Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

[Brian33]

If you run Apple's Disk Utility > First Aid on the disk, it should also trim the SSD disk after the checkup routine. In the popup window it will state "Trimming unused blocks." at the end of fsck's status messages.

Good idea, thank you! It seems that is correct, because I can see the trimming messages in the system log after doing the DU First Aid on the volume. Oddly, though, I do not see "Trimming unused blocks" in the DU status messages on my system (Sequioa 15.1.1). (see attachment). It seems that DU ejects and later mounts the volume(s), so I think that's what is causing the TRIMs to be done.


Another note on 'trimforce' -- my testing indicates it is still needed to get TRIM to work (as evidenced by system log messages) on SATA SSDs connected via Thunderbolt. However it should not be needed for NVMe SSDs. I hadn't read the man page thoroughly enough... it clearly says trimforce is for third-party drives "attached to an AHCI controller." I think that means SATA drives only, so not relevant to this thread. Sorry for the red herring.

 

[SpecFoto]

Received an Acasis 405 Pro Max Dual NVMe enclosure 2 weeks ago and put in a pair of WD 850X 4TB Black NVMe's. Nicely built enclosure, my 3rd from them, that has an absolutely quiet built-in fan with an on-off switch. This is a newer upgrade model vs the previous that did not have a fan switch and/or used an external clip on fan.

Comments after 2 weeks of use:
1. It requires an external power supply to run both SSD's and they include a 100 W charger head with a single USB-c port. It's standard wall mount size, so no big power block with dual cords is needed. They include a (way to short) USB-c power cable and a TB4 cable that are both about 18" long.
2. The overall enclosure size is quite small. Compared to my Acasis 405 single unit it is just about same length at 4-1/4" and 1/2" taller in height and width.
3. The controller splits a single TB3 port from my M2 Studio Max into 2 channels so the overall speed is halved for each slot. Acasis states 1,200 MB/s single (RAID 1 or JBOD) and up to 2,500 MB/s dual (RAID 0). Seems this is the older controller as it the same rating as my year plus old single drive 405. MY single drive Maiwo enclosures with a newer controller are about 10-12% faster.
4. I used Disk Utility to RAID 0 the 2 drives together, giving me a 8TB setup. MY speeds were at or slightly faster than they stated, see below.
5. The fan is very quiet and does an effective job at keeping the unit cool. Even after running all day I don't hear it. I did a 4.7 TB transfer twice, once with the fan on and once off. Sitting idle with fan on its 36C. During the transfer near the end, about 52 minutes, is got to 55C. Sitting idle with fan off it is normally 40C, and during the transfer near the end it got to 67C.

Overall a very good enclosure that is fast, quiet, compact and easy transportable. Plus is has 3 other ports to act as a mini hub. It lists for $189 direct from Acasis, but I bought during the holidays in Dec for $34 off that, it took about 16 days to receive (sat at LAX customs for a week).

 

[EugW]

Received an Acasis 405 Pro Max Dual NVMe enclosure 2 weeks ago and put in a pair of WD 850X 4TB Black NVMe's. Nicely built enclosure, my 3rd from them, that has an absolutely quiet built-in fan with an on-off switch. This is a newer upgrade model vs the one that did not have a fan switch/or used an external clip on fan.

Comments after 2 weeks of use:
1. It requires an external power supply to run both SSD's and they include a 100 W charger head with a single USB-c port. It's standard wall mount size, so no big power block with dual cords is needed. They include a (way to short) USB-c power cable and a TB4 cable that are both about 18" long.
2. The overall enclosure size is quite small. Compared to my Acasis 405 single unit it is the same length and 1/2" taller in height and width.
3. The controller splits a single TB3 port from my M2 Studio Max into 2 channels so the overall speed is halved for each slot. Acasis states 1,200 MB/s single (RAID 1) and up to 2,500 MB/s dual (RAID 0). Seems this is the older controller as it the same rating as my year plus old single drive 405. MY single drive Maiwo enclosures with a newer controller are about 10-12% faster.
4. I used Disk Utility to RAID 0 the 2 drives together, giving me a 8TB setup. MY speeds were a bit faster than they stated, see below.
5. The fan is very quiet and does an effective job at keeping the unit cool. Even after running all day I don't hear it. I did a 4.7 TB transfer twice, once with the fan on and once off. Sitting idle with fan on its 36C. During the transfer near the end, about 52 minutes, is got to 55C. Sitting idle with fan off it is normally 40C, and during the transfer near the end it got to 67C.

Overall a very good enclosure that is fast, quiet, compact and easy transportable. Plus is has 3 other ports to act as a mini hub. It lists for $189 direct from Acasis, but I bought during the holidays in Dec for $34 off that, it took about 16 days to receive (sat at LAX customs for a week).

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That RAID 0 speed slower than a single drive.

 

[M.Brane]

Guess you missed #3.

 

[EugW]

Guess you missed #3.

Well, I'm talking about single drive enclosures too. Yes he is aware, but this enclosure just seems pointless.

 

[SpecFoto]

That RAID 0 speed slower than a single drive.

Same speed results for the OWC NVMe 4 bay controller, they say 700MB/s is the max per lane or 2,800 MB/s RAID 0, but of course the speed drops to about the same as above in actual use.

Yes it is a bit slower than a single drive, but only some very expensive single drives. My 2 WD 4TB Black's were $470 vs. $650 for a single WD Black 8TB. Come Wednesday my WD 8TB 850X Black (ordered for $549 during BF😀) will finally arrive and I plan to put that into a Maiwo enclosure. I am expecting R/W speed closer to 3,000 MB/s. With this I will now be finally done with HDD's. Main and 2 backups will all be SSD's or NVMe's. My in the fire safe 16TB RAID USB-c is only good for less than 350 MB/s R/W speeds ......

Well, I'm talking about single drive enclosures too. Yes he is aware, but this enclosure just seems pointless.

Maybe pointless to you but Certainly not to me. It only requires a single TB port from the Mac, It runs cooler than a single (non-fan) enclosure. Whatever size your single drive is I can double that. I plan on getting another 8TB WD Black once they drop under $600 again and putting both of them into this Acacias enclosure. This will not require another TB computer port as 2 single drive would and gives me an extremely small 16TB RAID 0 Main drive powered via a single USB-c cable.

 

[EugW]

Yes it is a bit slower than a single drive, but only some very expensive single drives.

?? Pretty much all of the mid-range or better drives and many of the lower end budget drives these days can reach close to that 3000 MB/s threshold.

3000 MB/s these days is not very interesting. What might be more interesting are the random r/w speeds. That's where that enclosure has the potential to shine, but you didn't post those results.

It only requires a single TB port from the Mac

Fair enough.

It runs cooler than a single (non-fan) enclosure.

That's a strange argument. Sure, an enclosure with a fan runs cooler than an enclosure without one, but single enclosures can have fans too of course.

However, your posted drive temps, while quite reasonable, are not absolutely amazing IMO. Some single fanless enclosures will operate well under 60 C peak with extended file transfers on DRAM-endowed drives.

Whatever size your single drive is I can double that.

Reasonable point.

 

[SpecFoto]

?? Pretty much all of the mid-range or better drives and many of the lower end budget drives these days can reach close to that 3000 MB/s threshold.

3000 MB/s these days is not very interesting. What might be more interesting are the random r/w speeds. That's where that enclosure has the potential to shine, but you didn't post those results.

I don't deal with low budget electronics, learned the hard way. I am talking about 4TB and 8TB NVMe's, and the ones that are faster, have longer warranties, 1.5 million hours or more MTTF ratings and are PCIe 4 and above, are expensive and there are not a lot of those. For me I pretty much stick to Samsung and WD Black.

However, your posted drive temps, while quite reasonable, are not absolutely amazing IMO. You can get certain single fanless enclosures to operate well under 60 C peak with extended file transfers.

Probably because it was 4.7TB transfer. Up until the last 5 minutes the temps were quite a bit lower with the fan on, around 47C, but only at the very end did it jump to 55C.

Another reasons I wanted this enclosure is I've spent the last few summers in Thailand, my wife of 21 years is Thai and we are going back this year. With this new tiny enclosure I can run it off the same 2 port power charging block I use for travel anyway and use only 1 TB port on my Mac laptop, yet have 16TB of my data with me and a 16TB backup in the 4 SanDisk 4TB Extreme SSD's I use for mobile backup. No big and heavy HDD's needed or larger RAID setups with big power blocks, it all fits in my small 14" laptop bag. For me it a win-win.

 

[chars1ub0w]

Received an Acasis 405 Pro Max Dual NVMe enclosure 2 weeks ago and put in a pair of WD 850X 4TB Black NVMe's. Nicely built enclosure, my 3rd from them, that has an absolutely quiet built-in fan with an on-off switch. This is a newer upgrade model vs the previous that did not have a fan switch and/or used an external clip on fan.
...
Overall a very good enclosure that is fast, quiet, compact and easy transportable. Plus is has 3 other ports to act as a mini hub. It lists for $189 direct from Acasis, but I bought during the holidays in Dec for $34 off that, it took about 16 days to receive (sat at LAX customs for a week).

At this point, would be nice to see this in Thunderbolt 5, not USB-4, for speed reasons. Currently, 2 4TB NVMe drives are cheaper than 1 8TB drive, so that's one way to justify it for those who are port-limited.
If 8TB drives come down in price substantially, then it'd be nice to see 16TB supported.

 

[Brian33]

At this point, would be nice to see this in Thunderbolt 5, not USB-4, for speed reasons.

Yes, that would be sweet!

Acasis has a Thunderbolt-3 version; I might be interested in it. I like the idea of being able to put 2 NVMe in it. Either two cheaper ones, or maybe one now and leave one "bay" open for future expansion, using just 1 TB port. It is a lot more expensive than single-NVMe designs, though.

https://www.acasis.com/collections/...bay-raid-ssd-enclosure?variant=45034213343461

I like the power supply design, using standard replaceable parts. Yay! And best of all, for me, is the ability to daisy-chain other Thunderbolt devices (I have some legacy Thunderbolt 2 equipment that would work with Apple's adapter). I'm a little skeptical of how quiet such a small fan could be. I don't demand absolute silence, but I don't want a high-pitched sound all day...

Thanks, @SpecFoto for the review of the USB version.

 

[chars1ub0w]

Acasis has a Thunderbolt-3 version; I might be interested in it. I like the idea of being able to put 2 NVMe in it.

One thing that I worry about is not being bus powered anymore.
If you have two separate units, both bus powered, and if you're powering it from a Mac laptop, that's built-in UPS protection for short outages.

The units that come with an a/c adapter and power supply will go down on any power supply blip. However, if a dual NVMe enclosure has two USB-C cables, perhaps a laptop can supply enough juice over two cables.

 

[Brian33]

If you have two separate units, both bus powered, and if you're powering it from a Mac laptop, that's built-in UPS protection for short outages.

The units that come with an a/c adapter and power supply will go down on any power supply blip.

Very true, and maybe explains to me why bus-powered enclosures are so popular! I didn’t think of it because I use a Mac Mini, and I have a UPS for it and my externals. I view separate power supply as a plus (allows daisy-chaining), but you’ve reminded me I’m not the typical use case!

 

[Chancha]

Very true, and maybe explains to me why bus-powered enclosures are so popular! I didn’t think of it because I use a Mac Mini, and I have a UPS for it and my externals. I view separate power supply as a plus (allows daisy-chaining), but you’ve reminded me I’m not the typical use case!

Bus powered enclosure became the norm more or less because these days most users are using tech in a portable manner.

Another factor is unlike 3.5" vs 2.5" HDD era, the current crop of NVMe SSD and enclosure controllers can be adequately powered by bus only due to USB-C Power delivery being ale to output a lot of wattage. In the HDD era, 3.5" disk enclosure needed a power source that asked too much V/A for Thunderbolt 1/2 or Firewire or USB 3/2/1 to handle. So only 2.5" was a viable bus powered portable option, and it is too small to have the same capacity density increase like 3.5" disks had over the years.

 

[EugW]

I read that a thermal pad usually works best if it is compressed by a significant amount, like 20-40%. With my Qwiizlab / Samsung 990 Pro, the 2 mm thick stock thermal pad (unknown heat conductivity) did contact the enclosure well, but there seemed to be only a little bit of compression. I had tried stacking an additional supposedly 12.8 W/mk 0.5 mm pad on top of the existing stock 2 mm thermal pad to improve compression. However, it didn't improve things, and in fact may have made things a little bit worse.

Out of interest's sake I tried buying a new 15 W/mk thermal pad from the well rated Fehonda brand that is 2.25 mm thick, potentially raising both the thermal conductivity and compression a bit over the stock pad.

The pad in the test graph is their 12.8 W/mk version which is relatively inexpensive, but since I didn't need much I tried the 15.0 W/mk version for a few bucks more.

Was it worth it? Probably not. I think it might have reduced the speed of the temp fluctuations a bit so temp increases aren't quite as fast but the final idle temps might have dropped only just a degree or so. A small improvement, but not enough of a difference to really matter, even for just the ~US$12 I spent.

In conclusion, if your stock thermal pad has decent contact between the SSD and enclosure, and your temps are OK, then that should be good enough. However, if you happen to need new thermal pads, then I can confirm the Fehonda 15 W/mk pads are of decent quality. Another benefit to the Fehonda is that you can get them in odd thicknesses, like the 2.25 mm I purchased. BTW, some suggest 12.8 W/mk is the sweet spot, since those pads tend to be a bit softer than the 15.0 W/mk pads and more easily compressible, to reduce stress on circuit boards, but the 15.0 W/mk one I bought seems reasonably soft.

BTW, I guess I should have waited. The prices are almost 30% less now than what they were when I ordered 10 days ago. Doh!

 

[SpecFoto]

..........
I like the power supply design, using standard replaceable parts. Yay! And best of all, for me, is the ability to daisy-chain other Thunderbolt devices (I have some legacy Thunderbolt 2 equipment that would work with Apple's adapter). I'm a little skeptical of how quiet such a small fan could be. I don't demand absolute silence, but I don't want a high-pitched sound all day...

Thanks, @SpecFoto for the review of the USB version.

I have not heard the fan on the Acasis Dual NVMe enclosure unless I put my ear right next to it. It is a small fan, about the size of a US quarter, and runs at a slower non-adjustable speed. It works quite well and keeps the temps lower. I am reading from and writing back to the Acasis dual NVMe 8TB RAID setup a Handbrake encoding session that has been running for 3-1/2 hours. The temp is only 43C, up 5C from when it was idle.

 

[SpecFoto]

Can the Mac OS startup (for a M2 Studio Max) be from an external RAID drive? Has anyone tried this and have any experience?

Apple has some excellent instructions about making an external startup drive, but they do not say if this is allowed on a RAID external drive or list any excluded drive types. See this link:

Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support

If you have an external storage device, you can set it up as a Mac startup disk.

support.apple.com

I would like to use my new Acasis 405 Pro Max Dual NVMe enclosure, see post #1977 above, as my startup drive. It has 2 WD 4TB Black NVMe's inside, formatted as APFS. The drive has been excellent for storing data as with the internal, quiet fan it runs cooler than my single drive external enclosures. It would be awesome to have it as 8TB startup drive. Yes it may run a bit slower than the single drive external enclosures in R/W speeds but I am fine with that.

Of course I can just test it, but thought I might find out if anyone knows if a RAID setup can be the startup drive before I do.

EDIT: After digging into this it seems this is possible to do, but only using Apples RAID Utility, which is a beefed-up version of Disk Utility and available on a MacPro with the Pro RAID card. Disk Utility does not allow for adding volumes, but with RAID Utility you can add volumes to RAID setups and one of those can be the startup volume, see below. It puts the added volume on the 1st disk.

 

[Brian33]

After digging into this it seems this is possible to do, but only using Apples RAID Utility, which is a beefed-up version of Disk Utility and available on a MacPro with the Pro RAID card. Disk Utility does not allow for adding volumes, but with RAID Utility you can add volumes to RAID setups and one of those can be the startup volume, see below. It puts the added volume on the 1st disk.

Yes, Apple removed the software RAID functions from Disk Utility.app a few years ago; they used to be much more user-accessible! I had used it maybe 12 years ago to make an AppleRAID set (although I didn't boot from it).

Apple did not remove RAID support from macOS, though! You can use the diskutil command to create and manage AppleRAID volumes. Once set up with diskutil, they should act like regular volumes.

man diskutil will explain how to use it.

I haven't verified this syntax, but it should be something like diskutil appleRAID create stripe mySetName APFS disk4 disk5
EDIT: Make ABSOLUTELY sure you specify the correct disk numbers, as they will be erased/formatted!

diskutil appleRAID list should display the new RAID volume info.

You can use 'ar' as a synonym for 'appleRAID'. Also, note this:

When creating new RAID sets or adding disks, if possible, it is better to specify the entire disk instead of a partition on that disk. This allows the software to reformat the entire disk using the most current partition layouts.

I can't comment on the reliability of booting from a software RAID volume. One should have good backups, of course.

 

[Idgit]

Has anyone noticed their NVMe enclosure temperatures rising over time? When I first got my SN850x and Maiwo USB4 enclosure, the temperature stayed in the low 50 degrees Celsius. But especially since the Mac OS 15.3 update the drive, when not doing anything, is 60-63ºC.

I don't understand why its idle temperature has crept up 10ºC over the past month or so. Anyone seeing this?

 

[EugW]

Has anyone noticed their NVMe enclosure temperatures rising over time? When I first got my SN850x and Maiwo USB4 enclosure, the temperature stayed in the low 50 degrees Celsius. But especially since the Mac OS 15.3 update the drive, when not doing anything, is 60-63ºC.

I don't understand why its idle temperature has crept up 10ºC over the past month or so. Anyone seeing this?

Not here.

This was last week, probably after an hour or two after wake so the two external drives (Hagibis and Qwiizlab with Kioxia XG8 and Samsung 990 Pro respectively) had a chance to warm up to their max idle temps. I'm guessing the room temp was around 22C or so. These are both operating in Thunderbolt 3 mode (connected through Thunderbolt 4 hubs). The idle temps are about 2-3C higher in USB 4 mode (connected directly to Mac).

Are your thermal pads still doing their jobs properly?

 

[Idgit]

Are your thermal pads still doing their jobs properly?

That's a good question. There is some movement with the NVMe so it's possible the thermal pad isn't getting compressed. I'll order some some. Any recommendations? Aliexpress has a lot of generic brands.

 

[EugW]

That's a good question. There is some movement with the NVMe so it's possible the thermal pad isn't getting compressed. I'll order some some. Any recommendations? Aliexpress has a lot of generic brands.

Fehonda is what I bought. It does well in one Russian YouTube review and I can confirm it's decent.

High Conductivity Thermal Pad 15W 12W 8W Mult-Size Fehonda 0.5/0.75/1.0/1.25/1.5/1.75/2.0/3.0mm Silicon soft Thermal Pad Cpu Gpu - AliExpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

vi.aliexpress.com

I bought the 15 W version, but the 12 W should also be good. Make sure you choose the right thermal conductivity and size. Thickness 1.5 mm? 2.0 mm? I got the 2.25 mm x 85x45 one. Took 11 days to arrive in Canada.

Their store also has a 21 W version, but it's much cheaper and not Fehonda branded, so I suspect it likely actually is inferior.

However, you might want to check inside your enclosure first to make sure there isn't something else going on.

 

[chars1ub0w]

I can't be sure but it seems like temperatures have risen (or reporting has changed). The SSD inside is around 37ºC, but the external one is now 60ºC. Old style Lexar 790 and Zike drive (firmware updated). I'm not worried about temperature, but I am worried that the internal SSD is no longer at 100% health.

 

[Habusho]

Are there any recommendations for a thermal pad from Amazon? I don’t wanna wait two weeks for Alibaba.

 

[Idgit]

Following EugW’s earlier finding, I plugged my drive into a Thunderbolt 4 hub instead of directly into the Mini and now my temperatures have dropped to 53ºC.

I'm trying to understand why that would make a difference.

 

[EugW]

Following EugW earlier finding, I plugged my drive into a Thunderbolt 4 hub instead of directly into the Mini and now my temperatures have dropped to 53ºC.

I'm trying to understand why that would make a difference.

It switches to Thunderbolt 3 mode instead of USB 4. It appears macOS has better power management in Thunderbolt 3 mode as opposed to USB 4. You can check in the System Report, under the Thunderbolt/USB4 section.



My power measurement cable and dongle aren't too precise so the numbers may be a little inaccurate, but nonetheless it's clear that Thunderbolt uses significantly less power, albeit with a little bit lower peak performance.

In USB 4 mode, both my drives use 5-5.5 Watts at idle. In Thunderbolt 3 mode, one drive consistently uses 4.1 Watts at idle, while the other starts out at 4.1-4.6 Watts at idle, but after a period of time settles down to 3.6 Watts at idle.

Are there any recommendations for a thermal pad from Amazon? I don’t wanna wait two weeks for Alibaba.

The Thermalright Extreme Odyssey pads get good reviews, but I personally have not tried them.