Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

[nadja75]

Good evening everyone, I'm a new user of this fantastic forum, and I've been the owner of a 256Gb MAC Air M2 for a few months.
Today I purchased yet another hdd case with the ASMedia ASM2464 chip on board, I'll include the link at the end of the post. As soon as I turned it on I proceeded to update the firmware to version AS_USB4_240129_85_00_00.bin.
Since the MPTool utility does not have backup functions for the old firmware and the configuration, I proceeded to take some screenshots, where the configuration is shown in a hex table.
Originally I had the firmware version AS_USB4_231005_85_02_03, which I believe is just a variant, perhaps not even real, of the firmware that can be found online AS_USB4_231005_85_00_00 which is mounted on the JEYI models
As expected immediately after the update, the case status LED began to not work properly.
For example, if connected to the TB4 port, it does not light up blue and remains only green as if it were connected to a USB 3.0 port.
During reading/writing, this does not flash as it should and remains lit steadily.
By modifying the ini file in the [PCIE_USB_Config] parameter - two_leds_enable=1 I managed to obtain the flashing during the reading phase but when connected to a USB 3.0 port, while if I connect it to a TB4 port, the LED turns on for a moment to green and then turns off.
Do you have any idea how to proceed to resolve the situation.
Thank you.

Custodia SSD Hagibis USB 4.0 40Gbps M.2 NVMe compatibile con custodia per disco rigido esterno Thunderbolt 4/3 USB 3.2/3.1/3.0 ASM2464 - AliExpress 44

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[whodiini]

I purchased a Blueendless ASM2462 based enclosure and received it today. Mechanically, it is mediocre. There is a very beefy aluminum extruded enclosure and a plastic NVMe holder that slides into the aluminum. It includes a thermal strip, which has to slide to make contact with the enclosure, so contact is not very good. It also includes a fan that can be turned on or off. The worse part is that the USB socket is recessed and only accepts cables that are the small oval size. I have many cables that are rectangular and they dont fit. It came with the c18 firmware probably the same as the Jeyi one mentioned earlier in these posts. I inserted a SN850X and a few strange issues arose. System report shows a link width of x2 and a link speed of 16.0GT/s This seems strange as I thought each link was 4GT/s. This is with a Studio Max M1. Running BlackMagic, I get the same speed as when I had the NVMe in a Acasis TB3 enclosure. I thought there might be a difference. Edit - I now connected it directly to the Studio Max. It is about 7% faster than the Intel chips. I added a 2mm thermal pad instead of using the included 1mm pad. The fan switch is labeled in reverse. On means off and off means on. I had to use a dremel and open up the area around the recessed USB socket to fit a standard rectangular plug. So mediocre construction, but I wanted something cheap to test the ASM2464 chip.

Even though it is cheap ~ $40, I would rather get the OWC 1M2 if I wanted something of quality to put a 4TB SN850X $$.

 

[joevt]

I purchased a Blueendless ASM2462 based enclosure and received it today. Mechanically, it is mediocre. There is a very beefy aluminum extruded enclosure and a plastic NVMe holder that slides into the aluminum. It includes a thermal strip, which has to slide to make contact with the enclosure, so contact is not very good. It also includes a fan that can be turned on or off. The worse part is that the USB socket is recessed and only accepts cables that are the small oval size. I have many cables that are rectangular and they dont fit. It came with the c18 firmware probably the same as the Jeyi one mentioned earlier in these posts. I inserted a SN850X and a few strange issues arose. System report shows a link width of x2 and a link speed of 16.0GT/s This seems strange as I thought each link was 4GT/s. This is with a Studio Max M1. Running BlackMagic, I get the same speed as when I had the NVMe in a Acasis TB3 enclosure. I thought there might be a difference. Edit - I now connected it directly to the Studio Max. It is about 7% faster than the Intel chips. I added a 2mm thermal pad instead of using the included 1mm pad. The fan switch is labeled in reverse. On means off and off means on. I had to use a dremel and open up the area around the recessed USB socket to fit a standard rectangular plug. So mediocre construction, but I wanted something cheap to test the ASM2464 chip.

You are looking at the PCI tab in System Information.app? 16 GT/s is the PCIe gen 4 link width per lane. A Thunderbolt enclosure using an Intel Thunderbolt controller would have PCIe gen 3 link max (8 GT/s). Normally there should be 4 PCIe lanes.

I don't know of anything that would report 4GT/s. PCIe gen 2 is 5 GT/s and gen 1 is 2.5 GT/s.

In the Thunderbolt tab in System Information.app, I think it should report "Speed: Up to 40 Gbps x1" and "Current Link Width: 0x2" which means 20 Gbps per lane (2 Thunderbolt/USB4 lanes).

 

[whodiini]

You are looking at the PCI tab in System Information.app? 16 GT/s is the PCIe gen 4 link width per lane. A Thunderbolt enclosure using an Intel Thunderbolt controller would have PCIe gen 3 link max (8 GT/s). Normally there should be 4 PCIe lanes.

I don't know of anything that would report 4GT/s. PCIe gen 2 is 5 GT/s and gen 1 is 2.5 GT/s.

In the Thunderbolt tab in System Information.app, I think it should report "Speed: Up to 40 Gbps x1" and "Current Link Width: 0x2" which means 20 Gbps per lane (2 Thunderbolt/USB4 lanes).

Yes. Under PCI tab in System Information. pci1987,5016: Link Width: x2 Link Speed: 16.0GT/s
Tested with M1 Studio Max and with Intel Macbook Pro. Both say the same.
Also under Thunderbolt/USB4: Link Width: 0x2 Speed: Up to 40 Gb/s x 1
Also under NVMExpress: Link Speed x2 Link Speed: 16.0GT/s

Since this is a ASM controller, then 16GT/s makes sense (8GT/s x 2)?

 

[joevt]

Since this is a ASM controller, then 16GT/s makes sense (8GT/s x 2)?

Correct. ASM USB4 controllers support PCIe gen 4 = 16 GT/s.
You said ASM2462 which I guess is the two PCIe lane version of the ASM2464PD which has 4 PCIe lanes.

 

[haitho1996]

Hi everyone, I am quite new to this forum but have done quite an experiment in this field, and I have encountered a problem that needs some of your knowledge.

1. I bought 2 HyperDrive USB4 Enclosure HD5001GL & combine with 2 SSD Acer Predator Gm7000 4TB Gen 4, using with 2 Orico TB4/USB4 cable.

2. When using the above combo separately, I have no issues, speed meets 2700 - 3200 MB/s on bold read/write

3. But when using the above combo together, like plugged-in two enclosures simultaneously (I'm using MBP 16 inch M3 Max 48GB RAM) & copying quite a large bunch of files (let's say, 400 - 800 GB), after copy completion or get back to work after some time of idling, one of them will auto-eject randomly without any reason.

4. After all of that, when I bought another pair of Orico USB 4 Enclosure to test, all issues disappeared, noted that the cable of Orico works fine in any circumstance cause I used it a lot with many drives before, and all enclosures are updated today firmware in ASmedia website

So my question is, which SSD brand & model works perfectly with Hyperdrive HD5001GL enclosure, does my combo have any faulty setup?

 

[Jimmons7]

About how much faster will it be with one of the recommended enclosures and a pci 4 nvme drive compared to something like the Samsung t7 on a 2020 MacBook Pro m1 ?

 

[Loco Sock]

Deleted.

 

[Loco Sock]

Just received the Satechi USB4 NVME SSD Pro enclosure.. waiting on the 4TB 990 Pro to get here. Seems like a very sturdy case from the unboxing and looking forward to see how it performs.

 

[Loco Sock]

Looking good so far... The enclosure itself feels well built and is totally tool-less. I'll be doing some capturing and editing later on today and tomorrow, we'll see how it performs. If anyone wants further info on it, let me know.

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Edit: Additionally, here are my sad Apple Internal 512GB SSD benchmarks.. it's fast enough for what I'm doing. I'm never waiting for the computer:

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Edit: Not that I need it, but I wanted to see if Samsung Magician would recognize it as it did not when I had the Acasis enclosure.. a couple things worked:

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Edit: And well, the Drive had a firmware upgrade, even though it was manufactured on 2024 01 03. So I plugged it into my Mini PC and did the update through Magician there:

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[Arak]

How good is the design of OWC 1m2 regarding heat transportation the controller on enclosure motherboard to the enclosure? The controller physically in tight contact to enclosure shell?

 

[ekwipt]

How good is the design of OWC 1m2 regarding heat transportation the controller on enclosure motherboard to the enclosure? The controller physically in tight contact to enclosure shell?

not sure but it's the best design i've got out 3 Thunderbolt/usb4 drives

 

[macphoto861]

How good is the design of OWC 1m2 regarding heat transportation the controller on enclosure motherboard to the enclosure? The controller physically in tight contact to enclosure shell?

There's an aluminum "post" molded into the inside of the shell, which contacts the controller via a rubbery blob of heat-conductive compound.

 

[meringues]

I have a wd sn850x 4tb (pci4) on a m1 imac. Realworld test with a 450gb mixed file folder gives +3000gb/s r and 2500gb/s w. amorphous gives 3500 gb/s r and 1200 gb/s r.
blackmagic gives + 3000gb/s r/w. I suspect that amorphous has a problem with some disks.

I also have an M1 iMac. Instead of the Jeyi I have an ACASIS TBU405 Air -- this model from what I understand is a "pure" TB3 enclosure, driven by the JHL7440 controller.

To my surprise AmorphouseDiskMark was showing write speeds that were less than a third of my read speeds:

(As far as I can tell, SN820 looks to be an OEM SN850X. I got very similar results with a 2TB 990 Pro)

When I did some research I found this is a common "issue"/observation wiith base M1 powered Macs other than the Mini (i.e., MBA M1, iMac M1, MBP M1). Interestingly enough, ACASIS seems to warn about this issue on their site page for the TBU405. They claim this has something to do with some kind of M1 "firmware limitation."


I saw mogens' post above and also these posts from earlier in the thread:

I remember some people reporting slow write speeds over thunderbolt on M1 Macs (Macbook air, Mac mini), like here for example : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253097384

The question is : how does the drive perform in real world tests ? Try copying a 400 GB folder (with large files like raw files or movies) to the sn850x and check the actual write speed in activity monitor.

This is what I get for the TBU-405/SN850X 4TB combo :

View attachment 2254779
'Données lues/s' = data read/sec
'Données écrites/s' = data written/sec
'Go' = GB

That's 2.70 GB/sec read/write performance in finder copy.

And these are my AmorphousDiskMark results for the TBU-405/SN850X 4TB combo, on a M2 Ultra Mac Studio :
View attachment 2254784

I tried it with a 110 GB folder from the desktop of my iMac m1 to ext. TBU-405 with an SN 850x and got this. I guess it looks OK?
View attachment 2254817

When I tried to copy a ~50gb folder of ~50 items, here's what I got:

For reference, here's what I'm seeing in my System Info:

------

So:

1a--there may be something to the theory that AmorphousDiskMark is not giving fully accurate results for base M1 machines?

1b-- @mogens and @micheloupatrick 's results above suggest M1 base computers are capable of getting close to 3.0 GB/s read & write speeds despite any reports to the contrary.

2--why am I still apparently slower in terms of real world performance than the ~2.5+ GB/s read/write speeds I'd expect using TB3? Am I just not using a good sample/not large enough file sizes?

3--does anyone have any view on what the best enclosure is for those of us with base M1 hardware? Perhaps worth giving Jeyi a try?


-----

EDIT: well now the plot thickens for a moment. I swapped the drives again and the 50gb file copied to the 990 pro in about 20 seconds, twice as fast as the WD. Activity Monitor showed speeds of 2.9 GB/s.

Reinforcing others' suggestions/experience above about AmorphousDiskMark's fallibility, but also suggesting the WD may not be playing nice with my enclosure or M1 Mac.

 

[Chancha]

I got a TBU405 and then another TBU405ProM1, both are fitted with SN850X 4TB. Both of them can reach around 2800 write in both AmorphouseDiskMark and BlackMagic. And of course I made sure they are not connecting via the Realtek USB side.

I don’t know how close or different the SN820 are to the SN850X, but I have seen PC users having them blasting at like 7000 when directly plugged as PCIe4 on their boards.

 

[meringues]

I got a TBU405 and then another TBU405ProM1, both are fitted with SN850X 4TB. Both of them can reach around 2800 write in both AmorphouseDiskMark and BlackMagic. And of course I made sure they are not connecting via the Realtek USB side.

I don’t know how close or different the SN820 are to the SN850X, but I have seen PC users having them blasting at like 7000 when directly plugged as PCIe4 on their boards.

Yeah, I don't think it's an issue with the drive itself. What Mac/SOC are you getting these results on out of curiosity?

 

[godzfire]

Hello, I'm fairly new to Mac. I have a 2017 Imac Thunderbolt3. I have the Jeyi TB2464wFan and a 2TB samsung 970EVOPlus. I have added the latest firmware from Jeyi Jan,2024 (3c.18 in sys report) But Im Only getting half the transfer speeds others are reporting. Is this as fast as my older TB3 machine can access the drive or do I have a setting off someplace?My 2018 MBpro Can write about 300MB/s faster but reads are the same.

View attachment 2356257

Known issue with the Samsung 970 EVOs. I had one in an Acasis TB3 enclosure and had the same thing happen. If you look at most of the TB enclosures you'll see in the compatibility list 970 Evos are crossed out due to some sort of bandwidth issue in external enclosures. I contacted Samsung because there is no mention on the Amazon product page regarding this problem. They basically scoffed at me and said that "hard drive enclosures are not supported". Well *******s if that's the case then why wasn't that detailed on the product page, as I told them if I would have known I would have never bought one.

 

[godzfire]

What's the max write speeds people have been able to get in an external TB enclosure with the 980 Pro? The best I've gotten was 2300 in my Acasis TBU 401 and I feel that's lower than normal. Even worse as of semi recent, my write speeds are capped at 1400, which is definitely not normal. I've gotten high temperature readings from DriveDX from it and I'm wondering if either the case is malfunctioning or the NVME is.

EDIT: Also, does anyone have the Acasis fan models of TBU 401 Pro or 405 Pro?

 

[Mike Boreham]

This may not be news but sharing that I am very pleased with this updated Orico enclosure.

This is the first TB enclosure I have bought for a couple of years, and its distinguishing feature is that if connected to a TB3/TB4 port it connects at 40Gbps, and if connected to a USB3,2 port it connects to the USB bus at 10Gbps. Two years ago I couldn't find any dual mode enclosures.

It is also one of the cheapest but seems well made.

 

[ryansebiz]

Does the OWC Express 1M2 support TRIM?

 

[macphoto861]

Does the OWC Express 1M2 support TRIM?

Yes.

 

[Ifti]

How good is the design of OWC 1m2 regarding heat transportation the controller on enclosure motherboard to the enclosure? The controller physically in tight contact to enclosure shell?

I open the drive to install the SSD in this video, at around the 3:00 mark......

I have 2 of these - an empty enclosure in which I put a 4TB Samsung SSD (as in below video), and a prepopulated 8TB version that I use with Final Cut. Both have been flawless and are now my go-to work drives.
In fact my OWC Thunderblade drives are simply just used for storage now (a waste I know!) as I feel the 1M2 drives run better...

 

[Ifti]

This Yottamaster drive I just picked up performed pretty well - and has active cooling too. The fan is pretty quiet as well, much quieter then my Sharge Disk, it's actually not very noticeable (and I like a quiet environment when I work!). For a cheap enclosure its actually pretty good!

 

[macphoto861]

Just FYI, the OWC Express 1M2 is on sale right now for $20 off.

 

[star-affinity]

Hi!

Any ideas on why I get "Disk Not Ejected Properly" messages when using my M2 flashdrive (Corsair MP600 PRO LPX) in a Orico enclosure with ASM2464PD chipset? I heard it might be worth swapping out the cable to one with USB4 (40 Gbps) support. Orico themselves says when I email them:

For your Mac and SSD, We recommend you buy our Thunderbolt chipset JHL7440 enclosure with widely compatibilities

Do you think it will help to move over to an enclosure with the Intel JHL7440 chipset or is the problem about something else? Searching the web the unexpected disconnect problem seems to happen with other drives (non SSD) too. Hmmm....