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Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
VitoBotta said:
**** :( After updating the firmware it's getting worse... now it's writing at less than 10MB/sec!!!!!
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i do not recall if you mentioned earlier what version of macOS are you running?

Have you installed smartmon tools? You can use this to dump some SMART info from the SSD such as temp and data written. I think brew install smartmontools will do it.
 
steve123 said:
i do not recall if you mentioned earlier what version of macOS are you running?

Have you installed smartmon tools? You can use this to dump some SMART info from the SSD such as temp and data written. I think brew install smartmontools will do it.
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Ventura. I'll try smartmontools
 
VitoBotta said:
I made several attempts without success
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You have to flash the disk image to a USB flash drive using Balena Etcher and then use it to boot an Intel based mac. The image boots a command line version of Linux that runs the firmware flashing tool. Did you get it to boot?

I seem to recall there might be an issue when the target is a usb disk ... the flashing tool cannot select a usb disk for some reason. I could not find info on whether or not someone got it to work with a Thunderbolt enclosure.
 
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I don't know what to do now. The performance of the drive was stable before upgrading the firmware. Any suggestions? Read speed is always fine, but writes go anywhere from 3000MB/sec to 10MB/sec randomly and the system slows down dramatically as you can imagine.
 
If I'm you I'll erase the ssd clean and do the benchmark without any data in it. Transfer data onto your ssd when you are done. Doesn't it make more sense?

Or you can deselect spotlight indexing on that ssd. Spotlight still indexing geez? How much data you have going?
 
orpheus1120 said:
How much data you have going?
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IIRC, he is using the disk as his main boot disk. Spotlight reads a lot of data but it does not write a lot. I think Spotlight may be a bit of a red herring. That is, a symptom not the cause. I do not understand how the performance of the benchmark could be affected by Spotlight in an asymetrical manner?
 
orpheus1120 said:
If I'm you I'll erase the ssd clean and do the benchmark without any data in it. Transfer data onto your ssd when you are done. Doesn't it make more sense?

Or you can deselect spotlight indexing on that ssd. Spotlight still indexing geez? How much data you have going?
Click to expand...
I did a clean install with nothing other than macOS. no difference. Write speed is totally unstable. However, I tried running benchmark every now and then while the drive was connected to the intel mbp under windows, and it didn't seem to show the problem and I got max speed.

I tried connecting the drive to both thunderbolt ports on the m1 mini just in case and it didn't help.

Now I am reinstalling macOS on the old drive (x5). I'm lost
 
I formatted the drive and it's now connected, empty, to the Intel MBP. I am running Amorphous disk benchmark every few minutes and it's fast. What the hell? Can the Acasis case be incompatible with the M1 mini or something like that?
 
I wonder if there is some task gone rogue that that is gobbling up memory and causeing macOS swapping to disk? Have a look at your memory pressure in Activity Monitor.
 
steve123 said:
I wonder if there is some task gone rogue that that is gobbling up memory and causeing macOS swapping to disk? Have a look at your memory pressure in Activity Monitor.
Click to expand...

I have done a clean install several times to exclude problems with applications etc. No change. The weirdest thing is that when I connect the drive to the Intel MBP I see max speeds in both Windows and macOS and the speeds are stable. AND if I format the drive and connect it empty to the M1 mini (the target computer) while the X5 is the primary boot drive, then the benchmarks show expected speeds. So for some reason something goes wrong when using this drive in the enclosure as the boot drive. I also tried disconnecting the display from (I have a secondary on HDMI) and there is no change.

Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior when booting from a drive in such an enclosure?

Also, if I return the Samsung 980 Pro, which other brand shall I buy that is known to work with the Acasis TBU405? I think I am gonna start the return procedure today. I am tried of trying and trying.
 
micheloupatrick said:
Another combo : ACASIS TBU405 + FireCuda 530 4TB on a MBP 16" M1 Max :
View attachment 2134287
The numbers are similar to those observed by Chancha with the same enclosure and the WD SN850X 4TB.

In a real world test, copying a 470 GB folder (containing photoshop files) to the MBP internal drive took 2 minutes 40 seconds without any slowdown. The enclosure got pretty hot though.
Click to expand...

Hi, have you had any issues so far with the Acasis TBU405 + Firecuda 530? I am looking to buy the Firecuda to replace the Samsung 980 Pro (see posts above).
 
VitoBotta said:
Which other brand shall I buy that is known to work with the Acasis TBU405?
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Western Digital WD_Black has several models that work well. SN770 is the budget model which is plenty fast and perfectly fine for external storage but if you're planning to boot off that, I wouldn't get it because the lack of onboard DRAM.

The top of the line WD_Black is the SN850X. Nobody on this thread or anywhere I have seen reports any difficulties using that in an Acasis enclosure along with Mac over Thunderbolt 3.

The thing that makes Western Digital so reliable is that they work closely with Apple and supply some of their OEM drives, so I guess that means they have been very careful to develop firmware that works well with Mac OS and hardware without any issues.
 
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After reading various reviews of people who use the Firecuda with the Acasis I ordered the Firecuda. But this time from a local store here in Finland. It's more expensive than Amazon Germany but I can return it more easily in a store if something goes wrong. I truly hope I have better luck with this drive.
 
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VitoBotta said:
So for some reason something goes wrong when using this drive in the enclosure as the boot drive.
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So, not the same experience but may be related in the sense that it illustrates a difference when used as a boot disk.

I originally purchased my Samsung 980 PRO to replace the SSD in my Mac Pro 6,1. I used an NGFF adapter and installed the 980 PRO and restored from a TM backup. I was running Big Sur at the time and things were basically ok but there was a problem with panics during sleep. At the time, there were other sleep related issues related to firmware so I did not think to link the SSD to the panic during sleep. Evenutally I added another volume to the APFS container on the SSD to install Monterey and test it out. Early versions of Monteray were installed but I experienced more frequent kernel panics so I never decided to completely migrate to Monteray. There were also some iCloud syncing issues and I finally gave up and returned to Big Sur. Smartmontools showed the disk running warmer than I wanted, close to 60C.

When Monteray 12.6.1 was released, I upgraded the volume. Whoa, big problems. The install took hours to complete. When it finally completed, Monteray was unusable. Massive lag in the GUI where everything would freeze, including mouse movement, for periods of minutes and the boot time was several minutes. I started paying closer attention to some issues reported about the 980 PRO when used with the MP 6,1 and started to consider it may have something to do with the SSD. I used smartmontools to check the temperature and noted that the SSD temp was close to 60C even when idling. I dug into TRIM and found that TRIM was taking a very long time to complete. I went back to Big Sur. Boot time less than a minute, no lag.

I set out to evaluate some SSD enclosures and decided to try a Kingston Fury Renegade (I would have got the Firecuda 530 but it was twice the price at the time). At first, I used the Kingston within the enclosures I was evaluating. I then decided to give Ventura a shot and installed OCLP and upgraded the Monteray volume to Ventura on the 980 PRO. Install took a long time, Ventura did eventually boot but GUI was similarly laggy as with Monteray. However, I did notice that if I let the machine "stabilize", it eventually would become somewhat less laggy but TRIM times were still enormous. So, I cloned the 980 PRO SSD to the Kingston SSD and replaced the Samsung 980 PRO with the Kingston. Ventura booted in under 30 seconds with no lag. TRIM times were an order of magnitude faster. There were other issues with Ventura that forced my return to Big Sur. I noticed that since replacing the Samsung 980 PRO, I was not experiencing any panics when sleeping.

Finally, I put the Samsung 980 PRO into an enclosure and started running benchmarks using the enclosure as a data volume instead of as a boot disk. Everything works fine but I have not really stressed tested the 980 PRO in the enclosure beyond the testing with the benchmarks.

So, I do think there is a difference when using the disk as a boot disk and I think there are problems with the Samsung 980 PRO when used as the boot disk. There may be other issues when used as a data volume but I have not isolated anything yet in that regard. At the moment, I do not think this is an Apple Silicon related issue (my MP is an Intel machine and I have tested the enclosure with my MP and a MBP M2 Max).

Having spent some time looking into the underlying PCIe bridge configurations on my quest to see if I could get a 20 Gbps connection to the TB2 port of my MP 6,1, my best estimate of the root cause of the Samsung 980 PRO issues is that the problem may be related to the PCIe interface of the Samsung controller, perhapes some odd hardware incompatibility that causes the PCIe bus to hang and/or kick down to a slower speed. It maybe possible to address with a firmware update but it is unclear if that update needs to come from Samsung or Apple. The problem has not been fixed by either of them and the drive is effectively obsolete now so I do not expect it will ever be resolved. Given the other problems associated with the 980 PRO related to the firmware updates Samsung has released, I suspect Samsung has some serious problems with this controller and any other products that use it.
 
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steve123 said:
So, not exactly the same experience but may be related in the sense that it illustrates a difference when used as a boot disk.

I originally purchased my Samsung 980 PRO to replace the SSD in my Mac Pro 6,1. I used an NGFF adapter and installed the 980 PRO and restored from a TM backup. I was running Big Sur at the time and things were basically ok but there was a problem with panics during sleep. At the time, there were other sleep related issues related to firmware so I did not think to link the SSD to the panic during sleep. Evenutally I added another volume to the APFS container on the SSD to install Monterey and test it out. Early versions of Monteray were installed but I experienced more frequent kernel panics so I never decided to completely migrate to Monteray. There were also some iCloud syncing issues and I finally gave up and returned to Big Sur. Smartmontools showed the disk running warmer than I wanted, close to 60C.

When Monteray 12.6.1 was released, I upgraded the volume. Whoa, big problems. The install took hours to complete. When it finally completed, Monteray was unusable. Massive lag in the GUI where everything would freeze, including mouse movement, for periods of minutes and the boot time was several minutes. I started paying closer attention to some issues reported about the 980 PRO when used with the MP 6,1 and started to consider it may have something to do with the SSD. I used smartmontools to check the temperature and noted that the SSD temp was close to 60C even when idling. I dug into TRIM and found that TRIM was taking a very long time to complete. I went back to Big Sur. Boot time less than a minute, no lag.

I set out to evaluate some SSD enclosures and decided to try a Kingston Fury Renegade (I would have got the Firecuda 530 but it was twice the price at the time). At first, I used the Firecuda within the enclosures I was evaluating. I then decided to give Ventura a shot and installed OCLP and upgraded the Monteray volume to Ventura on the 980 PRO. Install took a long time, Ventura did eventually boot but GUI was similarly laggy as with Monteray. However, I did notice that if I let the machine "stabilize", it eventually would become somewhat less laggy but TRIM times were still enormous. So, I cloned the 980 PRO SSD to the Kingston SSD and replaced the Samsung 980 PRO with the Kingston. Ventura booted in under 30 seconds with no lag. TRIM times were an order of magnitude faster. There were other issues with Ventura that forced my return to Big Sur. I noticed that since replacing the Samsung 980 PRO, I was not experiencing any panics when sleeping.

Finally, I put the Samsung 980 PRO into an enclosure and started running benchmarks using the enclosure as a data volume instead of as a boot disk. Everything works fine but I have not really stressed tested the 980 PRO in the enclosure beyond the testing with the benchmarks.

So, I do think there is a difference when using the disk as a boot disk and I think there are problems with the Samsung 980 PRO when used as the boot disk. There may be other issues when used as a data volume but I have not isolated anything yet in that regard. At the moment, I do not think this is an Apple Silicon related issue (my MP is an Intel machine and I have tested the enclosure with my MP and a MBP M2 Max).
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing your experience, it confirms my suspicions. I should be getting the Firecuda in a few days. Can't wait to test it and see if the problem is gone as I hope.
 
@VitoBotta I must point out that you are the only one if not one of the very few in this thread to use an external ssd as the OS boot disk. Coincidentally you had decided upon the 980 pro which added to the complication due to issues of the said ssd under certain conditions. One of the reasons I didn't go for the 980 pro was because of the firmware issue I linked previously which had been reported by several forum members and across the internet. How will subsequent firmwares address the issues was at the point in time unknown to me. Although multiple Gen3 ssd had shown great results but ultimately I settled on the WD SN850x which has the best IO performances so far I have researched. It was built upon the SN850 which was a great ssd albeit it had some initial issue with the firmware but was rectified by a subsequent firmware. The great result was carried over to the SN850x. So I can totally understand why the SN850x offers such stability in general and the premium price it commands currently.

Great caution must be exercised when one is trying to find the best combination of hardware for the Mac platform. The OS is fickle and thus mac users would benefit greatly to research thoroughly and understand how the hardware are used in every members' situation which ultimately give them the great results they are seeing.

I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of their results, and if I decide to get the same hardware as them, I will make sure I put the hardware to the same use case in order to replicate the same result. Deploying the same hardware for a different usage situation and expecting the same outcome is human nature, but ultimately a risky gambit.

Your current task if I may give an advice, is to research the stability of the ssd of your choice as a boot disk in Mac OS, specifically Ventura.
 
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orpheus1120 said:
@VitoBotta I must point out that you are the only one if not one of the very few in this thread to use an external ssd as the OS boot disk. Coincidentally you had decided upon the 980 pro which added to the complication due to issues of the said ssd under certain conditions. One of the reasons I didn't go for the 980 pro was because of the firmware issue I linked previously which had been reported by several forum members and across the internet. How will subsequent firmwares address the issues was at the point in time unknown to me. Although multiple Gen3 ssd had shown great results but ultimately I settled on the WD SN850x which has the best IO performances so far I have researched. It was built upon the SN850 which was a great ssd albeit it had some initial issue with the firmware but was rectified by a subsequent firmware. The great result was carried over to the SN850x. So I can totally understand why the SN850x offers such stability in general and the premium price it commands currently.

Great caution must be exercised when one is trying to find the best combination of hardware for the Mac platform. The OS is fickle and thus mac users would benefit greatly to research thoroughly and understand how the hardware are used in every members' situation which ultimately give them the great results they are seeing.

I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of their results, and if I decide to get the same hardware as them, I will make sure I put the hardware to the same use case in order to replicate the same result. Deploying the same hardware for a different usage situation and expecting the same outcome is human nature, but ultimately a risky gambit.

Your current task if I may give an advice, is to research the stability of the ssd of your choice as a boot disk in Mac OS, specifically Ventura.
Click to expand...

I had no idea unfortunately about the firmware issues with the Samsung drives, otherwise I would have ordered something else.

I am surprised that there aren't many people who boot from external drives. I have an M1 mini with just 256 GB of internal storage since I opted to spend more money on memory knowing that I could add more storage externally for cheaper than what it would cost with Apple. Somehow I thought there would be more people with the same context and who would be booting from external drives.

I don't understand though what is the difference between using a drive for data only vs for the OS. Surely there is some overhead when running the OS and apps from the same drive, but I doubt that would explain the disastrous behavior I have experienced with my Samsung 980 Pro, also because before doing the firmware upgrade it worked just fine for several hours.
 
The problem isn't about booting from external hard drive. Apple does allow users to do that (not flash drive though). It is just unfortunate that some ssd like the 980 Pro exhibits peculiar issues which you have just experienced it first hand.

Your case is unique and unfortunate.

Yes I understand what you are saying. I own a M1 mini with 256gb ssd too and I maxed up my ram. However unlike you, I choose to boot from the internal drive, keep my applications and system services running on the internal ssd, but store user data on external hard drives. This was a logical approach to me because that's what I had been used to since back in the days when internal storage can be upgraded on the macs. For what I do, 256gb is adequate. With such low internal storage I'm constantly monitoring my storage usage. This is the price I pay for opting for the lower storage option. A simple case of cause and effect.

Lastly I would strongly suggest you hold off getting another ssd until your research on the ssd of your choice (for your particular use case) shows great stability and results.
 
VitoBotta said:
I am surprised that there aren't many people who boot from external drives.
Click to expand...
I have been contemplating this idea for a while now which was part of the reason I invested time into investigating these issues. The computers I want to use externally are generally older iMac's that I want to avoid having the open up to replace the disk and/or ssd. Unfortunately, it is proving to be nearly impossible to achieve this and maximize the performance of the TB2 port on the older macs. The closest product that looks like it might work in this way is the Sonnet Dual NVMe dock but it is quite expensive and you have to add the Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter on top of that. And, if you only use one NVMe slot, you are limited to 2 PCIe lanes and about 1500 Gbps speed. So, unfortunately, not ideal.

If ACASIS or the other vendors offered their enclosures with the option to power the enclosure from bus power or an external USB-C PD adapter, that would likely allow them to operate with the Apple adapter. Unfortunately, I haven't found one.
 
steve123 said:
If ACASIS or the other vendors offered their enclosures with the option to power the enclosure from bus power or an external USB-C PD adapter, that would likely allow them to operate with the Apple adapter. Unfortunately, I haven't found one.
Click to expand...

I am currently using an Acasis TBU42 (loaded with WD SN770 inside) with the 30W Apple adapter that ships with the 2018 Macbook Air. I use it as an external Thunderbolt SSD off my Mac Mini M2 Pro. The 30W adapter works fine.

The only reason I'm using it with this Apple adapter is that my wife has issues with the hub attached to her MB Air. So for last few days she has been using the 65W GAN power adapter to see if that helps. The 65W GAN adapter is something I purchased from Acasis along with the TBU42 by paying an extra $20 and it worked fine with that as well.

The TBU42 requires power be supplied so not sure if that meets your requirements. For me - that's what I wanted. I use its ports to charge my Apple Watch and iPhone or iPad while keeping the Mac Mini and UPS (and all the wires coming out of both) hidden away. The only thing exposed is the TBU42 and the wires going in/out of it.
 
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