno]

I was wondering…

The lifespan of a SSD is based on the quantity of data written.

The faster a SSD runs, the shorter would its lifespan be ?

Btw I have been comparing enclosures prices in Europe and they almost all in the same price range, so the Orico might be the best solution so far ?

The ligespan is based on amount of data written. These amounts are huge, but you are right. If you are only able to write 100 megabyte/sec it takes 20 times more to write the same amount of data, than ot does to write 2GB/second. You - personally -use 20 times longer time to complete the same task.

Let’s say, you write 100GB to the disk. Whether it takes a long time or a short time, you have written 100 GB. The specified lifespan has diminished with 100GB written.

Top class SSD’s typically are specified with a longer timespan, than the cheapest consumer SSD’s. In all cases, it is a “statistical lifespan” with little to no practical use in real life. The Samsung is specified to work for minimum 1200 TBW (terabytes written) or at maximum speed you can fill the complete SSD 1200 times over. Or 5 years, whatever comes first. For consumer SSD’s, the limit is often 2 or 3 years only.

At 2GB/sec this will take 1200 times 500 seconds or 600.000 seconds (specs are seen here https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970pro/).There are 86.400 seconds in a day, and it will take you roughly seven days of non-stop writing to reach 1200 TBW. 70 days if you only can reach 1200 TBW with 200 megabyte/sec. Wear is the same. You just use more time on slower disks.

But… but… but…

Why would you fill the SSD fully from start to end 1200 times, without even reading and using the data at least once, before starting all over each time?

You won’t earn any brownie points, if the director on a video set has to yell “CUT” just because you bought the cheapest and slowest SSD and made it completely impossible to complete even short takes without loosing data while crew and talent are waiting and equipment rent fees accumulate at hourly costs, that are far higher, than total SSD costs.

SSD’s are used for a lot of things. In modern video editing settings, it makes a lot of sense to get the highest speed reasonably priced external media, that is available “everywhere” within hours or a day or two, if it fails. A 100 USD difference, when written 1200 times is small change, if that copy in process will only take 7 days accumulated instead of 70 days (just to name the outliers) over a period of, let’s say a year or less. Normally you do not start working on material, that has not even been completely written yet.

Speed can and often does equal large or even impressive amounts of time and money saved, compared to the price difference between cheap, average or best in class.

It’s quite OK, that you - personally - only judge gear for personal use based on only your needs; do not assume, that your needs are universally valid, though.

Regards

 

[Mad Davey]

As discussed in earlier posts.

I purchased the Echo Express SE IIIe for my M1 mini, going from a cMP.

I installed my 7101A. About a week ago I did not get the web GUI or driver to work for the 7101A, but it works good for the SAS RR2722 card. I used both together in cMP and the drop down in the web GUI would let me switch between the two, now when I install the driver for the 7101A it knocks out both drivers and neither work in the GUI or in the system report. So I'm moving forward with no driver for 7101A. Although I noticed yesterday they did put a new driver up that supports OS 12 for the 7101 so I may try that later but I need to be sure I have a solid backup first. I have a third SATA card in the case as well.

In the 7101A I have a raid stripe setup with two 512 960 pro's, I left that raid intact from cMP, Also a single 1tb 970 EVO as well as a 1tb 980 Pro in the 7101.

A few observations.

The hardware raid disk stays intact in the new system in the Sonnet, no issues, so someone can setup raid in another machine then transfer the 7101 card in.

The 2 x 960 Pro raid in the 7101 seems limited by the Thunderbolt or the Sonnet case, probably both. I was getting 3260 write and 4660 reads in my cMP. The same raid in the M1 through the Sonnet 3 PCI enclosure in the 7101 is getting 1651 write and 2479 read.

The 1 tb 970 EVO was getting 2469 read and 2686 write in the cMP in the 7101, in the sonnet on the M1 mini it's getting 1808 read and 2627 write which surprisingly, is faster than the raid.

I did not plan to use the raid moving forward but wanted to see how it would work. I have yet to test the single 980 Pro, but my guess is it will not be far from the EVO.

I am very happy with the Sonnet SE IIIe case and did end up cutting the back of the middle slot out very carefully so I did not have to use the 8x to 16x riser, but it did fit just perfectly. I did have to move the Sonnets Noctua fan from the inside to in front of the inner aluminum front plate. Surprisingly easy to do. I have PWM temp sensors coming for my SAS case and my Sonnet to try to quiet things down more. Although everything is currently about half the noise of my cMP which I thought was fairly silent. I plan to remove the fan and end cap on the 7101, it's the loudest thing here.

 

[Mad Davey]

Ok, I was wrong, the 980 Pro does much better, it reads at just over 2500 and writes around 2400.

 

[joevt]

You could try using a dremel to turn one of the slots into an open ended x8 to allow an x16 to fit.
It should connect as an x4 slot and the speed should be the same as the SE3 or similar to any other Thunderbolt enclosure.

I tried the following successfully:
The riser at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D46WW1V will raise the card by 19mm.
The Sonnet SE IIIe has about 25mm of clearance (from the underside of the pcie bracket).
the HighPoint SDD7505 rises about 6mm above the underside of the pcie bracket.
6mm + 19mm = 25 mm so it's a perfect fit.
If the SSD7101A is of a similar size then it should work. Get a 19mm standoff to make it more secure. I'm not sure what size of screw the Sonnet uses for the pcie brackets. Bigger than M3. Maybe #6-32?

I found a x8 riser https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NX9D72S

I was also considering the idea of cutting this one down to x8 since I like the straight traces as opposed to the others that use vias, but I'm sure that it would be the same anyway. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RWRK2L6

I am very capable of dremeling it without damage, however I am sure that would void my warranty so a riser it is at least for a while.

I wonder if I will regret not spending the extra money for the Echo III, for example if they start to support external gpu's with the m1.

On my old 5,1 with the 7101A card I was using the driver Highpoint provided (disabled SIP to install), should I use that driver on the M1 mini or is it not supported?

I just pulled the trigger on the Express SE3e from Newegg for $500, I plan to use the riser for a while at least to maintain warranty. I hope to use the 7101A and a highpoint SAS card with some SATA drives, now to find a good SAS enclosure. I like the older highpoint SAS cards since they were compatible with my 5,1 and allowed for sata drives in raid or single to be connected at ok speeds respectively. I will also have the ability to add a third card. I will report back later. Thanks for the tips joevt!

As discussed in earlier posts.

I purchased the Echo Express SE IIIe for my M1 mini, going from a cMP.

I installed my 7101A. About a week ago I did not get the web GUI or driver to work for the 7101A, but it works good for the SAS RR2722 card. I used both together in cMP and the drop down in the web GUI would let me switch between the two, now when I install the driver for the 7101A it knocks out both drivers and neither work in the GUI or in the system report. So I'm moving forward with no driver for 7101A. Although I noticed yesterday they did put a new driver up that supports OS 12 for the 7101 so I may try that later but I need to be sure I have a solid backup first. I have a third SATA card in the case as well.

In the 7101A I have a raid stripe setup with two 512 960 pro's, I left that raid intact from cMP, Also a single 1tb 970 EVO as well as a 1tb 980 Pro in the 7101.

A few observations.

The hardware raid disk stays intact in the new system in the Sonnet, no issues, so someone can setup raid in another machine then transfer the 7101 card in.

The 2 x 960 Pro raid in the 7101 seems limited by the Thunderbolt or the Sonnet case, probably both. I was getting 3260 write and 4660 reads in my cMP. The same raid in the M1 through the Sonnet 3 PCI enclosure in the 7101 is getting 1651 write and 2479 read.

The 1 tb 970 EVO was getting 2469 read and 2686 write in the cMP in the 7101, in the sonnet on the M1 mini it's getting 1808 read and 2627 write which surprisingly, is faster than the raid.

I did not plan to use the raid moving forward but wanted to see how it would work. I have yet to test the single 980 Pro, but my guess is it will not be far from the EVO.

I am very happy with the Sonnet SE IIIe case and did end up cutting the back of the middle slot out very carefully so I did not have to use the 8x to 16x riser, but it did fit just perfectly. I did have to move the Sonnets Noctua fan from the inside to in front of the inner aluminum front plate. Surprisingly easy to do. I have PWM temp sensors coming for my SAS case and my Sonnet to try to quiet things down more. Although everything is currently about half the noise of my cMP which I thought was fairly silent. I plan to remove the fan and end cap on the 7101, it's the loudest thing here.

I decided to try the 19mm stand off idea. 19mm is almost exactly 3/4 inch so I bought some 3/4 inch #6-32 male/female standoffs and a couple x8 to x16 risers.
I was disappointed that the threading of the male end of the standoffs did not extend all the way to the hex part of the standoff but the metal of the Sonnet backplane is thick enough that the standoffs almost don't have any vertical play and everything tightens up nicely when the PCIe cards are screwed into the standoffs.

So I installed an x16 card into each of the x8 (electrical and physical) slots. One amfeltec gen 3 with 4 M.2 slots, one HighPoint SSD7505 gen 4 with 4 M.2 slots, and one GC Titan Ridge card for the x4 electrical slot.
I had to put a rubber foot on the back of the amfeltec so it wouldn't interfere with the HighPoints fan.
The amfeltec is long enough that I had to move the fan of the Sonnet as @Mad Davey did.
The amfeltec didn't work in the middle slot so I had to switch its place with the HighPoint.
The GC-TITAN RIDGE doesn't work because I don't have its Force Power pin connected which should allow its USB controller to work. Thunderbolt support would require some extra software that doesn't exist yet.
The pictures have the cards in various alternate positions.

 

[Mad Davey]

I used a combination of some old mother board case mounts and tool-less case thumb screws. Your method looks more elegant. I added a 5v coil 125v 10a relay inline with a power cord hooked to a usb cable on my mini, so it fully powers down my SAS case as well as my sonnet Echo. Although the Echo didn't really need it, the lights inside tend to stay on and now all I should need to do to change cards is power down my comp.

 

[Mad Davey]

I hope there will be some way to run the titan ridge this way. talk about a teaser..

Incidentally Aliexpress sells those 8 to 16x risers for pennies on the dollar.

 

[Mad Davey]

Joevt, By the way, I am adding a "Silenx IXP-52-11 iXtrema Pro Fan - 80mm x 15mm, 11dBA, 18CFM" to the Sonnet SE IIIe, I believe it will allow me to put the fan back into the original location and still fit the 7101A. This should quiet things down a bit since the fan will sit further inside, and the fan itself is much quieter. At the expense of airflow of course so I will monitor temps.

 

[lecureuil]

Any feedback regarding the brand Trebleet ?
They seem to offer docks and enclosures and claim to get good performance

But i have not found any review…

 

[joeriggs]

Any feedback regarding the brand Trebleet ?

Haven't had an issue with mine, but it does get extremely hot.

 

[lecureuil]

Haven't had an issue with mine, but it does get extremely hot.

just wondering, did you put a heatsink on the ssd or just the ssd in the enclosure ?

 

[ekwipt]

I’ve got one and put the heat sink that came with it (looks like a sticker with some sort of heat compound rubber type think… looks like blue tack )

Get 2500down and 2100 up on a WD black 2TB

 

[joeriggs]

just wondering, did you put a heatsink on the ssd or just the ssd in the enclosure ?

I did put the piece of thermal tape pad that came with the enclosure on the SSD, is that considered a heatsink?

 

[ubercool]

I just bought a TEKQ Veloce 500GB SSD so I could swap the drive out for 4TB WD Black SSD. TEKQ Veloce is the new (as of December 2021) TEKQ Rapide, which was frequently used as an “upgrade platform” because it was a very speedy TB3 enclosure.

Well, I guess I should have paid more attention to this thread. I cannot figure out how to remove the board from this new model — the old one had removable rubber feet that hid the screws, the new has no screws under its feet.

And while the company’s Amazon listing promises 2150MBs+ read, 1900MBs write, my Blackmagic Disk Speed Test shows only 1373Mbs write on an M1 MBP. 🙄 I see from an earlier post that the Orico TB4 enclosure works well, I will exchange it for that.

 

[ekwipt]

I just bought a TEKQ Veloce 500GB SSD so I could swap the drive out for 4TB WD Black SSD. TEKQ Veloce is the new (as of December 2021) TEKQ Rapide, which was frequently used as an “upgrade platform” because it was a very speedy TB3 enclosure.

Well, I guess I should have paid more attention to this thread. I cannot figure out how to remove the board from this new model — the old one had removable rubber feet that hid the screws, the new has no screws under its feet.

And while the company’s Amazon listing promises 2150MBs+ read, 1900MBs write, my Blackmagic Disk Speed Test shows only 1373Mbs write on an M1 MBP. 🙄 I see from an earlier post that the Orico TB4 enclosure works well, I will exchange it for that.

Do you have it plugged in directly? it's not through thunderbolt 4 hub by any chance?

 

[ubercool]

Do you have it plugged in directly? it's not through thunderbolt 4 hub by any chance?

Yes, plugged in directly. I see that some say going through a hub is faster but I can only go through my LG 5K display or a bus-powered MOKiN. Would that help?

A few other comments, which may affect performance:

1. MBP M1 still running Big Sur.
2. The Veloce is equipped with a WD SN550 Blue drive, so not top-of-the-line.

 

[ubercool]

@joeriggs I know you are more interested in sustained speeds but I just bought a WD SN750 Black 4TB and I’m interested in the same Trebleet TB3 enclosure you own.

Care to post a speed test to help out? 😊