Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures

[SpecFoto]

Is anyone running 3 x 40gbps NVME enclosure on their Mac (pref M4 Pro?)

When I connect the 3rd drive it is dead slow/crashes.. (it can be any drive)

This is a known problem for Apple Silicon Macs. I have a MS M2 Max with 4 TB ports, I could only power 3 enclosures at 40Gb/s directly. (but if I intentionally unplugged 1 and later replugged in, I had to restart to see all 3 again). Seems the same for your Mac mini Pro, only 2 work at a time. It's an internal power limitation issue that all the TB ports can't provide the needed 15W each, at the same time, that external TB devices require. And that Apple doesn't like to talk about. See the link below.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m4-mac-mini-external-thunderbolt-drives-limitation.2445812/

You can power additional enclosures thru a TB hub, in my case an OWC TB4 hub, but the speed is cut to around 1.2-1.4-Gb/s per port as they are sharing the TB bandwidth from 1 port on the Mac. (This speed may be increased with a TB5 hub?) I pair up 2 WD580X 4TB in separate Maiwo K1717 encosures as a RAID 0 8TB array, hooked up to the OWC hub, the speeds get back to near 2.5 Gb/s R&W, but if hooked directly as RAID 0 to the MS TB ports, speeds are 5.5R and 4.6Gb/s W The 3rd port on the hub is driving my 2nd Apple monitor.

 

[adonis3k]

Thanks mate, looks like I will be just using 2 NVME drives and my ssd which are all working fine at the moment. I was going to get a TB5 enclosure but 6x the price I paid for my 40gpbs enclosures so not worth it for me.

 

[drrich2]

It's an internal power limitation issue that all the TB ports can't provide the needed 15W each at the same time that external TB devices require.

Are there reputable brandname external single SSD enclosures with Thunderbolt 3 (or 5) that have their own power supply rather than relying on your Mac's (or a hub/dock's) Thunderbolt bus for power?

That would solve the problem, yes?

 

[adonis3k]

Maybe something like this https://www.acasis.com/products/acasis-40gbps-thunderbolt-3-m-2-nvme-2-bay-raid-ssd-enclosure or

 

[SpecFoto]

Are there reputable brandname external single SSD enclosures with Thunderbolt 3 (or 5) that have their own power supply rather than relying on your Mac's (or a hub/dock's) Thunderbolt bus for power?

That would solve the problem, yes?

Maybe something like this https://www.acasis.com/products/acasis-40gbps-thunderbolt-3-m-2-nvme-2-bay-raid-ssd-enclosure

I bought that Acasis 405 TB4 Dual NVME encolsure 3 months ago and have 2 WD Black 8TB in it as a 16TB RAID 0 array. I really like the enclosure but there are some items to be aware of:

Yes, it's self powered via a standard USB-C charger, which is great compared to most external power bricks of many others, but the Mac does not know it is self powered. It seems the power is supplied for the fan and other ports, like the monitor and USB-C 10Gb/s. So the Mac treats it as a non-powered unit and you run into the same 15W limitation and external drive limit.

There is a single cable from the Macs TB port to it, which means the 2 NVME slots are sharing the TB bandwidth and run at half speed each (Acasis claims 1.5Gb/s) with a RAID 1 backup array. If you run RAID 0 you gain back some of the speed, but not quite all of it. My Black Magic RAID 0 R/W speeds are 2.8Gb/s & 2.5Gb/s, which is in line with other dual drive enclosures in a RAID 0 array.

The fan is VERY quiet and keeps the dual drives 4 to 7 C cooler than my other single drive enclosures. Unfortunately shutting down the Mac ejects the drive and turn off the NVME's, but not the fan. You have to manually push the tiny fan On/Off switch when shutting down or the fan will run continuous. And since I don't hear the fan as the enclosure is behind my MS and Display, that happens a lot.

Still if I had a TB5 Mac, and Acasis will make a version for I, I would get it. My oldest Acasis enclosures has been trouble free for 3+ years.

 

[PaulD-UK]

@drrich2 ”Are there reputable brandname external single SSD enclosures with Thunderbolt 3… that have their own power supply…”

I have 3 Western Digital D50 TB3 docks which have an internal NVMe slot which they sell empty or fitted with an SN750 SSD.

They have two TB3 ports so are daisy chainable, plus all the usual USB ports etc.

They function absolutely reliably with my M4Pro mini, at full TB3 2800MB/s r/w speeds, although write speeds drop to ~1700MB/s if I have a 5K display plugged into the TB3 output port of the dock.

https://shop.sandisk.com/en-gb/products/ssd/external-ssd/wd-black-d50-game-dock-nvme-thunderbolt-3-ssd

Or with no SSD. However you need to provide a heatsink to fit your own choice of SSD.

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