Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

[SpecFoto]

Good points but aren't the Samsung T series drives (USB 3.2 Gen 2) slower vs USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 for MAIWO?

Samsung T5 drives are USB 3.2 Gen 1 (not 2) @ 5Gb/s with R/W speed typically at 430-460MB/s. This is about 1/6 the speed of the K1717 with a PCIe 4.0 NVMe inside. Yes the T5 are cheaper, but not that much in 8TB. WD Black 8TB NVMe is now $550, plus about $60 for the K1717 or $610 total. 8TB T5 at B&H is $430. So $180 more for 6 times the speed.....and down the line you can move the WD 8TB drive to a TB5 enclosure and almost double the speed...... a no brainer for me.

If you want a smaller capacity, the 4TB WD Black with the K1717 totals out to $300, only $70 more than the 4TB T5 alone. The K1717 speed advantage is the same.

The K1717 install is quick and easy, see post #1725 above.

 

[EugW]

Samsung T5 drives are USB 3.2 Gen 1 @ 5Gb/s with R/W speed typically at 430-460MB/s. This is about 1/6 the speed of the K1717 with a PCIe 4.0 NVMe inside. Yes the T5 are cheaper, but not that much in 8TB. WD Black 8TB NVMe is now $550, plus about $60 for the K1717 or $610 total. 8TB T5 at B&H is $430. So $180 more for 6 times the speed.....and down the line you can move the WD 8TB drive to a TB5 enclosure and almost double the speed...... a no brainer for me.

The K1717 install is quick easy, see post #1725 above

The T7 Shield gets about twice that speed (10 Gbps) so around 850 MB/s on Apple Silicon Macs and over 1000 MB/s on Intel Macs. Power consumption at *peak* is also only about 4 Watts, and it sleeps at 0.1 Watt. This is advantageous for MacBook and iPad users, and you can even use these with iPhones.

But yeah, the T7 Shield maxes out at 4 TB.

 

[SpecFoto]

The T7 Shield gets about twice that speed (10 Gbps) so around 850 MB/s on Apple Silicon Macs and over 1000 MB/s on Intel Macs. Power consumption at *peak* is also only about 4 Watts, and it sleeps at 0.1 Watt. This is advantageous for MacBook and iPad users, and you can even use these with iPhones.

But yeah, the T7 Shield maxes out at 4 TB.

Love the portable 10 Gb/s SSD's have both SanDisk Extreme V2 and Samsung T7. Hopefully they will release 8TB versions some day.

Regarding power consumption, my 2024 11" iPad Air (M2) with the USB-C port, can power either of these SSD drives, the M4Pro version with TB port is not required. I currently use a 2TB T7 Shield with my Air for all remote photo shoots to serve as an instant on-site photo backup. Sure beats bringing my 14" M1 MBP, as the Air fits inside my smallest camera bag and does not need any external power. Haven't tried it with my iPhone, cause I still use a old 2019 SE with the lightening connector and those don't work with the Files app.

Just to test it out, I plugged into the Air both the Maiwo K1717 with the WD 4TB Black and a Acasis 405 with a 4TB Crucial P3 NVMe and it powered them both and they appeared in the Files app. So no different than the portable SSD's

 

[EugW]

Love the portable 10 Gb/s SSD's have both SanDisk Extreme V2 and Samsung T7. Hopefully they will release 8TB versions some day.

Regarding power consumption, my 2024 11" iPad Air (M2) with the USB-C port, can power either of these SSD drives, the M4Pro version with TB port is not required. I currently use a 2TB T7 Shield with my Air for all remote photo shoots to serve as an instant on-site photo backup. Sure beats bringing my 14" M1 MBP, as the Air fits inside my smallest camera bag and does not need any external power. Haven't tried it with my iPhone, cause I still use a old 2019 SE with the lightening connector and those don't work with the Files app.

Just to test it out, I plugged into the Air both the Maiwo K1717 with the WD 4TB Black and a Acasis 405 with a 4TB Crucial P3 NVMe and it powered them both and they appeared in the Files app. So no different than the portable SSD's

Of course it’s different. The K1717 is much larger in comparison and draws 5.5 Watts at idle and 8 Watts under heavy load. I think these NVMe drives are great as external desktop solutions or for laptops with access to power, but aren’t well suited for untraportable battery powered laptop use.

 

[SpecFoto]

Of course it’s different. The K1717 is much larger in comparison and draws 5.5 Watts at idle and 8 Watts under heavy load. I think these NVMe drives are great as external desktop solutions or for laptops with access to power, but aren’t well suited for untraportable battery powered laptop use.

I have used my Acasis 405 with 4TB NVMe to be the startup drive for my 14" M1 MBP, including numerous off grid situations, for up to 6 hours. This includes 2 months in Thailand last year where we were moving around the country and power was not always available. How much more time does one need when working off the internal battery? And as far as being "Much Larger" or not transportable, well the photo below I just took, shows that it simply not true. The weight of the SanDisk is roughly 3 ounces, the Samsung and Acasis are 4 ounces as they have beefed up cases. The Acasis and Samsung are the same depth but the Acasis is 1/2" longer.

Top SSD is 4TB SanDisk Extreme V2, middle is Acasis 405 with Crucial 4TB PCIe that runs 2-1/2 times faster than the other 2 at 2,800 Mb/s, and bottom is 2TB Samsung Shield.

 

[EugW]

I have used my Acasis 405 with 4TB NVMe many times to be the startup drive for my 14" M1 MBP

That is a very niche use case. Most people would not be doing this.

including numerous off grid situations, for up to 6 hours. How much more time does one need?

That's not bad, but 6 hours is not a full day either. If you need that speed then that's good for your needs, but a lot of people do not, and would prefer something that sips less power.

And as far as being "Much Larger" well the photo below I just took shows that it simply not true. Far as weight the SanDisk is roughly 3 ounces, the Samsung and Acasis are 4 ounces. Top SSD is 4TB SanDisk Extreme V2, middle is Acasis 405 with Crucial 4TB PCIe that runs 2-12 times faster at 2,800 Mb/s than the other 2, and bottom is 2TB Samsung Shield.

Fair enough. However, the Samsung T7 (non-shield) is only 2 ounces, and is smaller.

 

[SpecFoto]

That is a very niche use case. Most people would not be doing this.


That's not bad, but 6 hours is not a full day either. If you need that speed then that's good for your needs, but a lot of people do not, and would prefer something that sips less power.


Fair enough. However, the Samsung T7 (non-shield) is only 2 ounces, and is smaller.

Niche case?? The whole point of this 70 page thread (read the title) is to discuss small and fast TB enclosures to run a Mac off of, or gain extra storage space, rather than pay the insane prices Apple asks for it's SSD drives. All 3 of my Macs run this way off USB4/TB/3 enclosures with NVMe SSD's.

The T7 (non-shield) I have is 1TB and the same length and 1/8" thinner in width than the Shield version. It is the same depth as the SanDisk pictured above but thinner than the Shield by the thickness of its silicone casing. And it weighs 72 grams or 2.54 ounces, not 2 ounces. It others words it is 95% as large, so to bring up a 5% difference in overall size savings is a very niche case. Most people would not be doing this.

 

[egalitarian]

As I read most of the enclosures have issues with MacOS power management as they are based on the same chipset. Is there any enclosure that actually reduces power usage when idle?

 

[EugW]

Niche case?? The whole point of this 70 page thread is to discuss small enclosures to run a Mac off of, or gain extra storage space, rather than pay the insane prices Apple asks for its SSD drives. All 3 of my Macs run this way off USB4 enclosures with NVMe SSD's.

Yes it's niche. What I was saying is most people don't boot their laptops off external drives. The external drives are for additional storage, for various purposes, but the vast majority of people do not boot off them on the road. This is also even true for desktops too.

The T7 (non-shield) I have is 1TB and the same length and 1/8" shorter in width than the Shield version. It is the same depth as the SanDisk pictured above but thinner than the Shield by the thickness of its silicone casing. And it weighs 72 grams or 2.54 ounces, not 2 ounces. It others words it is 95% as large, so to bring up a 5% difference in overall size savings is a very niche case. Most people would not be doing this.

The T7 is 58 grams actually. The main point though is that the T7 sips power.

Anyhow, it's great that you like your external drives. I like my USB 4 external NVMe drive too. However, your enthusiasm for them may not be shared by all portable users, because of the factors I've mentioned.

 

[SpecFoto]

Yes it's niche. What I was saying is most people don't boot their laptops off external drives. The external drives are for additional storage, for various purposes, but the vast majority of people do not boot off them on the road. This is also even true for desktops too.


The T7 is 58 grams actually. The main point though is that the T7 sips power.

Anyhow, it's great that you like your external drives. I like my USB 4 external NVMe drive too. However, your enthusiasm for them may not be shared by all portable users, because of the factors I've mentioned.

According to Samsung the T7 (non-shield) is 72 grams, not 58, below is their spec page as listed on semiconductor.samung USA

Far as my post being a niche, for This Thread, I do not agree. Read the Title of this 70 page thread, look at the 1st Wiki post, it is for discussing TB3 NVMe enclosures. It is exactly for people like me who were looking to add/discuss super fast TB enclosures to run a Mac off of or add super fast extra storage. You are the one who keeps bringing up non-TB, off the shelf SSD's that are 1/3 to 1/6 the speed of my 3 USB4/TB3 enclosures. It doesn't matter if they are far more common you are off topic, as standard off the shelf SSD's don't really fit into this thread about specialty enclosures until such a time as they are capable of using TB, or at least approaching the same R/W speeds.

 

[EugW]

According to Samsung the T7 (non-shield) is 72 grams, not 58, below is their spec page as listed on semiconductor.samung USA

View attachment 2455722

Samsung.com:



2 TB:

 

[EugW]

The ITGZ USB 4 enclosure is IMO too small and doesn't have a huge surface area to radiate heat, but I like what they did with the ASM2464PD chip. The chip is on the underside of the circuit board, and is pressed up right against the bottom of the aluminum enclosure, with thermal paste. No thermal pad involved.



BTW, is there a Mac app that can measure the temperature of the ASM2464PD chip?

 

[Chancha]

The ITGZ USB 4 enclosure is IMO too small and doesn't have a huge surface area to radiate heat, but I like what they did with the ASM2464PD chip. The chip is on the underside of the circuit board, and is pressed up right against the bottom of the aluminum enclosure, with thermal paste. No thermal pad involved.

View attachment 2455911

BTW, is there a Mac app that can measure the temperature of the ASM2464PD chip?

TG Pro, can turn on external SMART monitoring.

 

[EugW]

TG Pro, can turn on external SMART monitoring.

Thanks. I downloaded the trial. It has entries for SSD and SSD (NAND), but neither the ASM2464PD nor the Samsung 990 Pro show up in the list of monitored temperatures.



BTW, there was a small thermal pad on the underside of the motherboard close to but not at the ASM2464PD chip. I moved that pad directly under the chip (and put another piece where the old one was), but that didn't seem to make much difference.

However, I also put a piece of ceramic tile below the drive, and it's dropped the idle temp by a couple of degrees. The drive is on rubber feet, so the metal is not directly in contact with the ceramic tile, but nonetheless you could see that drop in temperature in just a couple of minutes. After the drop, the temp will creep up again as the tile warms up, but it will reach equilibrium idling a little lower than it was before. (I didn't want to remove the rubber feet though.) Nothing to write home about, but hey, I'll take it.

 

[Loco Sock]

Grab a copy of DriveDX.. doubt it's going to give you the external chips temp.. but it will for the NVMe. Or if you have iStat Menus.. that will give you the NVMe temp.

Sitting at 132.8 right now... and it's been on basically since May... 4,865 hours.

P.S. Should really go for a new thread that has a more fitting topic these days. We tried changing it a year ago.. just ended up with the Wiki thing. But for some reason, and maybe it's good that they don't come, people see the topic and think I'm/we're bananas talking about current generation stuff.

 

[FilterJoe]

Acasis site has good Black Friday prices AND an additional 15% to 20% off of already discounted prices.

I went for 3 x TBU405 Air (Thunderbolt 3/4 and USB 4.0 but not backwards compatible with older USB interfaces). On sale for $59.90, less than $50 each with the discount applied.

Combine with 1 TB NVMe and it's only slightly more expensive than a 1 TB thumb drive, but 5x faster.

 

[Chancha]

Thanks. I downloaded the trial. It has entries for SSD and SSD (NAND), but neither the ASM2464PD nor the Samsung 990 Pro show up in the list of monitored temperatures.

In TG Pro, you have to go into Settings > Temperatures > Optional > Check hard drive temperatures using SMART

Now this way for most external enclosure there is only one temp, it is reading off the NVMe SSD SMART, the temperature of the board of the enclosure or the controller chip is typically unknown since no manufacturer would bother to add a sensor there. But for the purpose of monitoring the general effectiveness of the heat dissipation of the entire enclosure, the SMART reading off the NVMe is more than enough. If you specifically want to know how how the controller chip gets, use an IR gun, but then again this doesn't tell you how the thermal pad / fan of the enclosure performs.

 

[EugW]

In TG Pro, you have to go into Settings > Temperatures > Optional > Check hard drive temperatures using SMART

Now this way for most external enclosure there is only one temp, it is reading off the NVMe SSD SMART, the temperature of the board of the enclosure or the controller chip is typically unknown since no manufacturer would bother to add a sensor there. But for the purpose of monitoring the general effectiveness of the heat dissipation of the entire enclosure, the SMART reading off the NVMe is more than enough. If you specifically want to know how how the controller chip gets, use an IR gun, but then again this doesn't tell you how the thermal pad / fan of the enclosure performs.

Thanks. Yes I missed that setting. I turned it on and it reports the same thing as Macs Fan Control, and like Macs Fan Control, it causes the drive LED to flash constantly while the app is actively monitoring the temp.

Anyhow, as previously mentioned I know from Macs Fan Control that even though my Samsung 990 Pro is single-sided, putting a thermal pad on the underside of the NVMe SSD (where there are no NAND chips) in addition to the usual thermal pad on top of the NAND and controller, helps to reduce the SSD temperature.

 

[ekwipt]

I bought one of these TH3P4G3 85W PD, that people use as a eGPU setup and put a HighPoint SSD7101A-1 and 1x Samsung 980Pro.

Speeds are decent, and I can put 4 of them in there, a cool experiment

TH3P4G3 85W PD Charging Thunderbolt-compatible GPU Dock for Laptop Notebook to External Graphic Card 40Gbps for Macbook Windows - AliExpress 7

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/nvme2-gen3/ssd7101a-1

 

[EugW]

Interestingly, Colorii is now selling a M4 Mac mini stand that allows access to the Mac mini's hidden power button and which is tall enough to house the Colorii / Qwiizlab / Hagibis SSD enclosure.

Colorii Ms60 Aluminum Stand For Mac Mini 2024 M4 Space For A Finger To Touch On Power Button Heat Dissipation - Buy For Mac Mini M4 for Mac Mini 2024 for Mac Mini M4 2024 fro Mac Mini 2024 M4 Product on Alibaba.com

Colorii Ms60 Aluminum Stand For Mac Mini 2024 M4 Space For A Finger To Touch On Power Button Heat Dissipation - Buy For Mac Mini M4 for Mac Mini 2024 for Mac Mini M4 2024 fro Mac Mini 2024 M4 Product on Alibaba.com

www.alibaba.com

Only US$6.30 if you buy 1000 of them!

 

[RedNova6289]

Is there an enclosure/NVMe setup that doesn't heat up, even if it means lower speeds ?

Some people refer to the T7 & co. alternative, but it seems to me that there are also heat-related problems with the appearance of a white wax.

I'm still stuck with my SATA enclosures, despite having updated devices (M1+M4 Pro).

PS: I don't know if my message here will go unnoticed...

 

[Donka]

Is there an enclosure/NVMe setup that doesn't heat up, even if it means lower speeds ?

Up until now, I have been running a Sabrent USB 3.2 NVMe enclosure with a WD Blue SN570 2TB inside. It does get a little warm in use but is cool when idle and it clearly sleeps as it is stone cold over night. Speeds are still fine around 1GB/s max transfer though.

 

[RedNova6289]

Up until now, I have been running a Sabrent USB 3.2 NVMe enclosure with a WD Blue SN570 2TB inside. It does get a little warm in use but is cool when idle and it clearly sleeps as it is stone cold over night. Speeds are still fine around 1GB/s max transfer though.

So if I understand correctly, you've plugged it into a USB-c port and not Thunderbolt ?

1Gb/s is better than what I have here with my SATA SSDs, but ideally I'd like to go up to around 2Gb/s.

If it's impossible to get these speeds without overheating, whatever the enclosure/NVMe, then maybe I'll have to wait a bit longer.

 

[EugW]

Is there an enclosure/NVMe setup that doesn't heat up, even if it means lower speeds ?

Get something like the OWC 1M2 USB 4 enclosure or the Colorii MC40 / Hagibis MC40 / Qwiizlab ES40UR USB 4 enclosure with a cool running NMVe drive like the SK Hynix Gold P31. Note though, that drive maxes out at 2 TB. No 4 TB version available.

The enclosure will still heat up a bit, but not get hot.

 

[Donka]

So if I understand correctly, you've plugged it into a USB-c port and not Thunderbolt ?

1Gb/s is better than what I have here with my SATA SSDs, but ideally I'd like to go up to around 2Gb/s.

If it's impossible to get these speeds without overheating, whatever the enclosure/NVMe, then maybe I'll have to wait a bit longer.

I'll test it out this weekend on the M4 mini in both front and rear ports to check.