Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

[v0rtex]

We are using a lot of Samsung 980 Pro in external Thunderbolt 3 Devices w/ our iMacs Intel/M1. Samsung released firmware 5B2QGXA7 in January 2022. We updated to this version using the Magician Software on Windows. This was big mistake, as the devices are now unusable under macOS. Write speed is dramatically decreased, fluctuating during the day, sometimes down to 50Mbit/s and there is no way to downgrade to an earlier firmware. So we urge you to stay away from firmware 5B2QGXA7 if you are using Macs.

Thank you for the heads up! Currently using two of these Samsung 980 Pro 2TB drives with 4B2QGXA7 firmware in external Sabrent XTRM-Q Thunderbolt 4 enclosures and they are still working just fine. If you have any updates or a future firmware fixes the issue, please do let us know! You feedback is much appreciated and saved myself and others from an unfortunate situation!

 

[v0rtex]

External Enclosure Heatsink

If you end up with an SSD enclosure with a flat top, and will only use it on your desktop, might I suggest a heatsink for the enclosure. It dropped the temps of my SSD down whole lot. 41 degrees C from 52 or higher at idle. I use these with my two Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q enclosures with Samsung 980 Pro SSDs and they work very well! The Easycargo 2pcs 40mm Heatsink Kit 100mmx40mmx20mm + 3M8810 Thermal Conductive Adhesive Tape, Cooling Aluminium Heat Sink does a great job, it fits the top perfectly and are very inexpensive for 2: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08VDX7NNG/

 

[MrAverigeUser]

External Enclosure Heatsink

If you end up with an SSD enclosure with a flat top, and will only use it on your desktop, might I suggest a heatsink for the enclosure. It dropped the temps of my SSD down whole lot. 41 degrees C from 52 or higher at idle. I use these with my two Sabrent Rocket XTRM-Q enclosures with Samsung 980 Pro SSDs and they work very well! The Easycargo 2pcs 40mm Heatsink Kit 100mmx40mmx20mm + 3M8810 Thermal Conductive Adhesive Tape, Cooling Aluminium Heat Sink does a great job, it fits the top perfectly and are very inexpensive for 2: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08VDX7NNG/

just BTW:

I read very positive comments of people using this type of passive cooling device which incorporates even an internal heat-pipe:

the „be quiet MC1 Pro“

MC1 PRO from be quiet!

be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies, cases and cooling solutions for your desktop PC.

www.bequiet.com

could be used for external enclosures as well as (perhaps at the same time) for cooling of the enclosure itself…

comments of customers are positive: they report reduction of temps of more than 30 degrees C if puttting just one single on a M.2 SSD in desktop-PC - so it might be even more efficient if one uses several of them on an enclosure.

cheers

 

[cpnotebook80]

I received the Acasis enclosure and debating on an nvme model mostly in the 4tb size.
Just had few questions.

I will be using the M1 ultra so the cable that comes with the enclosure, the site mentions tb3. Will an nvme speed be affected when not using the tb4 port on the M1? I have no used these cables before as coming from the old mac pro 5.1 era.

Also, I was looking the firecuda 530 and noticed a heatsink option - wondering if that would fit in the enclosure with that bump or should I best to just get without heat sink and use the adhesive heat sink?


Update: It will not as i found the specs and checked the enclosure and looks its too tall with the lid on.

still wondering on the cable with the enclosure as its tb3 and wondering if tb4 will make a difference on speeds then with the M1.

 

[joevt]

still wondering on the cable with the enclosure as its tb3 and wondering if tb4 will make a difference on speeds then with the M1.

The cable shouldn't make a difference. Both should connect as 40 Gbps. The Acasis is a Thunderbolt 3 device anyway.

 

[joeriggs]

I am not sure if you wrote about this solution, you mean two slots for two SSD?
After sending back the Orico TB3 enclosure because there is no power supply when used with a TB 3 —> TB2 adapter (my 2015 MBP has only TB2 ports) I purchased this dual-bay which is sort of open „enclosure“ for 2 SSD and as well usable as a hardware-cloning station.
did not have the time to use it, but this is well-reputated and delivers 10Gbit/sec. albeit not really being an enclosure…

That's a cloning device, what I'm looking for is the ability to have 2 NVMEs in a raid 0 configuration
but without it needing a power supply. As far as I know, it does not exist.

There are enclosures that offer the ability to raid 2 NVMEs (Sabrent, Trebleet) but they all require a power supply.

 

[SpecFoto]

Blackmagic DST 5GB Stress on Acasis TB3/USB4 enclosure with a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME. Both direct to 2019 27" iMac and 14" MBP M1 Pro, and with Acasis attached to OWC Thunderbolt 4 Hub.

27” iMac TB3 port direct to Acasis enclosure:
2521 W / 2646 R

27” iMac TB3 port attached to Hub and Acasis enclosure:
2370 W / 2637 R

14" MBP attached Acasis enclosure via TB4 port:
2795 W / 2710 R

14" MBP with HUB and Acasis enclosure:
2739 W / 2707 R

14" MBP attached Acasis enclosure via TB4 port, BUT with USC-C (non-TB/USB4) cable:
973 W / 888 R (someone asked a few pages back about USB4/TB3 enclosure speeds with USB-C cable)

27” iMac 512GB internal blade:
1857 W / 2155 R

14” MPB 1TB internal blade:
5869 W / 5333 R

 

[MrAverigeUser]

That's a cloning device, what I'm looking for is the ability to have 2 NVMEs in a raid 0 configuration
but without it needing a power supply. As far as I know, it does not exist.

There are enclosures that offer the ability to raid 2 NVMEs (Sabrent, Trebleet) but they all require a power supply.

IIRC the device is capable to connect two NVMe SSD with your machine like any „enclosure“ for two NVMe SSD, but it is ALSO capable to clone one SSD to the other SSD as another nice feature.

But I agree with you, it is not a raid-device.

cheers

 

[SpecFoto]

I'm not sure any exist but are there any dual slot NVME enclosures that are bus powered?
Thunderbolt or USB 3.1 gen 2 is fine.

Having a very small dual 2.5" USB 3.1 drive enclosure, it needs a power supply, so I don't think you will find one without it, at least not yet. I am looking the Treblett dual slot (PCIe 3.0 X2) NVME TB3 aluminum enclosure with an external 120W power supply. It has a 2nd TB3 port, which would not happen with a bus powered unit, so there are some advantages to having the power supply. And it will work with Disk Utility RAID.

 

[funkahdafi]

Having a very small dual 2.5" USB 3.1 drive enclosure, it needs a power supply, so I don't think you will find one without it, at least not yet. I am looking the Treblett dual slot (PCIe 3.0 X2) NVME TB3 aluminum enclosure with an external 120W power supply. It has a 2nd TB3 port, which would not happen with a bus powered unit, so there are some advantages to having the power supply. And it will work with Disk Utility RAID.

Putting two NVMe SSDs on a single PCIe x2 bus will yield you next to zero performance benefits in a RAID context. That's not enough bandwidth. You'd need 4 lanes to benefit.

 

[joevt]

Putting two NVMe SSDs on a single PCIe x2 bus will yield you next to zero performance benefits in a RAID context. That's not enough bandwidth. You'd need 4 lanes to benefit.

It's PCIe 3.0 x2 per NVMe. So it's x4 total.
x2 is useful if you have an NVMe that performs badly (e.g. 1000 MB/s) in a Thunderbolt enclosure because software raid can hide most of the performance problem (1000 MB/s x 2 = 2000 MB/s).

OWC has an enclosure that support four NVMe using 1 lane for each (800 MB/s per NVMe, 2800 MB/s total).

 

[fooger]

Hello.
How do you think, does NVMe enclosure Orico m2v01-c4 support 4tb drives? In specifications wrote that it support maximum capacity is 2tb.
Thank you.

 

[funkahdafi]

Hello.
How do you think, does NVMe enclosure Orico m2v01-c4 support 4tb drives? In specifications wrote that it support maximum capacity is 2tb.
Thank you.

Probably outdated information from a time when 4TB NVMe drives weren't available. Neither the NVMe specification nor the PCIe bus that's linked to the Thunderbolt connection limit the size of drives, so it should work.

 

[fooger]

This makes sense, thanks! Can I use thunderbold enclosure as bootable device (boot unix)?

 

[funkahdafi]

Check this out:

 

[palmor]

I'm looking at getting the OWC Express 4M2. I know it isn't the fatest but for my use case it would be fine and faster than the spinning external drives I have now. I haven't been able to find the answer to one question though, if in Raid 0 you can start with 2 drives then add more later? I'd probably start with 2 4TB SSDs then add additional 4TB SSDs as my storage requirements increase.

 

[funkahdafi]

I'm looking at getting the OWC Express 4M2. I know it isn't the fatest but for my use case it would be fine and faster than the spinning external drives I have now. I haven't been able to find the answer to one question though, if in Raid 0 you can start with 2 drives then add more later? I'd probably start with 2 4TB SSDs then add additional 4TB SSDs as my storage requirements increase.

No, you can't expand a Raid 0 array. You would first have to destroy it, add a new disk, and then rebuild it. Which is not practicle. Only mirrored Raid arrays can be expanded (e.g. Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 6 etc.).

 

[joevt]

I'm looking at getting the OWC Express 4M2. I know it isn't the fatest but for my use case it would be fine and faster than the spinning external drives I have now. I haven't been able to find the answer to one question though, if in Raid 0 you can start with 2 drives then add more later? I'd probably start with 2 4TB SSDs then add additional 4TB SSDs as my storage requirements increase.

You'll be using software RAID which means you can have as many NVMe's as you like spread across multiple Thunderbolt ports...
But every time you add an NVMe, you need to copy the data from the old RAID to something else before copying it back to the new RAID.

 

[gwerhart0800]

I'm looking at getting the OWC Express 4M2. I know it isn't the fatest but for my use case it would be fine and faster than the spinning external drives I have now. I haven't been able to find the answer to one question though, if in Raid 0 you can start with 2 drives then add more later? I'd probably start with 2 4TB SSDs then add additional 4TB SSDs as my storage requirements increase.

I have the 4m2 with four 2T drives in it. I finally abandoned the RAID software after way too many unexplained OS crashes. Now I just use the drives independently, but it is very slow as it only gives one lane per drive. I would NOT recommend buying the 4m2. I am looking to replace it.

 

[palmor]

I have the 4m2 with four 2T drives in it. I finally abandoned the RAID software after way too many unexplained OS crashes. Now I just use the drives independently, but it is very slow as it only gives one lane per drive. I would NOT recommend buying the 4m2. I am looking to replace it.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[joevt]

Now I just use the drives independently, but it is very slow as it only gives one lane per drive. I would NOT recommend buying the 4m2. I am looking to replace it.

700 - 800 MB/s is still faster that SATA. Plus random read/write will be much slower than that even with 4 lanes for a drive. So it depends on what kind of work you're doing.

 

[Berries-A-Million]

Just ordered this one on KickStarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/project...fest-m2-nvme-smart-ssd-enclosure?ref=activity

 

[funkahdafi]

Just ordered this one on KickStarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/project...fest-m2-nvme-smart-ssd-enclosure?ref=activity

That's only USB, not Thunderbolt. You are *severely* limiting the speed of any NVMe SSD with this.

 

[Berries-A-Million]

That's only USB, not Thunderbolt. You are *severely* limiting the speed of any NVMe SSD with this.

I prefer my data to not get corrupted over speed. It's still more than fast enough.

 

[funkahdafi]

I prefer my data to not get corrupted over speed. It's still more than fast enough.

What makes you think USB will give you better protection for data corruption than Thunderbolt? Or are you referring to the gimmicky display on the device that does nothing more than display some SMART information that your OS can display, too? Don't get scammed.