Thunderbolt 4 & NVMe M.2 External Storage: Read/Write Speeds?

[cgscotto]

Hi, I just wanted to follow-up on my post #105, where I was discussing the slow write speed, approx. 629 MV/s, of the Samsung 960 Pro I had housed in an OWC Envoy Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. F-Trains said some OWC enclosures do not perform as well as they can with certain OWC enclosures.

I bought the Orico USB4.0 NVMe SSD enclosure and a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD to add to my external drives. Before putting the 980 Pro in the Orico enclosure, I tried the 960 Pro in it to see if the bottleneck was the Envoy. As you see in the attached screenshot, the read speed improved dramatically, from apex. 1550 MB/s to 2675 MS/s, but the write speed stayed about the same, 651MB/s.

Everything improved when I put the 980 Pro in the Orico enclosure with 2736 MB/s write speeds and 2775 MB/s read speeds. I am happy with that result. All test were run with the drives connected to a CalDigit Dock.

I guess the 960 pro is just limited in this configuration, but it does seem odd that the read speed would improve dramatically but not the write speed.

 

[anticipate]

Thanks. Looking at those scores, M1's USB implementation is severely gimped.

Random QD1 is the single most important metric in small sized transfers and everyday tasks and if we look at the write speeds, all those scores are lower than the T5 connected to my Intel iMac. That includes M1's internal SSD as well your thunderbolt connected 980 Pro!

The RTL9210 JEYI enclosure is also reporting much lower speeds. The sequential reads is almost 30% lower than it should be.

To get a better picture, I connected my T5 drive to my M1 MBA and it only connects as a USB 5Gbps drive. Consequently, the scores are much lower. In fact, the scores are even lower than the same drive connected to the USB 3.0 5Gbps port of my Intel iMac.

It's sad that Apple has completely ignored the whole issue so far.

Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Random write performance is still abysmally low compared to the Intel machines. Here are a couple of scores I found online. The random write speeds on M1 machines are lower than 1/10 of these scores.

View attachment 2030969


View attachment 2030971

I ran some tests. It is definitely slower than Intel machines, but not THAT much slower. Except that last Random 4K write score...

I ran (different PCI Gen 3) stick tests in my Core i9 10850K PC w/64GB and got this:

On the M1 Ultra (I didn't test our M1 Max laptop) - internal, then two separate Thunderbolt 3/4 enclosures with Inland Gen 3 sticks each:

The random reads are ok, about half (?) compared with Intel/Windows but the write scores... yikes

And none of this is as fast as you showed.. must be stick dependent.

 

[F-Train]

Personally, I'm not planning on selling my Mac Studio and buying an Intel Windows computer so that I can get a faster random write speed, according to tests, on an external auxiliary drive. For practical, real world purposes the Samsung T7s and Samsung 980 Pros that I'm using are plenty fast enough, thanks.

This is not on the list of things that I'm going to get my knickers in a knot about

 

[AAPLGeek]

I ran some tests. It is definitely slower than Intel machines, but not THAT much slower. Except that last Random 4K write score...

I ran (different PCI Gen 3) stick tests in my Core i9 10850K PC w/64GB and got this:
View attachment 2031614

On the M1 Ultra (I didn't test our M1 Max laptop) - internal, then two separate Thunderbolt 3/4 enclosures with Inland Gen 3 sticks each:

View attachment 2031607

View attachment 2031608

View attachment 2031609

The random reads are ok, about half (?) compared with Intel/Windows but the write scores... yikes

And none of this is as fast as you showed.. must be stick dependent.

That last random write score is a big deal though. It's pretty much the only score that matters (along with QD1 random reads) when you're working on apps, VMs or even running macOS off of your external drive. Transferring thousands of small files? That's also random read and write speeds in play.

People in these threads tend to focus on sequential reads and writes when they're largely irrelevant outside of 4k/8k video editing or huge database transfers.

It's laughable that random write scores shown here are slower when compared to even the cheapest SATA SSD attached a USB 3.0 5Gbit port of an Intel Mac.

 

[F-Train]

That last random write score is a big deal though. It's pretty much the only score that matters (along with QD1 random reads) when you're working on apps, VMs or even running macOS off of your external drive. Transferring thousands of small files? That's also random read and write speeds in play.

I have no reason to put my Mac Studio's operating system on an external drive "Thousands of small files"? I gave a real life example in post #52:

"Benchmarks are well and good, but I thought that I'd time a real-life copy from the Samsung 980 Pro to my 2018 Mac mini internal drive [the Mac Studio, with its faster internal drive, hadn't arrived yet]...​

​

"I wanted to time copying of a large number of small files. I have Spitfire Audio's full BBC Symphony Orchestra library on the 980 Pro SSD. The library is 635GB. I copied the Woodwinds directory (see screen capture below), which consists of sounds from the orchestra's woodwind instruments (flutes, piccolo, oboe, clarinets, bassoons, cor anglais). The directory is 150GB and contains 4,485 files. That works out to an average of 33.4MB per file. I determined the number of files via the Mac Terminal command ls | wc -l. Mac right-click "Get Info" showed the same number of "Items"."​

​

The transfer happened plenty fast enough, thanks, and my Mac Studio and Logic Pro X don't seem to care whether that 635GB sound data library is on my internal drive or the 980 Pro; indeed, Logic runs fine with the library on a Samsung T7

You're pretty worked up about test scores. Maybe you should buy an Intel Windows computer.

 

[AAPLGeek]

I have no reason to put my Mac Studio's operating system on an external drive "Thousands of small files"? I gave a real life example in post #52:

"Benchmarks are well and good, but I thought that I'd time a real-life copy from the Samsung 980 Pro to my 2018 Mac mini internal drive [the Mac Studio, with its faster internal drive, hadn't arrived yet]...​

​

"I wanted to time copying of a large number of small files. I have Spitfire Audio's full BBC Symphony Orchestra library on the 980 Pro SSD. The library is 635GB. I copied the Woodwinds directory (see screen capture below), which consists of sounds from the orchestra's woodwind instruments (flutes, piccolo, oboe, clarinets, bassoons, cor anglais). The directory is 150GB and contains 4,485 files. That works out to an average of 33.4MB per file. I determined the number of files via the Mac Terminal command ls | wc -l. Mac right-click "Get Info" showed the same number of "Items"."​

​

The transfer happened plenty fast enough, thanks, and my Mac Studio and Logic Pro X don't seem to care whether that 635GB sound data library is on my internal drive or the 980 Pro; indeed, Logic runs fine with the library on a Samsung T7

You're pretty worked up about test scores. Maybe you should buy an Intel Windows computer.

Your 2018 Mac mini is an Intel machine. Maybe you should try reading my posts again instead of posting the childish “get a windows computer” remarks?

 

[F-Train]

Your 2018 Mac mini is an Intel machine. Maybe you should try reading my posts again instead of posting the childish “get a windows computer” remarks?

Ahh, your complaint has also been made about Mac Intel computers

This thread is in the Mac Studio subforum. It's for people who own, or are thinking of buying, a Mac Studio, and it talks about external drive options. Several people who have Mac Studio computers have provided concrete, practical, real life information about those options. That's why the thread has over 15,000 views.

You have now written six posts in pursuit of an issue that is only relevant if the choice is between a Mac or a Windows computer. You apparently don't have a Mac Studio computer, and your posts are "informed" by stuff that you say you "found online". Unlike others, you have posted no real life information whatever. What you're doing amounts to an irrelevant, multi-post rant that adds nothing of practical value to the readers of this thread.

As for my suggestion, I was being dead serious. You have now made repeated posts attacking how Mac computers perform, compared to Windows computers, on tests. If you are that upset about it, surely it's obvious that you should be considering a Windows machine. In the meantime, maybe you could stop hijacking this thread.

 

[AAPLGeek]

Ahh, your complaint has also been made about Mac Intel computers

This thread is in the Mac Studio subforum. It's for people who own, or are thinking of buying, a Mac Studio, and it talks about external drive options. Several people who have Mac Studio computers have provided practical, real life information about those options.

You have now written six posts in pursuit of an issue that is only relevant if the choice is between a Mac or a Windows computer. You apparently don't have a Mac Studio computer, and your posts are "informed" by stuff that you say you "found online". Unlike others, you have posted no real life information whatever. What you're doing amounts to an irrelevant, multi-post rant that adds nothing of practical value to the readers of this thread.

As for my suggestion, I was being dead serious. You have now written six posts attacking how Mac computers perform, compared to Windows computers, on tests. If you are that upset about it, surely it's obvious that you should be considering a Windows machine. In the meantime, maybe you could stop hijacking this thread.

Hilarious. Not once have I complained about Mac Intel computers.

Not once have I mentioned a word about windows or windows computers or made any comparisons.

My posts very clearly point out the USB/thunderbolt performance variation between Intel and M1 based Macs.

I don’t have a Mac studio, but I happen to have both Intel as well as M1 based Macs which I posted several screenshots of. My posts are absolutely relevant for anyone exploring fast external storage options for M1 based machines which is related to the title of this thread.

 

[whodiini]

Apple's storage is fast. Amorphous disk test on my Studio Max:

I took 2 Acasis TB3 enclosures and put 2 identical Hynix P31 Gold 2TB, and used disk utility to raid stripe them. I connected each one to one port on the back of the Studio max so they each had all the bandwidth of the port.
Amorphous disk test of the striped RAID:

The striped RAID is in the same ballpark as the native Studio Max storage!

Cost of this: 2 x ($90 enclosure +$160 P31 gold) = $500. So you can with carefully chosen components, save about half the cost of additional built in storage with a small hit on performance.

 

[handheldgames]

Hilarious. Not once have I complained about Mac Intel computers.

Not once have I mentioned a word about windows or windows computers or made any comparisons.

My posts very clearly point out the USB/thunderbolt performance variation between Intel and M1 based Macs.

I don’t have a Mac studio, but I happen to have both Intel as well as M1 based Macs which I posted several screenshots of. My posts are absolutely relevant for anyone exploring fast external storage options for M1 based machines which is related to the title of this thread.

As a Mac Studio Ultra owner, I agree 100% with your observations. The 4k read and write speeds on Apple Silicon are abysmal, at a fraction of write performance achievable on a 2012 Mac Pro. Not sure what's up with M1's 4k write performance as the issue is not limited to the internal SSD as attached thunderbolt storage also suffers.

 

[wei803]

It is sad that Apple no longer support bootable RAID with APFS, else this could be my interim setup. Duo ACASIS Thunderbolt 3 casing with duo 980 Pro. Tested on a MacBook Pro 15-inch 2017, using each channel of different side.

Just out of curiosity, creating the duo into a Fusion Drive half-ed the speed (I could boot from Fusion Drive but the speed are = to single drive).

 

[thoomp]

Hi everyone - Just tuning in to this, as I've got the same question here. As this is a bit of an older thread...I figured I'd re-ask the question...What's the current best recommendation as of Nov 2022 (ideally in time for Black Friday sales next week) for an external setup -- that won't break the bank?

In short, I just boughed a lightly used and incredibly affordable Mac Studio base model, so the 512GB internal drive seems stupidly fast but too small to use it as a FCPX scratch drive as well. Plus, I'm a bit leery of regularly slamming that internal SSD as it's not replaceable.

In short, I'm gearing up to start FCPX editing again -- after a few years break and I used to use external RAID-0 configurations over USB 3 -- in my 2012 cMP tower that's maxed out. For multiple reasons, it was time to finally upgrade. Although the cMP does great work, the Mac Studio was seriously at an irresistible price.

My guess is a 2TB workspace over TB4 (or TB3?) would be solid, with nightly backups to traditional spinner HDDs...and then reusing the setup for future projects. I'll be delivering 1080p in the end, using 4K footage.

@wei803 suggested the following in the last post: "Duo ACASIS Thunderbolt 3 casing with duo 980 Pro"

Any thoughts, I'd really appreciate it. Cheers!

 

[B.A.T]

Hi everyone - Just tuning in to this, as I've got the same question here. As this is a bit of an older thread...I figured I'd re-ask the question...What's the current best recommendation as of Nov 2022 (ideally in time for Black Friday sales next week) for an external setup -- that won't break the bank?

In short, I just boughed a lightly used and incredibly affordable Mac Studio base model, so the 512GB internal drive seems stupidly fast but too small to use it as a FCPX scratch drive as well. Plus, I'm a bit leery of regularly slamming that internal SSD as it's not replaceable.

In short, I'm gearing up to start FCPX editing again -- after a few years break and I used to use external RAID-0 configurations over USB 3 -- in my 2012 cMP tower that's maxed out. For multiple reasons, it was time to finally upgrade. Although the cMP does great work, the Mac Studio was seriously at an irresistible price.

My guess is a 2TB workspace over TB4 (or TB3?) would be solid, with nightly backups to traditional spinner HDDs...and then reusing the setup for future projects. I'll be delivering 1080p in the end, using 4K footage.

@wei803 suggested the following in the last post: "Duo ACASIS Thunderbolt 3 casing with duo 980 Pro"

Any thoughts, I'd really appreciate it. Cheers!

I bought a Studio three weeks ago. For external storage I bought the OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini and 4 1TB SSD drives. I'm set up in JBOD mode and for my needs it is working great. I basically edit 4k drone footage and am doing just basic stuff with FCP.

 

[whodiini]

Have a studio max. Have a thread about some efforts posted here. Summary is my recommendation is:
For NVME a 2TB Hynix P31 gold is fast, reasonbly priced ($165 amazon sale price, sale runs often) and runs cool and transfers fast to M1 macs. An Acasis enclosure I have been happy with; use the clamshell type. If you want to run 2, raid striped to double the speed, dont use a duo enclosure as a single NVMe will close to fill the thunderbolt pipeline so 2 will not be faster, you will run each NVMe at half speed! Just get a second enclosure and then run it in raid striped mode and the speed will be close to the speed of the internal studio max storage. Or just start with one and if you want double the speed and double the storage, get another one.

 

[thoomp]

Have a studio max. Have a thread about some efforts posted here. Summary is my recommendation is:
For NVME a 2TB Hynix P31 gold is fast, reasonbly priced ($165 amazon sale price, sale runs often) and runs cool and transfers fast to M1 macs. An Acasis enclosure I have been happy with; use the clamshell type. If you want to run 2, raid striped to double the speed, dont use a duo enclosure as a single NVMe will close to fill the thunderbolt pipeline so 2 will not be faster, you will run each NVMe at half speed! Just get a second enclosure and then run it in raid striped mode and the speed will be close to the speed of the internal studio max storage. Or just start with one and if you want double the speed and double the storage, get another one.

@whodiini - This sounds like an amazing plan; I was coming to a similar conclusion on all accounts (largely due to your earlier comments). I was thinking the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB instead of the Hynix (as it's currently on sale for $180)...and I tend to have had good luck with Samsung SSDs for years...but definitely the ACASIS. A few quick questions on this:

• Which Acasis enclosure did you go with? It looks like there's one with ridges and one without. (TBU405 vs TBU401). Also can't find the one for $90.
• Does your Acasise nclosure get hot? I'd hate to fry an expensive SSD.
• What kind of editing stuff do you throw at it? Any bottlenecks?

Given that I got the Mac Studio rather inexpensively, I'm hoping that just starting out with the one 2TB stick will be plenty for now both per speed and space....and without breaking the budget at $300 plus tax. I have a feeling that the ~2500 speeds will be plenty and I'm just not used to it (I'm used to about ~120 from a few years back with RAID-0 7200 drives over USB 3).

You are a rock star, @whodiini -- Really -- Thanks for taking the time out to help on this! Cheers.

 

[whodiini]

I got the TBU405 thru aliexpress; took a risk without support. The TBU405 is not a sandwich type, so removing the cover will be a pain. I went with the P31 gold because I wanted something that ran cool. I understand the 980 pro runs hot. I didnt want thermal throttling to slow down the NVMe. With the P31 gold, it is lukewarm, not even hot.

If you decide on the 980 Pro, get better thermal pads. Also place it on top of the Studio Max so that the whole block of Al will act as a heat sink.

Good luck!

 

[thoomp]

Wow, @whodiini -- If you're getting BOTH amazing speeds AND it remains lukewarm no matter what you throw at it (with just the thermal pad I'm assuming is included with the Acaisise), I'm totally sold here. What kind of heavy tasks do you routinely throw at it?

Again, although I was admittedly not really in the market for a Mac Studio (yet), I couldn't pass the price up and figured -- I'd never have to worry about video cards and FCPX stuttering ever again -- at last for the next few years. I also really just edit at my desk these days, so a MacBook Pro would just sit uncomfortably tethered to my desk. I love your idea of starting with one and then RAID-0-ing it later if I want/need more speed -- resting easily that this should prolong the life of the internal SSD.

I'll definitely have to watch for a sale; the P31 looks like it jumped up to $210 as I write this, and the enclosure is now $120 on Aliexpress. I'll wait for sales, I guess?

Finally - Did you test the speeds with a single SSD before building the RAID 0? If so, any idea what the speeds you were getting?

A huge thanks for your weighing in here!

 

[AppleTomsk]

I've create a 32tb Raid0 striped volume with 4 units of OWC Thunderblade 8tb, each one connected to a different Thunderbolt4 port on the Mac Studio Ultra. The read/write speeds are amazing! View attachment 1986139

Can you link the enclosure and the NVMes you use here ?

 

[Pressure]

Can you link the enclosure and the NVMes you use here ?

If you want something more professional you can look at iodyne that uses Thunderbolt NVMe Multipathing and connects with multiple TB cables.

 

[DSM2.Hackintosh]

Wrong thread - sorry

 

[AppleTomsk]

@Pressure Will check it out! Thanks!

 

[EzisAA]

Hi everyone - Just tuning in to this, as I've got the same question here. As this is a bit of an older thread...I figured I'd re-ask the question...What's the current best recommendation as of Nov 2022 (ideally in time for Black Friday sales next week) for an external setup -- that won't break the bank?

In short, I just boughed a lightly used and incredibly affordable Mac Studio base model, so the 512GB internal drive seems stupidly fast but too small to use it as a FCPX scratch drive as well. Plus, I'm a bit leery of regularly slamming that internal SSD as it's not replaceable.

In short, I'm gearing up to start FCPX editing again -- after a few years break and I used to use external RAID-0 configurations over USB 3 -- in my 2012 cMP tower that's maxed out. For multiple reasons, it was time to finally upgrade. Although the cMP does great work, the Mac Studio was seriously at an irresistible price.

My guess is a 2TB workspace over TB4 (or TB3?) would be solid, with nightly backups to traditional spinner HDDs...and then reusing the setup for future projects. I'll be delivering 1080p in the end, using 4K footage.

@wei803 suggested the following in the last post: "Duo ACASIS Thunderbolt 3 casing with duo 980 Pro"

Any thoughts, I'd really appreciate it. Cheers!

I use with my MacBook Pro M1, 2TB Samsung 980 Pro in ACASIS (TBU401). Read speed when copy is about 2,6GB/s, but write 2,6GB/s (after cache 1,6 GB/s). With Acasis enclosure come two thermal stickers, I stick both to SSD for better heat output.

On wood table after write 1,5TB, SSD heat to 66° in celsius. Speed not drop less than 1,6GB/s.

Random write+read SSD is about 1GB/s. (when you read and write on SSD in same time)

In this week, I edit 9 from 10 video on this SSD at FCPX.

Working perfect.

 

[chouseworth]

I have been using the Acacis Thunderbolt 3/4 enclosure with a Samsung 2T 980 Pro for the past week on my Studio Max and have had zero issues. No disconnects at sleep, rock solid performance. Read and write speeds as measured by Blackmagic 5GB stress option are each about 2750MB/sec. Idle temps at 40C, highest I got with a 300GB transfer was 51C. I do keep the chip side of the Acacis face down on the top of my Studio. The Studio seems to act as an additional large heatsink to supplement the two thermal strips inside the case. Considering $119 for the enclosure and $179 for the Samsung 980 Pro I am very satisfied.

 

[whodiini]

right now, the Hynix P31 gold 2TB is at an all time low of $150 on Amazon.... Great drive. and I am not a shill nor get any compensation for this recommendation.

 

[DSM2.Hackintosh]

it’s a shame that we can’t get the Controller Boards only… this would make a ton of possibilities…