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Thunderbolt 4 & NVMe M.2 External Storage: Read/Write Speeds?
- Thread starter F-Train
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I’ve been searching fruitlessly and asking around, with no success so far…
Where are the Thunderbolt 4 storage (nvme) devices? Chips have been ‘out’ for years, I think? But I have seen no TB 4 storage devices actually come to market?
I'm confused by this. I want to buy a TB 4 enclosure for 4 nvme drives, preferably bus powered and passively cooled; NO FANS.
I've only seen a few 4-bay devices. None are bus powered, and only one from trebleet (whoever that is) is passively cooled. It’s TB 3, and $400.
This whole area is a giant bag of pain and frustration...
Where are the Thunderbolt 4 storage (nvme) devices? Chips have been ‘out’ for years, I think? But I have seen no TB 4 storage devices actually come to market?
I'm confused by this. I want to buy a TB 4 enclosure for 4 nvme drives, preferably bus powered and passively cooled; NO FANS.
I've only seen a few 4-bay devices. None are bus powered, and only one from trebleet (whoever that is) is passively cooled. It’s TB 3, and $400.
This whole area is a giant bag of pain and frustration...
Yes, since it arrived.
There are very few scenarios where you'd notice the difference between 2.5gb/s and 8gb/s, so I'm fine with an external thunderbolt drive. Especially since some projects easily write tens of TB's in a few days.
I'm planning to keep the machine for quite a while. And if I'd ever want to sell it, showing the internal disk has less than 1TB of data written should help.
Who knows, Apple might lock external boot devices in a future OS update. By then I have a 'fresh' internal ssd.
Benchmarks showed that random access was actually worse on my internal drive than the external one. Not that I noticed...
I highly doubt latency or small files will be faster compared to an external nvme drive, but I can't comment on that.
I used to have one issue where certain drivers would only work if you'd disable SIP and boot from the internal drive. But I switched DAC's so I don't have that problem anymore. Right now the system works beautifully and is rock stable using Monterey 12.4. I'm a happy camper 👍.
[Internal 2TB]
[External 2TB]
My experience with the Acasis + Samsung 980 Pro combo is that it doesn't like 2 bootable partitions of different OS. Or it has problems with Sonoma. I wiped the Sonoma partition some time ago and now I only use Monterey. Only then is de boottime acceptable. Otherwise there are lockups and spinning beachballs.
Read and write speed is 2750 MB/sec approx.
Read and write speed is 2750 MB/sec approx.
Do you mean Samsung 980 Pro?Bought this.
Put a Samsung 990 Pro 2Tb drive in it and plugged it into one of the ports on the back of my M1 Mac Studio Ultra.
This is what I get.
That's alright isn't it?
Yup, been waiting on the satechi one for months. They keep pushing it. Was supposed to be summer 2023
I'm guessing you're not going to see a bus-powered four-bay design from anyone reputable, because 4 NVMe SSD's could draw a lot of power, possibly more than a single TB port can supply (I think it's 15W max, unless it has the special 100W charging spec). And if you exceed that during a data transfer, the transfer could be corrupted. [So yes, you could possibly see a 4-bay bus-powered design that requires 2 TB cables, but I doubt anyone would build one.]
That's also why most 4-bay devices have fans--though a sufficiently large device could certainly dissipate the heat passively. For example, here's wall-powered (but fanless) four-bay device from OWC. [At least I think it's fanless, b/c it lists the noise as "0.0 dB"; you can confirm that with OWC.] The problem is that it's pricey because it only comes with SSD's (but maybe they'll sell you an "empty" one):
OWC ThunderBlade: 40 GB/s Thunderbolt (USB-C) NVMe RAID SSD
Silent, blazingly fast, and mobile-ready, the OWC ThunderBlade offers top-tier performance with RAID reliability for creative professionals on the go.
Just out of curiosity, why do you want TB4? Its max data transfer rate is no higher than TB3's. When it comes to performance, all TB4 gives you is higher minimums, but that just means it filters out the low-end stuff, which it doesn't sound like you're looking at anyways. Specifically, with TB4, the enclosure has to have 4 x PCIe4.0 to meet the spec, while with TB3, the enclosure could have either 2 x PCIe4.0 or 4 x PCIe4.0:
"Thunderbolt 4 requires PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) at 32Gbps for storage speeds up to 3,000MBps, which is double the minimum requirements of Thunderbolt 3.....With Thunderbolt 4, you’re assured to have all four lanes of PCI Express available—so PCIe can consume up to 32Gbps of the total 40Gbps Thunderbolt bandwidth. With Thunderbolt 3, depending on your laptop manufacturer and model, some implementations offer only 16Gbps of PCIe bandwidth. "
Source: Simon Jary, Macworld
Thunderbolt 4 vs Thunderbolt 3 vs USB4
What is the difference between Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4, and then what about USB4?
www.macworld.com
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I haven't seen any external Thunderbolt 4 SSD's.
How is this external drive from Sabrent?
https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Exte...96995932&sprefix=sabrent+,aps,290&sr=8-4&th=1
How is this external drive from Sabrent?
https://www.amazon.com/SABRENT-Exte...96995932&sprefix=sabrent+,aps,290&sr=8-4&th=1
Which enclosure is better: Acasis TBU405 or TBU401?
Which ssd is better: Western Digital SN850X or Samsung 980 Pro?
Which ssd is better: Western Digital SN850X or Samsung 980 Pro?
TBU405 clearly.
SN850X has slight edge, temperature lower and also without that hardware batch problem the 980 Pro had.
is there a reason to choose an Acasis case and an SSD when one can buy a ready made unit that will deliver the same speeds over TB3 for probably about the same price and with the RTL9210 chipset? Like this one: https://www.flexxmemory.co.uk/storage/owc-envoy-pro-fx-thunderbolt-3-usb-c-portable-nvme-m-2-ssd/
If one has no time or experience to shop around, buying whole is probably a better idea. But for example if you wait and snatch the SSD during prime day / black friday or via some other deals, then source the enclosures straight from China, the combination can be a lot cheaper:
Back in July I bought:
~USD$100 Acasis TBU405 Pro M1
~USD$240 WD SN850X 4TB
Cool, thanks. My question isn't a judgement by the way, it's purely trying to understand what to do for the best.
The enclosure referenced has a USB 3.2 interface, not TB3. So, it is not capable of achieving the bandwidth of something like the ACASIS TB405.
In general, Samsung NVMe drives have known TRIM issues with macOS. Avoid them.
I thought this when looking at the images but it's a universal connection: TB3/4, USB C/A (A with the tethered connector) and says it can reach up to 2800mbs. It has the Intel Titan Ridge chipset. Looking further it seems the 480GB version is a good deal getting quite close to the max TB speeds.
Yeah, you are correct. I missed the image of the lightning bolt next to the connector when I looked at the images and mistakenly made an inappropriate conclusion.. It is definitely TB and capable of TB speeds. The tests results seem to suggest the write speeds are low?
Yes, TB speeds seem to vary vary across the SSD sizes and they're all either roughly at or over 2000Mb/s - which for me I think will be fine. I spoke to OWC support and they told me to expect the same performance regardless of SSD size.
I'm not sure about the reliability of the DIY solution and the hot temps - I'd be using it most days for months/years - can't afford for it to go down mid job.
Is anyone using the OWC Envoy Pro FX? Does it run hot or cool?
eshop.macsales.com
OWC Envoy Pro FX - The Fastest, Most Compatible Drive Ever Made
Works with yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s Thunderbolt and USB computers and devices, and supports the max performance of any interface up to 2800MB/s.
So what would be best 4tb ssd to pair with acacis tbu 405 pro m1? I was considering 4tb samsung 990 pro but concerned about trim issues and also firmware issue. Is SABRENT 4TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-4TB) better?