Why are my SSD slow?

[TurboJobo]

I have an old PNY drive of 480 gb and I am trying moving the data to a new Samsung T7 and also a Sandisk extreme portable and both take about an hour or more to transfer 300GB of data. For some reason I thought this was going to be way faster being that both are connected via USB type C and I'm using the newest MacBook Air m2. I downloaded the Blackmagic test app and the T7 is SLOOOOW, I have writing data speed of 200-300 and the Sandisk is around 700. Reading speeds for the t7 is around 500 and for the Sandisk is 600 even thought they bought claim a writing and reading speed of 1000 mbps. Any advice on how to make my ssd's faster?

 

[Slartibart]

Which file system is the T7 using? If you do not need cross-system file access compatibility (e.g. between a Windows machine and your Mac), reformatting it using APFS via Apple’s Disk Utility will increase speeds.
Additionally make sure to connect using the USB-C-2-C cable which comes with the T7. You can check under USB in System Information with which speed your T7 is connected.

In general read/write times for USB3.x-external SSDs are slower on AS- compared to Intel-Macs.

 

[TurboJobo]

for both the Samsung and Sandisk I'm using their stock file system I guess. How can I Know what I am using? I just plugged them in and I'm using for both their originals cables. how long should 300 gb of data take ?

 

[Slartibart]

for both the Samsung and Sandisk I'm using their stock file system I guess. How can I Know what I am using? I just plugged them in and I'm using for both their originals cables. how long should 300 gb of data take ?

I think Samsung uses ExFat as default file system. If you select the SSD-icon in the Finder and open the Information window (choose File > Get Info in the menu bar) you can see which file system is used.

 

[Slartibart]

Transfer times will depend on the data you copy, a rule of thumb: many small files take longer than few larger files for the same amount of data total.

 

[TurboJobo]

Just found out online that the old PNY memory I have only tops at 400 read/write plus whatever apple silicon bug there is making transfers via usb slower taking it a while.....

 

[TurboJobo]

Transfer times will depend on the data you copy, a rule of thumb: many small files take longer than few larger files for the some amount of data total.

Just notice that both the Samsung and Sandisk are on exFAT but the Sandisk is outperforming the Samsung by twice the speed! I wonder what would the speed difference be if I out both on apfs