Yes, it really does look nice, but I'd rather have the vertical cooling fins, as per my Orico enclosure. But maybe the extra girth of alloy in the enclosure works well? It's a tasty solution anyway... 👍
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Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures
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Have a look at Samsung Portable SSD X5 series (the "X" ones, not the "T" ones). These have been benchmarked to went above ~ 2.5GB/s throughput.
I'm not aware of any Consumer SSD > 1TB without SLC cache other than the 960Pro 2TB. Unfortunately it's exactly this SSD that does not work properly (800MB/s write speed) in the enclosures incorporating Intel JHL6340 PCB's (as you can buy from Acasis, Orico, Yottamaster etc.). So to reach constant! full speed without limits you're pretty much stuck to my solution (970Pro 1TB/Acasis), I would say. I stand to be corrected...
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I'd take the enclosure *without* the sh*tty drive inside. Unfortunately you can't open it up. It's all politics to sell the drives. But time comes these enclosures will hopefully be available empty.
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None with JHL7440 Titan Ridge (which gives you USB3.1 Gen2 + Thunderbolt3) afaik.
Hi everyone
OK, I have a mini (2018) Macmini8,1 6-Core Intel Core i7 20Gb memory.
I purchased a Thunderbolt 3 external Samsung X5 1TB drive last year. All good for my plethora of VM machines for testing stuff etc.
I wanted to get a 2TB nvme to expand my fleet so turned my attention to getting a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure + NVME drive and as a bit of 'Research and Development', I went for the Orico SCM2T3-G40 and took the plunge with a Crucial P5 2TB NVME as it seemed to have quite high R/W statistics.
Doing some AmorphousDiskMark tests I have the following for the mini internal disk, the Samsung and the Crucial. I had hoped the the Crucial would be up there with the others but sadly no. I have tried to find out if the Crucial is actually supported but to no avail on either Orico or Crucial support sites.
I’ve checked the Thunderbolt connections and the Orico is working as expected. Any ideas/recommendations?
Many thanks in advance.
OK, I have a mini (2018) Macmini8,1 6-Core Intel Core i7 20Gb memory.
I purchased a Thunderbolt 3 external Samsung X5 1TB drive last year. All good for my plethora of VM machines for testing stuff etc.
I wanted to get a 2TB nvme to expand my fleet so turned my attention to getting a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure + NVME drive and as a bit of 'Research and Development', I went for the Orico SCM2T3-G40 and took the plunge with a Crucial P5 2TB NVME as it seemed to have quite high R/W statistics.
Doing some AmorphousDiskMark tests I have the following for the mini internal disk, the Samsung and the Crucial. I had hoped the the Crucial would be up there with the others but sadly no. I have tried to find out if the Crucial is actually supported but to no avail on either Orico or Crucial support sites.
I’ve checked the Thunderbolt connections and the Orico is working as expected. Any ideas/recommendations?
Many thanks in advance.
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If you have a Windows pc, see if there's a firmware update? Not sure you can update on a mac...
Must be drive incompatibility with Mac then, much like the Samsung 960Pro 2TB mentioned above. Or a faulty cable (the one with my enclosure - same as yours - works fine).
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Show the PCIe device info for the NVMe. It might be connecting with x2 instead of x4? The Orico is supposed to use the JHL6340 which has x4 lanes so it shouldn't be a problem.
I'd say incompatibility of the JHL6340 FW with some (UEFI implementation ??? in) SSD drives.
But his problem seems to be 2xPCIe lanes (instead of 4x), I guess also.
There's a FW tool from Wavlink (UTE02) for the JHL6x40 https://www.wavlink.com/en_us/firmware/details/d2c01db1f7.html but details are above my knowledge so far.
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Thanks for your comments guys.
1. All TB3 cables are performing well.
2. I’ve attached screenshots of the TB link info for each enclosure. I connected them to the same TB Bus slot each time for consistency. They look the same - link width 0x2 but showing that 40Gb/s x1 is available?
Right, next I decided to open up the Samsung enclosure and put the Samsung nvme into the Orico enclosure.
The Samsung nvme performs more or less the same as in its own enclosure. Good!
Then put the Crucial nvme into the Samsung enclosure.
The Crucial nvme is just the same as when in the Orico enclosure.
Conclusion: the Crucial is not compatible so will seek to get it exchanged by Amazon - I’ve tried to raise a support incident with Crucial but their site appears to be wonky at the moment.
1. All TB3 cables are performing well.
2. I’ve attached screenshots of the TB link info for each enclosure. I connected them to the same TB Bus slot each time for consistency. They look the same - link width 0x2 but showing that 40Gb/s x1 is available?
Right, next I decided to open up the Samsung enclosure and put the Samsung nvme into the Orico enclosure.
The Samsung nvme performs more or less the same as in its own enclosure. Good!
Then put the Crucial nvme into the Samsung enclosure.
The Crucial nvme is just the same as when in the Orico enclosure.
Conclusion: the Crucial is not compatible so will seek to get it exchanged by Amazon - I’ve tried to raise a support incident with Crucial but their site appears to be wonky at the moment.
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Nice effort. Glad you sorted it out. If you don't absolutely need 2TB then you know what drive to buy - and which ones to avoid - now. And what saves your precious time
Thunderbolt 3 is two lanes, 20 Gbps each. 40 Gbp/s x1 width x2 means the lanes are combined into a single connection which is normal.
Interesting. That seems very conclusive that the issue is with the combination of Crucial with Thunderbolt type enclosures.
One thing you didn't check is an enclosure that doesn't use Thunderbolt bus power? For example, a Sonnet Echo Express SE-I with a PCIe to NVMe adapter. I think it's likely that it won't change the result.
One thing you didn't show is the PCI connection information for the Crucial NVMe - there's a PCI section in System Information.app that has that info. The Samsung definitely is connecting with 8 GT/s x4. The Crucial could be less than that (which would be part of the problem), but it could be the same, and if it is, then the problem is an interaction between its NVMe controller and Thunderbolt.
Sonnet Echo Express SE-I is Thunderbolt2. What's that gonna prove?
It's not "between its NVMe controller and "Thunderbolt" " it's JHL6340 vs. FW/Controller/UEFI specs or whatever. Save your time with those drives if you're using a JHL6340 PCB or deepdive into FW patches of the JHL6340.
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Sonnet Echo Express SE I (Thunderbolt 3 Edition). Or any other similar enclosure.
Right. Maybe the problem is not with all Thunderbolt 3 controllers. Maybe it's just a problem with the JHL6340 (single port Alpine Ridge). The Sonnet uses a two port Alpine Ridge. The OWC Mercury Helios 3S uses a two port Titan Ridge. Of course, you wouldn't want to use those enclosures all the time since they are not portable and are more expensive, but it would be an interesting test.
I see.
I don't think there's much difference between JHL6340 and JHL6540 regarding NVMe handling.
It's likely Intel did extensive testing with its TB controllers and that the fault could also lie somewhere in the drives itself beeing not exactly according to specs.
FYI JHL6340 draws 1,7W max the Samsung 970Pro 1TB (for example) 8,5W max which equals 10,2W. TB3 can deliver 15W max bus power. So this should neither be a problem nor decrease speed.
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