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

[thoomp]

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.

Thanks again, @whodiini - I took your advice. I already got the Hynix on Black Friday and waiting for your suggested enclosure to arrive (delayed in transit). The fact that you said that the case remains lukewarm was key. I really like the idea that given that the throughput in the 3Ks and the max throughput of Thunderbolt 4 is that anyway, there was no need to spend more for faster throughput right now -- and it'll be thermally managed and will stay cool. Was very tempted to go for the Samsung 980 Pro, 970, etc. but keeping cool and being maxed out on speed -- why spend more? I figure 2TB should be fine for the next year for my video editing purposes, and will take your advice for getting a second setup and RAID-0 it if absolutely necessary; hopefully prices will drop further by then. You rock and thanks for the advice!

 

[hajime]

As of today, what is the best Thunderbolt 4 NVMe enclosure?

 

[chouseworth]

As of today, what is the best Thunderbolt 4 NVMe enclosure?

I am sure there will be lots of opinions but after having done a good bit of research on my own, I believe the Acasis M.2 SSD NVMe Enclosure has to be right up there. It is on Amazon now for $139, but it was on sale for Black Friday for $119. I have been getting great performance (2750 MB/s) with both the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro and the 2TB WD Black SN850 on my Studio Max. Not sure about how the Hynix NVMe would work out....

​

 

[hajime]

I am sure there will be lots of opinions but after having done a good bit of research on my own, I believe the Acasis M.2 SSD NVMe Enclosure has to be right up there. It is on Amazon now for $139, but it was on sale for Black Friday for $119. I have been getting great performance (2750 MB/s) with both the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro and the 2TB WD Black SN850 on my Studio Max. Not sure about how the Hynix NVMe would work out....

​

I read that it is quite fast but not really thunderbolt 4. Why there is no true thunderbolt 4 enclosure? How about those from ORICO and Sabrent? Are they also pseudo-thunderbolt 4 enclosures?

 

[DSM2.Hackintosh]

It’s the max speed you can get with an Thunderbolt 3/4 Enclosure due to Bandwidth Limit. It would be higher if you would have the M1 Ultra… @hajime

PS: you don’t need to quote a whole answer just mark a user as I did…


Personally I will build myself probably a diy Thunderbolt solution or my own raid and connect it via 10 Gbit LAN…

 

[Chancha]

I read that it is quite fast but not really thunderbolt 4. Why there is no true thunderbolt 4 enclosure? How about those from ORICO and Sabrent? Are they also pseudo-thunderbolt 4 enclosures?

Because Thunderbolt 3 while advertised as having "40gbps" bandwidth, it actually does not technically let you use all that in a single PCI connection. A typical thunderbolt controller in a NVMe enclosure can only utilize 22gbps (minus 10gbps reserved for type-C DP) out of the 31.52gbps (x4 lanes total) available.

The above is true for Thunderbolt 3, and I am unsure if Thunderbolt 4 has broken through that barrier or has it changed its PCIe lanes vs DisplayPort in terms of bandwidth allocation. There are TB4 / USB4 enclosures that advertise as having 40gbps and I am not sure what that means.

 

[hajime]

Between Acasis and ORICO, which is a better in terms of performance, reliability and customer services?

 

[cpnotebook80]

deleted

 

[rworne]

I have the OWC Envoy Pro FX, 4TB version. It manages 2800+ MB/s read, 2200+ MB/s write.

Black Magic seems to have an issue with this drive, as it reports slow read speeds for some reason. Amorphous DiskMark gives consistent high readings though. Using the drive, I think it has no speed problems either - but I fired off an email to OWC asking about this.

Speed comparison with internal storage:

 

[hval]

Hiya all,


I have read much, but not all, of the advice and comments that I find interesting. Unfortunately, I am now a bit confused. I am about to buy a Mac Studio which I will be using for photo editing, which includes photo stacking, scanning of photographs/ negatives along with some fairly light use of Final Cut Pro, Motion and Logic Pro use.


I am attempting to maximise the £6,000 (approx $7,000 but UK prices are $1 = £1 when buying stuff) I have to spend.


I currently have about 8TB of data that will need to be transferred and kept “live”. I have thousands of photographs to scan over the next few years, along with a photography hobby where I can end up with large files of photo stacked images, or 50MB file sizes for photographs.


I had thought of the following external drive systems to go along with a Mac Studio Max with a 2TB internal storage: -

OWC MiniStack STX empty

Samsung 990 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD (used for scratch disk). Goes inside OWC Ministack

Toshiba X300 PRO 16TB High Workload Performance for Creative Professionals 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive – Up to 300 TB/Year Workload Rate CMR SATA 6 GB/s 7200 RPM 512 MB Cache - HDWR51GXZSTB. For MiniStack

LaCie d2 Professional, 18TB, External Hard Drive Desktop, Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, 7200 RPM Enterprise Class Drives - Time Machine back up device

I had thought of utilising a Drobo 5D3 for Time Machine, but the two I have owned were nothing but trouble, would only ever work intermittently, and expanding drive space meant wiping out prior backups. I have read a few reviews which are not complimentary to the Drobo 5D3 and that call the Drobo 5D3 “a disaster” and “I bought one and have regretted that decision ever since”.


I do have a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD which I currently use in my Mac Pro 5,1 as the boot drive. That would come available for some use as well.


If anyone is recommending the use of two 2TB drives in Acasis enclosures, does anyone know where to buy better thermal pads?


I have 6, practically unused (but now quite old) 2TB 3.5” hdds from the non functioning Drobos, that I could also make use of somewhere.


Do you guys have any recommendations for a system that might meet my needs. The Mac Studio that I have selected is the Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine with 64 GB RAM and a 2 TB SSD.

 

[EzisAA]

Hiya all,


I have read much, but not all, of the advice and comments that I find interesting. Unfortunately, I am now a bit confused. I am about to buy a Mac Studio which I will be using for photo editing, which includes photo stacking, scanning of photographs/ negatives along with some fairly light use of Final Cut Pro, Motion and Logic Pro use.


I am attempting to maximise the £6,000 (approx $7,000 but UK prices are $1 = £1 when buying stuff) I have to spend.


I currently have about 8TB of data that will need to be transferred and kept “live”. I have thousands of photographs to scan over the next few years, along with a photography hobby where I can end up with large files of photo stacked images, or 50MB file sizes for photographs.


I had thought of the following external drive systems to go along with a Mac Studio Max with a 2TB internal storage: -

OWC MiniStack STX empty

Samsung 990 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD (used for scratch disk). Goes inside OWC Ministack

Toshiba X300 PRO 16TB High Workload Performance for Creative Professionals 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive – Up to 300 TB/Year Workload Rate CMR SATA 6 GB/s 7200 RPM 512 MB Cache - HDWR51GXZSTB. For MiniStack

LaCie d2 Professional, 18TB, External Hard Drive Desktop, Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, 7200 RPM Enterprise Class Drives - Time Machine back up device

I had thought of utilising a Drobo 5D3 for Time Machine, but the two I have owned were nothing but trouble, would only ever work intermittently, and expanding drive space meant wiping out prior backups. I have read a few reviews which are not complimentary to the Drobo 5D3 and that call the Drobo 5D3 “a disaster” and “I bought one and have regretted that decision ever since”.


I do have a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD which I currently use in my Mac Pro 5,1 as the boot drive. That would come available for some use as well.


If anyone is recommending the use of two 2TB drives in Acasis enclosures, does anyone know where to buy better thermal pads?


I have 6, practically unused (but now quite old) 2TB 3.5” hdds from the non functioning Drobos, that I could also make use of somewhere.


Do you guys have any recommendations for a system that might meet my needs. The Mac Studio that I have selected is the Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine with 64 GB RAM and a 2 TB SSD.

Acasis enclosure comes with 2 thermal pads. I used both to my 2TB Samsung 980 Pro - no overheating. By the way next year will be available 4TB Samsung 990 Pro.

 

[Chancha]

Hiya all,


I have read much, but not all, of the advice and comments that I find interesting. Unfortunately, I am now a bit confused. I am about to buy a Mac Studio which I will be using for photo editing, which includes photo stacking, scanning of photographs/ negatives along with some fairly light use of Final Cut Pro, Motion and Logic Pro use.


I am attempting to maximise the £6,000 (approx $7,000 but UK prices are $1 = £1 when buying stuff) I have to spend.


I currently have about 8TB of data that will need to be transferred and kept “live”. I have thousands of photographs to scan over the next few years, along with a photography hobby where I can end up with large files of photo stacked images, or 50MB file sizes for photographs.


I had thought of the following external drive systems to go along with a Mac Studio Max with a 2TB internal storage: -

OWC MiniStack STX empty

Samsung 990 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD (used for scratch disk). Goes inside OWC Ministack

Toshiba X300 PRO 16TB High Workload Performance for Creative Professionals 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive – Up to 300 TB/Year Workload Rate CMR SATA 6 GB/s 7200 RPM 512 MB Cache - HDWR51GXZSTB. For MiniStack

LaCie d2 Professional, 18TB, External Hard Drive Desktop, Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, 7200 RPM Enterprise Class Drives - Time Machine back up device

I had thought of utilising a Drobo 5D3 for Time Machine, but the two I have owned were nothing but trouble, would only ever work intermittently, and expanding drive space meant wiping out prior backups. I have read a few reviews which are not complimentary to the Drobo 5D3 and that call the Drobo 5D3 “a disaster” and “I bought one and have regretted that decision ever since”.


I do have a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD which I currently use in my Mac Pro 5,1 as the boot drive. That would come available for some use as well.


If anyone is recommending the use of two 2TB drives in Acasis enclosures, does anyone know where to buy better thermal pads?


I have 6, practically unused (but now quite old) 2TB 3.5” hdds from the non functioning Drobos, that I could also make use of somewhere.


Do you guys have any recommendations for a system that might meet my needs. The Mac Studio that I have selected is the Apple M1 Max with 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine with 64 GB RAM and a 2 TB SSD.

Do you mean you have a total of 6000 pounds to spend, including the Mac Studio? And you are only getting the M1 Max not M1 Ultra so that leaves you roughly 4000 if you get the base model, and less if you spec up the internal SSD?

OWC dock with NVMe SSD & HDD: I can see the appeal of this, it puts everything in one closure, together with the Studio it is just a 2-piece sitting nicely on top of each other. But on a technical standpoint this is a single point of failure, and you limit the bandwidth to a single Thunderbolt connection which by itself is already low for the NVMe SSD. The only technical benefit is this can reduce the number of power sockets to just one which isn't even that big of a deal. I myself would separate all these into independent modules so their future failures are easier to be dealt with, and you get more flexibility in how you use them. Like a dedicated TB4 enclosure to maximize NVMe performance, then a dock with better selection of ports especially card readers and display output.

The 990 Pro: it is a good SSD but as other pointed out above it is only 2TB. Currently I say the SN850X 4TB is the best gen4 investment, it was on sale for $375 during black friday and will probably reach similar price some other odd times. (Not sure about UK deals though)

Toshiba X300 16TB: this is a good drive, Toshiba in enterprise line where its MG09 disk uses newer manufacturing technique (FC-MAMR in 18TB and up) and this goes into the X/N300 series; so get 18TB or more (16TB is still MG08 I think). Conversely you can also consider WD (HGST) Ultrastar 18-20TB. But frankly these are all enterprise class disks, you probably don't need such good disks for cold storage anyway (photos are accessed rather non-frequently, compared to say your boot drive).

LaCie D2: I'd say they are more looks than function since forever. Also for such enclosure you do not need Thunderbolt, and you only use it as TM. Something like a WD Elements with USB3 is already pretty decent for this.

Drobo: they were never even close to being relevant at any point of their product history. I have a feeling lots of amateur to semi-pros just fell for their marketing at some point, pretty much all of them regret the decision later. So yes drop the Drobos, take the 2TB disks out, get something cheap like a 6-8 bay ORICO bare bone enclosure (without hardware RAID card). Then use software RAID or even just macOS Disk Utility to create a RAID-0 or just JBOD them to use as secondary storage. But honestly if your current units are not broken yet you could still use them, just do ever depend your life on these.

Crucial MX500: It is still a decent drive for what it was, but it is only SATA and only 1TB. You can get a very cheap 2.5" enclosure since USB3 is enough for SATA, and use this drive as another TM backup (just for the Mac Studio OS) or some other portable usage that does not require NVMe speed. I myself use these kind of leftover SATA SSD for archival OS backup instances, or emergency bootable clones. They are stored away, does not require power brick to run, and is not as terrible as HDDs for booting or restoration.

two NVMes in one enclosure: currently there is no meaningful performance related reason to RAID up external NVMes since the Thunderbolt bandwidth is the cap. The only scenario where it makes sense is for a single large volume, like getting an OWC / JEYI 4 bay and stripping up 4 sticks of 4TB to get a 16TB volume on the go; but even then it requires extra power (the USB-PD from a single port does not cut it).

 

[handheldgames]

Acasis enclosure comes with 2 thermal pads. I used both to my 2TB Samsung 980 Pro - no overheating. By the way next year will be available 4TB Samsung 990 Pro.

Be careful, there are countless reports of 980 pro's self destructing unexpectedly. Same goes for the 940 Evo Plus, which is the same drive but limited to PCIe 3.0. It seems that many of current gen NVMe SSD's are far from rock solid and prone to failure.

 

[EzisAA]

Be careful, there are countless reports of 980 pro's self destructing unexpectedly. Same goes for the 940 Evo Plus, which is the same drive but limited to PCIe 3.0. It seems that many of current gen NVMe SSD's are far from rock solid and prone to failure.

From what planet earth are you from? In this earth no 940 evo. If you mean 970 evo, it is not the same as 980 Pro.

I have never seen or heard of any problems. On the contrary, everyone praises him as one of the more stable SSDs, because he has a overheating temperature is 86 degrees Celsius, and then the writing speed drops to only 1GB/s.

After continuous writing of 1.5TB, he only heats up to 60 degrees Celsius on a wooden table.

For example, when placing the SSD on the legs of the LG 4K 23.7 Thunderbolt monitor, the maximum temperature is 52 degrees Celsius after 1,7TB continuous write with speed 1,6-1,8 GB/s.

 

[hval]

Do you mean you have a total of 6000 pounds to spend, including the Mac Studio? And you are only getting the M1 Max not M1 Ultra so that leaves you roughly 4000 if you get the base model, and less if you spec up the internal SSD?

OWC dock with NVMe SSD & HDD: I can see the appeal of this, it puts everything in one closure, together with the Studio it is just a 2-piece sitting nicely on top of each other. But on a technical standpoint this is a single point of failure, and you limit the bandwidth to a single Thunderbolt connection which by itself is already low for the NVMe SSD. The only technical benefit is this can reduce the number of power sockets to just one which isn't even that big of a deal. I myself would separate all these into independent modules so their future failures are easier to be dealt with, and you get more flexibility in how you use them. Like a dedicated TB4 enclosure to maximize NVMe performance, then a dock with better selection of ports especially card readers and display output.

The 990 Pro: it is a good SSD but as other pointed out above it is only 2TB. Currently I say the SN850X 4TB is the best gen4 investment, it was on sale for $375 during black friday and will probably reach similar price some other odd times. (Not sure about UK deals though)

Toshiba X300 16TB: this is a good drive, Toshiba in enterprise line where its MG09 disk uses newer manufacturing technique (FC-MAMR in 18TB and up) and this goes into the X/N300 series; so get 18TB or more (16TB is still MG08 I think). Conversely you can also consider WD (HGST) Ultrastar 18-20TB. But frankly these are all enterprise class disks, you probably don't need such good disks for cold storage anyway (photos are accessed rather non-frequently, compared to say your boot drive).

LaCie D2: I'd say they are more looks than function since forever. Also for such enclosure you do not need Thunderbolt, and you only use it as TM. Something like a WD Elements with USB3 is already pretty decent for this.

Drobo: they were never even close to being relevant at any point of their product history. I have a feeling lots of amateur to semi-pros just fell for their marketing at some point, pretty much all of them regret the decision later. So yes drop the Drobos, take the 2TB disks out, get something cheap like a 6-8 bay ORICO bare bone enclosure (without hardware RAID card). Then use software RAID or even just macOS Disk Utility to create a RAID-0 or just JBOD them to use as secondary storage. But honestly if your current units are not broken yet you could still use them, just do ever depend your life on these.

Crucial MX500: It is still a decent drive for what it was, but it is only SATA and only 1TB. You can get a very cheap 2.5" enclosure since USB3 is enough for SATA, and use this drive as another TM backup (just for the Mac Studio OS) or some other portable usage that does not require NVMe speed. I myself use these kind of leftover SATA SSD for archival OS backup instances, or emergency bootable clones. They are stored away, does not require power brick to run, and is not as terrible as HDDs for booting or restoration.

two NVMes in one enclosure: currently there is no meaningful performance related reason to RAID up external NVMes since the Thunderbolt bandwidth is the cap. The only scenario where it makes sense is for a single large volume, like getting an OWC / JEYI 4 bay and stripping up 4 sticks of 4TB to get a 16TB volume on the go; but even then it requires extra power (the USB-PD from a single port does not cut it).

Hiya,

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a detailed response.

Yes, I have £6,000 total, for everything, including the Mac Studio. I did spec up a Mac Studio Ultra initially, which came to £4,600, or something like that. That left too little, in my view for the external drives and enclosures. I ended up speccing the base Mac Studio (Mac Studio with M1 Max 10 Core CPU, 32 Core GPU, 16 Core Neural engine, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD ). This comes to £3300.

The reason for an Enterprise level drive is that I actually do access those photographs more often than I ever expected to. Also my workflow is as follows: -

1/ Create folder on Scratch disk
2/ Copy photographs from camera to folder, or, scan slides/ negatives/ photos to folder
3/ Edit photographs, including adding information about photographs.
4/ Upon completion move folder to 3.5" HDD
5/ Get photo editing software (ON1 and Affinity) to index photographs

Similar workflow for video editing

For my Project management work, including MS Office, and the such I am also intending to use the 3.5" HDD, where the speed does not have to be massive. Mind you, some reports I create can be large.

For my music, I intend to keep that on the 3.5" hdd as well, as I do not use Apple music, or what ever it is called that much. I use Spotify instead.

I use my iPhone, with Moment lenses and additional kit an awful lot. The library for this is very large. I mean a few Terabytes large.


As for Drobo, yes, I was taken in by what they promised, and I would not ever use them again.


It looks like your recommendation might be....

1. Western Digital SN850X 4TB SSD - £369
2. Enclosure (possibly Acasis M.2 SSD NVMe) - about £120
3. Western Digital 18TB Ultrastar - £320 (equivalent Toshiba X300 is £481)
4. Thunderbolt 4 enclosure for Western Digital Ultrastar - Don't know of one
5. Western Digital Elements 20TB Desktop for Time Machine (40% off at the moment) - £289
6. 2.5" enclosure for Crucial MX500. - £35

The other stuff, including an enclosure for up to 8 2TB 3.5" HDDs can wait. I have always tended to go for enterprise drives. Force of habit. I used to buy them for servers.

Now.... I can afford to go for a Mac Studio Ultra. However much I am tempted, will I make use of all its capabilities? I am tempted to keep it as I am tempted to replace my Nikon D500 which has died. These are about £1600, even though they are not made anymore.

 

[Chancha]

Hiya,

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a detailed response.

Yes, I have £6,000 total, for everything, including the Mac Studio. I did spec up a Mac Studio Ultra initially, which came to £4,600, or something like that. That left too little, in my view for the external drives and enclosures. I ended up speccing the base Mac Studio (Mac Studio with M1 Max 10 Core CPU, 32 Core GPU, 16 Core Neural engine, 64GB RAM, 2TB SSD ). This comes to £3300.

The reason for an Enterprise level drive is that I actually do access those photographs more often than I ever expected to. Also my workflow is as follows: -

1/ Create folder on Scratch disk
2/ Copy photographs from camera to folder, or, scan slides/ negatives/ photos to folder
3/ Edit photographs, including adding information about photographs.
4/ Upon completion move folder to 3.5" HDD
5/ Get photo editing software (ON1 and Affinity) to index photographs

Similar workflow for video editing

For my Project management work, including MS Office, and the such I am also intending to use the 3.5" HDD, where the speed does not have to be massive. Mind you, some reports I create can be large.

For my music, I intend to keep that on the 3.5" hdd as well, as I do not use Apple music, or what ever it is called that much. I use Spotify instead.

I use my iPhone, with Moment lenses and additional kit an awful lot. The library for this is very large. I mean a few Terabytes large.


As for Drobo, yes, I was taken in by what they promised, and I would not ever use them again.


It looks like your recommendation might be....

1. Western Digital SN850X 4TB SSD - £369
2. Enclosure (possibly Acasis M.2 SSD NVMe) - about £120
3. Western Digital 18TB Ultrastar - £320 (equivalent Toshiba X300 is £481)
4. Thunderbolt 4 enclosure for Western Digital Ultrastar - Don't know of one
5. Western Digital Elements 20TB Desktop for Time Machine (40% off at the moment) - £289
6. 2.5" enclosure for Crucial MX500. - £35

The other stuff, including an enclosure for up to 8 2TB 3.5" HDDs can wait. I have always tended to go for enterprise drives. Force of habit. I used to buy them for servers.

Now.... I can afford to go for a Mac Studio Ultra. However much I am tempted, will I make use of all its capabilities? I am tempted to keep it as I am tempted to replace my Nikon D500 which has died. These are about £1600, even though they are not made anymore.

No worries; every time I see a long post like yours I can see how we struggled in the past, just wanted to drop my 2 cents to ease that for fellows (data management has always been hard).

Your budgeting looks fine; the Ultra is clearly beneficial in some photography workflows especially with LR Classic, but as you realise, the cost to benefit is very low, and going with "just the Max" you can save that much for the storage investment, so you are on a right mindset IMO. I may even go as far as picking just the binned M1 Max 24cores and 1TB to minimise spending on Apple since they ask ridiculous BTO price, but, the capacity of the internal drive may be integral to your aforementioned workflow so yeah do 2TB if you feel you need that room to manoeuvre.

Scratch: I take it you mean to use that Thunderbolt NVMe for this? There are a sea of choices but I'd just say what I recently bought: SN850X 4TB in Acasis TBU405. I only put them together days ago so cannot say how reliable it will be, but out of the gate the performance is stellar, and the enclosure is double-duty TB4/USB4 so it is mountable even on old Macs / Windows without Thunderbolt3/4. Previously I have used enclosures from JEYI and WAVLINK, then SSDs as 970EVO Plus and SN750 of various sizes, they all performed similarly but as always with Chinese enclosures it is sometimes hit or miss; 2 out the 4 screws on the JEYI is now falling off since they milled the screw holes too loose, and the WAVLINK has been really difficult to dissemble since it uses some spring loaded tabs instead of screws inside. And then the 970EVO Plus has been having macOS incompatibility / loss of performance lately. So yeah finding a good SSD and enclosure is a wild ride.

The 3.5" primary storage: so this is like a stage-2 storage for assets that need to be online (not archival)? Well then depending on your expectation, some people get by with a cheap WD Elements (the disk they use are actually Ultrastar white labels that failed some QA tests to make it retail). Others especially if they edit with files on it they opt for at least 2-bay RAID-0 enclosures so the access speed and wait time is not as slow. An enterprise disk single platter we are seeing 200MB/s+ sequential and much lower random reads since the data is scattered. So there is a very wide spectrum in what you should get, depending on the size of your media pool and how much smoothness you are expecting. If you only a single 3.5" disk then there really is no exceptional grade enclosure since there is no market for this so the manufacturers stopped making them, moving on to multi-bay NAS or SAS and the like. So anything USB3 is no worse than say an OWC enclosure. But yeah from a reputable brand you are getting a less crappy power supply but they are mostly mediocre Chinese OEMs anyway so it's all luck.

Drobo: Yeah just use it until it dies, I take it that the 2TB disks are not young anyway, you can check their SMART status, if disk power on hours is approaching 40000 then it is closing to its life expectancy. Btw I don't know what you intend to do with the classic Mac Pro, it has 4 bays and 2 more SATA ports on the mother board, so a total of 6 disks is possible to fit it, you just need to take out the optical drive(s) and get a bracket and some cables for this. Lots of people turn their old Mac Pros into macOS file servers like this, *but*, the one main disadvantage is its power consumption, I know the UK is at its worst in terms of power cost right now so you may reserve this idea later on.

I am a Nikon shooter as well, has been rocking a D850 + D500 dual wield for a while. I wish Nikon can throw out a Z series APSC sports body soon, but it looks like they will never do that again. Hell even a large MP Z series has not happened yet. If you miss the D500 that much maybe look at used markets?

 

[cpnotebook80]

I got the 4m2 OWC and yep the fans are slightly noisy. I was going to remove the fan and just add heat sinks to the ssds. I am still wondering if that is ok as I read someone doing the same and it was fine. So not sure how beneficial the fan really is along side a heat sink and if fan is required at all!

I saw a heatsink from Be Quite! and also some plain copper ones with fins. Just have to make sure they all fit snugly.

 

[Chancha]

I got the 4m2 OWC and yep the fans are slightly noisy. I was going to remove the fan and just add heat sinks to the ssds. I am still wondering if that is ok as I read someone doing the same and it was fine. So not sure how beneficial the fan really is along side a heat sink and if fan is required at all!

I saw a heatsink from Be Quite! and also some plain copper ones with fins. Just have to make sure they all fit snugly.

Heatsinks typically decrease with a margin of 10 degrees Celsius at best, so depending on the environment you put the thing in, it may be fine without a fan. But 4 sticks sitting at proximity with each other is not helping, so I guess the fact they designed a fan in place is to expect the worst for you regardless. There is an interesting alternative in the JEYI 4bay, it hardly has room for any heatsink thicker than like 3mm, but it looks like users are fine with it at least judging from their product comments (it is supposed to use heat pads directing heat to the aluminium casing).

 

[thoomp]

Quick follow-up. I went last month with the Acasis M.2 SSD NVMe Enclosure and the Hynix P31 Gold as a previous poster suggested. Plenty fast as the Thunderbolt bus appears saturated, and no fear of overheating as the enclosure gets warm and not really hot. Haven't put it through severe video editing stress tests, but it's more than what I likely need. Also set up an OWC ThunderBay 8 unit for my spinning rust. Going to edit on the M.2 with the Mac Studio, and store (with backup drives) on the ThunderBay. Thanks to everyone who has responded.

 

[cpnotebook80]

I have the same Acasis M.2 and wish they made a dual version. Hoping in 2023 maybe. You are right that its cooler.

 

[thoomp]

I doubt that there will be a dual version. The key point is that the Thunderbolt bus is already saturated by the single M.2 stick (the fastest component), and a second M.2 stick won't make the throughput through the Thunderbolt bus any faster.

So if you want faster speeds, you can RAID 0 (via SoftRAID) two sticks over two separate Thunderbolt connections -- which another user has done here -- which is nearly as fast as the internal SSD. That's my game plan if I find I need more speed.

If you just want more storage but the same space (say, two M.2 sticks in one enclosure), that would make sense but again -- the Thunderbolt connection would be the bottleneck here.

 

[handheldgames]

From what planet earth are you from? In this earth no 940 evo. If you mean 970 evo, it is not the same as 980 Pro.

I have never seen or heard of any problems. On the contrary, everyone praises him as one of the more stable SSDs, because he has a overheating temperature is 86 degrees Celsius, and then the writing speed drops to only 1GB/s.

After continuous writing of 1.5TB, he only heats up to 60 degrees Celsius on a wooden table.


View attachment 2131642
For example, when placing the SSD on the legs of the LG 4K 23.7 Thunderbolt monitor, the maximum temperature is 52 degrees Celsius after 1,7TB continuous write with speed 1,6-1,8 GB/s.

940 was a Typo.

For all intensive purposes, the 970 Evo Plus and the 980 Pro are the PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 versions of the same drive. With that being said, MANY users of BOTH ssd have been reporting sudden failures of the SSD, even in low usage situations. It appears there are serious reliability issues with this revision of the design. More of a FYI than anything... Luckily for Samsung, the 990 Pro seems to have resolved the issue, but time will tell.

 

[EzisAA]

940 was a Typo.

For all intensive purposes, the 970 Evo Plus and the 980 Pro are the PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 versions of the same drive. With that being said, MANY users of BOTH ssd have been reporting sudden failures of the SSD, even in low usage situations. It appears there are serious reliability issues with this revision of the design. More of a FYI than anything... Luckily for Samsung, the 990 Pro seems to have resolved the issue, but time will tell.

Still dont understand wher you get bad reportings sudden. Show a prof! 🤭🕵🏻‍♂️

Based on Amazon rating (more than 20k) it get 4,8 from 5 stars. And if read 3 star reviews people crying about long shipping, for screws not included for PC motherboards 🤭😂😂, overpriced, about how MS Office opens up so long, as if he is ever opened up fast... 🤭🤣

 

[handheldgames]

I was initially concerned with looking at the most recent reviews, where there were too many users calling out failing drives. From there I did some more research

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https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/swnrd4 ​

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https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/x8arle ​

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https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/ekezvn ​

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Amazon.com: Customer reviews: SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Drive w/ V-NAND Technology, Storage and Memory Expansion for Gaming, Graphics w/ Heat Control, Max Speed, MZ-V7S1T0B/AM

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Drive w/ V-NAND Technology, Storage and Memory Expansion for Gaming, Graphics w/ Heat Control, Max Speed, MZ-V7S1T0B/AM at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from...

www.amazon.com

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Amazon.com: Customer reviews: SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Drive w/ V-NAND Technology, Storage and Memory Expansion for Gaming, Graphics w/ Heat Control, Max Speed, MZ-V7S1T0B/AM

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for SAMSUNG 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Drive w/ V-NAND Technology, Storage and Memory Expansion for Gaming, Graphics w/ Heat Control, Max Speed, MZ-V7S1T0B/AM at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from...

www.amazon.com

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https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/xggxjc ​

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Amazon.com: Customer reviews: SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2 Internal Solid State Drive Memory Card, Maximum Speed, Thermal Control, MZ-V8P1T0B

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2 Internal Solid State Drive Memory Card, Maximum Speed, Thermal Control, MZ-V8P1T0B at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users.

www.amazon.com

Even a great product can have design issues irrespective of previous performance expectations. There have been others in this thread discussing sudden performance drops with current Gen Samsung NVME SSD's

 

[handheldgames]

Quick follow-up. I went last month with the Acasis M.2 SSD NVMe Enclosure and the Hynix P31 Gold as a previous poster suggested. Plenty fast as the Thunderbolt bus appears saturated, and no fear of overheating as the enclosure gets warm and not really hot. Haven't put it through severe video editing stress tests, but it's more than what I likely need. Also set up an OWC ThunderBay 8 unit for my spinning rust. Going to edit on the M.2 with the Mac Studio, and store (with backup drives) on the ThunderBay. Thanks to everyone who has responded.

I've tried 2 Hynix P31 SSD's in my Mac Studio using multiple interfaces and both cannot achieve more than 520 MB/S write speeds. Can you please confirm the performance you are seeing with your setup in Amorphous Disk mark?

I've tested on multiple hardware configurations:
MacOS Ventura 13.1 on a Mac Studio Ultra.
TB4 -> Sonnet Breakaway Box -> Highpoint 7107a -> Hynix P3 Gold
TB4 -> Acasis TB4 NVMe SSD interface -> Hynix P3 Gold