What external ssd drive is best for a M1 Mac mini?

[jwahaus]

Cool, you're getting the same speeds as digitalguy for the TB4 port -> USB 3.2 drive. Did you also find a speed difference between Intel and AS when the T7 is connected to the USB A port?

Updating the table based on your report .

PORT-------- DRIVE----------- SPEED
USB 3.1 ---- USB 3.2----- 350 MBps
TB4 ----- USB 3.2 ----- 700-800 MBps [for AS Macs -- Intel devices are faster]
TB4 ----- NVME/TB4----- UP TO ~2500 MBps


Have you tried using the T7 with Time Machine? Backing up is probably fast, but I find Time Machine is slow when you want to access past files, even when read off my fast internal drive.

I haven't tried the drives with an Intel machine but I've seen it reported a few times they get better performance on an Intel machine (whether Mac or Windows).

I did set up my T7 shield as a Time Machine drive. I partitioned it into two 1TB sections, half for my external data and half to backup my MBP's internal SSD. Backup is much faster than using an HDD but I haven't had the need to pull files from the backup history yet. It still takes a while to backup though, like 20 minutes instead of 3-4 hours for an HDD.

 

[Digitalguy]

First, let me make a small correction.
USB 3.2 is no faster than USB 3.1, it's the same standard that was renamed.
What determines the speed is gen 1 or 2.
So:

USB 3.1/3.2 gen 1 = 5Gb/s = around 500 MB/s
UBS 3.1/3.2 gen 2 = 10Gb/s = around 1 GB/s
UBS 3.2 gen 2x2 (yes there is no 3.1 gen 2x2, as the standard was introduced with 3.2) should be double that (but the actual speed is around 1.5GB/s)
Thunderbolt 3/4 and UBS 4 all go to 40Gb/s but the actually speed is capped at around 2.5GB/s instead of 4.

Then, to answer questions around, I redid a test and:
M1 Mac UBS A port is capped at around 350/370 MB/s with any SSD
With M1 Mac TB4 port:
Gen 2 drives are capped at around 750-780 MB/s
Gen 1 SSDs are capped at 385 MB/s
I have no gen 2x2 to test
Thunderbolt drives are not capped at all, so they can go up to 2.5GB/s

The same gen 1 and 2 drives on Intel are 20/25% faster.

 

[Digitalguy]

If you're looking at USB pricing (and don't want to deal with the heat from high speed Thunderbolt SSDs), then one of the best drives IMO is the Samsung T7 Shield. It gets sustained transfer rates of around 1 GB/s.

Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD Review: Tough and Consistent Portable Storage (Updated)

Samsung’s T7 Shield brings reliability for content capture

www.tomshardware.com

View attachment 2046244

View attachment 2046245

As you can see here, the Samsung T7 Shield holds its own against the Samsung X5 Thunderbolt SSD.

Plus the Samsung (and other name brand) pre-built drives don't have the power issues that some of DIY Thunderbolt and DIY USB drives have.

Let me put some context around this.
The T7 shield, just like the T7 and T7 touch is a gen 2 drive, so has the exact same speed limits. The only difference is that, since it's more recent, is has a newer NAND that is has better sustained write performance (read is the same).
So, while the X5, which is a Thunderbolt drive, has more than double the read and write speed, it will throttle faster until it becomes almost the same speed as the T7 shield after around 15 minutes of constant sequential write, equivalent to a transfer of almost 1TB. In the same 15 minutes the T7 has transfered around 350 GB.
I am sure some people have this kind of workflows, personally I rarely transfer more than 50GB at a time to the external SSD, for which both the T7 and T7 shield take around 1 min, so it does not matter, but if you find them at the same price get the shield.

 

[EugW]

I also read that several Mac (and Windows PC) users have complained that the Sandisk Extreme Pro series SSDs get very hot with extended use. I can't confirm that, but that's one reason I avoided getting that model. The other reason is cost. The Sandisk Extreme Pro V2 SSD (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps) costs significantly more than the T7 Shield.

Anyhow, here are some tests using Black Magic Speed Test on a 2017 iMac Intel Core i5-7600 with TB3/USB-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 10 Gbps. The tests are the the Samsung T7 and T7 Shield, both USB 3.2 Gen2 10 Gbps. However, the caveat is the T7 is formatted APFS and the T7 Shield is formatted ExFAT.

Samsung T7 - USB-C:

Samsung T7 Shield - USB-C:

Samsung T7 Shield - USB-A:

Remember, this is on a 2017 Intel iMac, not an Apple Silicon Mac. I don't have an Apple Silicon Mac to test.

Also, these tests don't measure sustained transfer rates over time where the T7 Shield shines. I don't typically transfer more than 50 GB at a time either, but occasionally I do, and as mentioned the T7 Shield usually costs the same or less (at least around here), so I don't see any reason to get the T7 in 2022.

 

[Digitalguy]

I also read that several Mac (and Windows PC) users have complained that the Sandisk Extreme Pro series SSDs get very hot with extended use. I can't confirm that, but that's one reason I avoided getting that model. The other reason is cost. The Sandisk Extreme Pro V2 SSD (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps) costs significantly more than the T7 Shield.

Anyhow, here are some tests using Black Magic Speed Test on a 2017 iMac Intel Core i5-7600 with TB3/USB-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 10 Gbps. The tests are the the Samsung T7 and T7 Shield, both USB 3.2 Gen2 10 Gbps. However, the caveat is the T7 is formatted APFS and the T7 Shield is formatted ExFAT.

Samsung T7 - USB-C:

View attachment 2046718

Samsung T7 Shield - USB-C:

View attachment 2046719

Samsung T7 Shield - USB-A:

View attachment 2046720

Remember, this is on a 2017 Intel iMac, not an Apple Silicon Mac. I don't have an Apple Silicon Mac to test.

Also, these tests don't measure sustained transfer rates over time where the T7 Shield shines. I don't typically transfer more than 50 GB at a time either, but occasionally I do, and as mentioned the T7 Shield usually costs the same or less (at least around here), so I don't see any reason to get the T7 in 2022.

The Sandisk extreme pro and the T7 Shield are in different leagues, the equivalent of the T7 (/touch/shield) is the Sandisk Extreme Portable V2 (mentioned above). I have the 4TB version and while it does get hot like any NVME drive under load, it maintained a constant speed when I moved my 2TB movie collection to it. Since it's not a laptop I need to type on or something with a lithium battery, I don't really care when any SSD gets hot, as long as it maintains the speed. I leave 4 SSDs constantly plugged to my Mac Mini and the Extreme is the coolest of the bunch when idle.

 

[EugW]

The Sandisk extreme pro and the T7 Shield are in different leagues, the equivalent of the T7 (/touch/shield) is the Sandisk Extreme Portable V2 (mentioned above). I have the 4TB version and while it does get hot like any NVME drive under load, it maintained a constant speed when I moved my 2TB movie collection to it. Since it's not a laptop I need to type on or something with a lithium battery, I don't really care when any SSD gets hot, as long as it maintains the speed. I leave 4 SSDs constantly plugged to my Mac Mini and the Extreme is the coolest of the bunch when idle.

I'm guessing the Sandisk Extreme Pro V2 gets significantly hotter than the Extreme non-Pro V2.

 

[doboy]

I'm guessing the Sandisk Extreme Pro V2 gets significantly hotter than the Extreme non-Pro V2.

Don't bother getting the Pro V2 since Macs can't do 2x2 so it'll be capped around 1 GB/s. Just wasting money unless your PC can do USB 3.2 2x2.

 

[doboy]

The same gen 1 and 2 drives on Intel are 20/25% faster.

This is pretty much true for regular M1 machines (don't know about M2) but M1 Pro machines are closer to Intel speeds, maybe ~10% off. I have both M1 Mini and 14" Pro along with bunch of T5, SD Extreme, and Extreme v2 . Best ext SSD's to get right now are T7 Shield and SD Extreme v2 (non-Pro). However, I lean towards Extreme v2 due to slightly cheaper pricing and 5 yr warranty (3 yr for Samsung).

 

[EugW]

Don't bother getting the Pro V2 since Macs can't do 2x2 so it'll be capped around 1 GB/s. Just wasting money unless your PC can do USB 3.2 2x2.

That’s not really what I was worried about. T7 Shield is fast enough for my needs for the time being. I was worrying more about how much heat generation comes out of the 2x2 models. I’d rather have a slower model that wouldn’t overheat, with a PC or future Mac.

 

[doboy]

That’s not really what I was worried about. T7 Shield is fast enough for my needs for the time being. I was worrying more about how much heat generation comes out of the 2x2 models. I’d rather have a slower model that wouldn’t overheat, with a PC or future Mac.

I would hope these vendors (especially large ones) would've done their due diligence and figured out how much heat it outputs and stay within what is tested to be safe for the product. But I may be asking too much, haha.

 

[EugW]

I would hope these vendors (especially large ones) would've done their due diligence and figured out how much heat it outputs and stay within what is tested to be safe for the product. But I may be asking too much, haha.

I've been looking into this.

Apparently the heat generation of the SanDisk Extreme Pro V2 (Gen 2x2) is definitely higher than the non-Pro, but for most users it's not too bad. However, AnandTech says the 4 TB model peaks at over 7 Watts and idles at 3 Watts, which may be problematic if you're trying to run it off some USB ports, and can also be a problem with a laptop. Sleep mode is 0.9 Watt too, which seems unusually high.

SanDisk Extreme PRO and Crucial X6 4TB Portable SSDs Review: Contrasting High-Capacity Storage Options

www.anandtech.com

In contrast, the Samsung T7 Shield 2 TB (Gen 2) peaks at just over 4 Watts, idles under 0.5 Watts, and sleeps at about 0.1 Watt. Much better.

Samsung Portable SSD T7 Shield Review: Flagship PSSD Gets IP65 Avatar

www.anandtech.com

Personally, I don't like any USB-powered drive that draws over 5 Watts.

 

[Digitalguy]

The problem with Sandisk extreme is indeed power consumption. Excluding the 500MB drive, anything 1TB and above does not work with lightning iPads, unless it has lightning USB 3.0 (2015 and 2017 pro only). Any other lightning is USB 2.0 which cannot power drives consuming 5watts ore more (I think the limit is 4.9watts)
The Samsung drives all work fine with lightning, since they use little more than 4 watts.
On the Android world it's also an issue with most tablets. The flagship S7 series cannot run the Sandisk extreme (again other than the 500MB which uses less than 5watts), even if they have USB 3.0 speeds.
Fortunately the S8 can power it fine (well at least the S8 ultra, I haven't tried the others).
UBS C iPad pros can power up to 7.5watts, which is enough for any SSD or HDD.

 

[doboy]

I've been looking into this.

Apparently the heat generation of the SanDisk Extreme Pro V2 (Gen 2x2) is definitely higher than the non-Pro, but for most users it's not too bad. However, AnandTech says the 4 TB model peaks at over 7 Watts and idles at 3 Watts, which may be problematic if you're trying to run it off some USB ports, and can also be a problem with a laptop. Sleep mode is 0.9 Watt too, which seems unusually high.

I've been looking into this.

Apparently the heat generation of the SanDisk Extreme Pro V2 (Gen 2x2) is definitely higher than the non-Pro, but for most users it's not too bad. However, AnandTech says the 4 TB model peaks at over 7 Watts and idles at 3 Watts, which may be problematic if you're trying to run it off some USB ports, and can also be a problem with a laptop. Sleep mode is 0.9 Watt too, which seems unusually high.

That's really high considering I use my 14" M1 MBP w/ 2TB Extreme v2 attached to it while running off of Apple's 20W charger

 

[theorist9]

I just read a claim that if you plug a Gen 2x2 external SSD into an M1's TB3 port, you don't get the M1-specific penalty seen with Gen 2 (i.e., for those drives, both AS and Intel show the same speeds). Anyone have a Gen 2x2 SSD and both an M1 and Intel box for testing?

 

[Digitalguy]

I just read a claim that if you plug a Gen 2x2 external SSD into an M1's TB3 port, you don't get the M1-specific penalty seen with Gen 2 (i.e., for those drives, both AS and Intel show the same speeds). Anyone have a Gen 2x2 SSD and both an M1 and Intel box for testing?

source for the claim?

 

[yellowhelicopter]

If you prefer a cheap but practical solution (not the fastest though) I can recommend to buy a new or used NVMe SSD of your choice and an USB-C/USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure. I personally bought a used Crucial 1TB NVMe for 60$ and Orico M2PV-C3 10Gbps enclosure for 20$. Works well and fast enough, faster than any SATA SSD at least and much cheaper than Thunderbolt drive, can be bootable too.

 

[EugW]

If you prefer a cheap but practical solution (not the fastest though) I can recommend to buy a new or used NVMe SSD of your choice and an USB-C/USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure. I personally bought a used Crucial 1TB NVMe for 60$ and Orico M2PV-C3 10Gbps enclosure for 20$. Works well and fast enough, faster than any SATA SSD at least and much cheaper than Thunderbolt drive, can be bootable too.

A brand new Crucial X6 1 TB is US$84.99, and the Crucial X8 1 TB is $89.99.
Hell, the Samsung T7 Shield 1 TB is only $99.99.

I have an Orico enclosure as well, but the problem with these solutions is that if you get a low power drive to guarantee USB compatibility, they are slow. If you get a fast drive, they are hot and may draw too much power for some computers and iPads. Some of the fast drives will also overheat in these enclosures. I bought the Orico so I can access and use an extra leftover NVMe drive after an upgrade.

 

[yellowhelicopter]

A brand new Crucial X6 1 TB is US$84.99, and the Crucial X8 1 TB is $89.99.
Hell, the Samsung T7 Shield 1 TB is only $99.99.

I have an Orico enclosure as well, but the problem with these solutions is that if you get a low power drive to guarantee USB compatibility, they are slow. If you get a fast drive, they are hot and may draw too much power for some computers and iPads. Some of the fast drives will also overheat in these enclosures. I bought the Orico so I can access and use an extra leftover NVMe drive after an upgrade.

Well, I preferred the drive + enclosure because I can use NVMe drive directly in a PC if need arises, it's just a more versatile solution. But yeah my Crucial M2 can be quite hot, even in such heat dissipating enclosure.

 

[theorist9]

source for the claim?

Just some guy posting on the Apple Discussion Forums. Not from a known source, and no backup testing supplied, so no reason to cite is as a source--that's why I said it was merely an intriguing "claim", and said it might be interesting to test it to see if it's true.

But, FWIW, here it is:

USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 on Thunderbolt 4 - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[Digitalguy]

A brand new Crucial X6 1 TB is US$84.99, and the Crucial X8 1 TB is $89.99.
Hell, the Samsung T7 Shield 1 TB is only $99.99.

I have an Orico enclosure as well, but the problem with these solutions is that if you get a low power drive to guarantee USB compatibility, they are slow. If you get a fast drive, they are hot and may draw too much power for some computers and iPads. Some of the fast drives will also overheat in these enclosures. I bought the Orico so I can access and use an extra leftover NVMe drive after an upgrade.

Crucial X6 is not a drive I would recommend. It's a QLC drive (so has a shorter lifespan than the TLC drives), but above all, once it's more than 20% full the speed will go down to under HDD speeds (50-75MB/s). So it's a fast drive as long as you keep it mostly empty... The X8 and T7 are much better drives (the X8 is still QLC, but it has a fast SLC cache and even the QLC nand is quite a bit faster than the X6)

 

[EugW]

Crucial X6 is not a drive I would recommend. It's a QLC drive (so has a shorter lifespan than the TLC drives), but above all, once it's more than 20% full the speed will go down to under HDD speeds (50-75MB/s). So it's a fast drive as long as you keep it mostly empty... The X8 and T7 are much better drives (the X8 is still QLC, but it has a fast SLC cache and even the QLC nand is quite a bit faster than the X6)

Yeah I wouldn't recommend the X6 either. However, while I knew it was slow, I didn't realize it was THAT bad. Tom's Hardware review indicates that after about 250 GB of sustained writes to the 2 TB model, it slows right down to 50-75 MB/s as you said, but then said that if you leave it for a while to clear the cache, it will regain the speed.

Crucial X6 Portable SSD Review: Affordable and Responsive

Powered by a DRAM-less architecture, Crucial’s X6 offers high capacity, portable storage for low cost

www.tomshardware.com

Crucial’s X6 has a large dynamic SLC cache that helps offset the inherent performance limitations of QLC flash. The X6 absorbed 250GB worth of data before performance degraded, falling from a 500 MBps average down to 115 MBps for the remainder of the write workload. During idle periods, the X6 recovered roughly 50GB of cache capacity per minute.

Do you have a link that reports the persistent loss of speed after it is 20% full? Or is that personal experience?

 

[theorist9]

Crucial X6 is not a drive I would recommend. It's a QLC drive (so has a shorter lifespan than the TLC drives), but above all, once it's more than 20% full the speed will go down to under HDD speeds (50-75MB/s). So it's a fast drive as long as you keep it mostly empty...

OK, my turn to ask for a source . That would be a fatal flaw for the X6. As @EugW said, the speed can decrease markedly if you try to write more than X amont of data at once (which happens when you saturate its fast SLC cache). But that's very different from always being slow whenever the disk is at > 20% of capacity.

 

[Digitalguy]

OK, my turn to ask for a source . That would be a fatal flaw for the X6. As @EugW said, the speed can decrease markedly if you try to write more than X amont of data at once (which happens when you saturate its fast SLC cache). But that's very different from always being slow whenever the disk is at > 20% of capacity.

The source is not in English unfortunately, but here it is anyway https://www.computerbase.de/2021-03/crucial-x6-portable-ssd-test/

Apparently, the X6 does NOT have a SLC cache, instead it uses empty QLC cells as cache and writes only 1 bit to them instead of 4, creating a sort of virtual SLC cache, which does not seem to be moved around as other QLC drives do (problem with these drives is the manufactures do not officially say how they work, so each reviewer tries to understand it with their tests)

 

[theorist9]

The source is not in English unfortunately, but here it is anyway https://www.computerbase.de/2021-03/crucial-x6-portable-ssd-test/

Apparently, the X6 does NOT have a SLC cache, instead it uses empty QLC cells as cache and writes only 1 bit to them instead of 4, creating a sort of virtual SLC cache, which does not seem to be moved around as other QLC drives do (problem with these drives is the manufactures do not officially say how they work, so each reviewer tries to understand it with their tests)

Thanks to Goggle Translate, German's not a problem!

That's an interesting article! What they're saying is that QLC drives generally operate that way (not just the X6): Their SLC cache isn't really SLC, it's just QLC where they are only writing one bit/cell, so those cells (like SLC) have only two voltage states, which makes writing to them fast. By contrast, QLC in std. operation is 4 bits/cell, which means 16 voltage states, which allows for much higher capacities in the same form factor, but makes them much slower:

"Current QLC SSDs rarely write faster than 100 MB/s in 4-bit-per-cell mode, which makes such an SSD slower than an HDD....To ensure that this does not usually happen, all manufacturers use a trick: the "SLC mode".This is not a separate memory on the SSD, instead the controllers can write cells with 1 bit as well as 3 bits (TLC) or 4 bits (QLC)."

[https://www.computerbase.de/thema/s..._der_unterschied_zwischen_slc_mlc_tlc_und_qlc]

I assume using QLC in 1-bit mode (as opposed to the standard 4-bit mode) takes up a lot of QLC space. And the cheaper the drive is, the less over-provisioned it is for this. The problem with the X6 is that it seems not to have reserved much extra QLC space at all for this cache. That's not a problem when it's empty—it just reallocates storage space to SLC-style cache, giving it 800 GB at 0% full. But at higher %fills it reclaims that cache, reducing it to 100 GB and 80 GB at 50% and 80% full, respectively. And that's for the 4 TB X6. The smaller X6's probably have less.

So, strictly speaking, it's not simply that the X6 reduces to ~HDD speed when the drive is 80% full. Rather, when it's 80% full (or even 50% full), while it still starts off at normal write speed, it reduces to HDD speed much sooner (during sustained writes) than when it's empty.

Here's the graph showing that effective SLC cache for the 4 TB X6 is 800 GB, 100 GB, and 80 GB at 0%, 50%, and 80% fill, respectively).

Note also that the X6 isn't the only drive to do this. The Samsung 870 Evo also does (though this is just a 1 TB drive; for a fair comparison to the X6, we'd need to see what a 1 TB X6 does).

Finally, here's another example. In this case we have a TLC drive with SLC cache. As with the X6, its SLC cache decreases with %fill.

 

[Damian Brown]

If you're looking at USB pricing (and don't want to deal with the heat from high speed Thunderbolt SSDs), then one of the best drives IMO is the Samsung T7 Shield. It gets sustained transfer rates of around 1 GB/s.

Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD Review: Tough and Consistent Portable Storage (Updated)

Samsung’s T7 Shield brings reliability for content capture

www.tomshardware.com

View attachment 2046244

View attachment 2046245

As you can see here, the Samsung T7 Shield holds its own against the Samsung X5 Thunderbolt SSD.

Plus the Samsung (and other name brand) pre-built drives don't have the power issues that some of DIY Thunderbolt and DIY USB drives have.

On MacBook air M1?