Advice needed: external SSD for a Macbook Pro M1 vs USB 3.1 HDD's

[WaveHunter]

I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an internal 512gB SSD.  I need to add external SSD storage with "reasonable" speed for storing several Lightroom catalogs and around 1tB (or possibly 2tB) of large camera raw files (32mb - 200mg each).  The ports on my new MBP are Thunderbolt 4



All of the tech specs of thunderbolt 4 vs  USB variations is confusing me to death LOL!  I'm not sure if I even need the potential speed of a thunderbolt 4 exteranl SSD.


From what I can figure out, the cheapest set up to get reasonable speed is:

• USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure

• 1tB SSD like the Western Digital Blue SN550


It should provide 1 gigabyte per second speed.

 

If I go with a Thunderbolt 4 solution, like this:

• Acasis 40Gbps M.2 Nvme SSD Enclosure
• SABRENT 1TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 SSD

It should provide around 2.6 gigabytes speed.

 

Do these transmission speeds sound correct for USB 3.2 vs Thunderbolt?

All I know for sure is that external USB 3.1 HDD's are making Lightroom almost unusable!

[tomazbodner]

I had very high failure rate of the external M.2 SSD enclosures, some have not just failed but made stick unreadable and unable to format again.

 

Internal drive (2TB flash) in my case is at ~2750 MB/s and external at ~950 MB/s (WD My Passport SSD) and ~1700 MB/s (SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD), according to BlackMagic Disk Speed Test. R and W are very close, nearly the same. Tested on Intel i9 based 27" iMac 2020.

 

Not sure if this is of any use.

[WaveHunter]

17 hours ago, tomazbodner said:

I had very high failure rate of the external M.2 SSD enclosures, some have not just failed but made stick unreadable and unable to format again.

 

Internal drive (2TB flash) in my case is at ~2750 MB/s and external at ~950 MB/s (WD My Passport SSD) and ~1700 MB/s (SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD), according to BlackMagic Disk Speed Test. R and W are very close, nearly the same. Tested on Intel i9 based 27" iMac 2020.

 

Not sure if this is of any use.

 

Interesting to know.  I was thinking of getting a Passport to use as a backup drive.  How has that been for you?

 

After a lot of research I am thinking of a DIY 2tB SSD in an external enclosure after seeing reviews of some of them on YouTube.  

 

Since my MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt 4, I want an SSD that takes advantage of that and the combination I found delivers the same read/write as you described (around 2700 Mb/sec.) which is even better than the MacBook Pro's internal SSD rated at around 1.5 - 2.2 Gb/s.

 

So far I'm leaning towards two different set-ups:

• Acasis 40Gbps M.2 Nvme SSD Enclosure ($120) or Orico4.0 NVMe ssd enclosure $180
• AND
• SABRENT 2TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD ($199) or WD BLACK SN770 2TB $180

The life expectancy of these SSD's are rated at around 4 times what they are for the ready made ones in a case like Lacie, Samsung, and Sandisk which are far slower (not much more than 1 Gb/s).  Also the warranty is much better on these do-it-yourself SSD's (5 year on both of them). 

 

Not cheap but with life expectancy of them, it sounds like good insurance against bricking so I guess it's worth it.

 

[tomazbodner]

1 hour ago, WaveHunter said:

 

Interesting to know.  I was thinking of getting a Passport to use as a backup drive.  How has that been for you?

 

After a lot of research I am thinking of a DIY 2tB SSD in an external enclosure after seeing reviews of some of them on YouTube.  

 

Since my MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt 4, I want an SSD that takes advantage of that and the combination I found delivers the same read/write as you described (around 2700 Mb/sec.) which is even better than the MacBook Pro's internal SSD rated at around 1.5 - 2.2 Gb/s.

 

So far I'm leaning towards two different set-ups:

• Acasis 40Gbps M.2 Nvme SSD Enclosure ($120) or Orico4.0 NVMe ssd enclosure $180
• AND
• SABRENT 2TB Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD ($199) or WD BLACK SN770 2TB $180

The life expectancy of these SSD's are rated at around 4 times what they are for the ready made ones in a case like Lacie, Samsung, and Sandisk which are far slower (not much more than 1 Gb/s).  Also the warranty is much better on these do-it-yourself SSD's (5 year on both of them). 

 

Not cheap but with life expectancy of them, it sounds like good insurance against bricking so I guess it's worth it.

 

Just as a response on Sandisk. It came with 5 year warranty as well, and is rated 2000/2000 MB/s though my speed tests showed 1650-1750 MB/s usual results writing/reading to a folder in root of the drive. I don't know how much of the limitation comes from iMac's back ports, though, so despite 40Gbps (5 GB/s) may be theoretical max speed of the enclosure, you might not get that actual speeds out of it, but even if you get half that, it's already same or faster than internal storage.

 

So whichever way you go, I think it'll work for you. And with M1 CPU having storage integrated, so if it degrades, you need new notebook, it's good to use external storage for heavy storage tasks. That's actually the reason I use external drives for most of software and all files. 27" iMac 2020 has flash soldered on mainboard.

 

One difference, though - on Intel based Mac you can boot from external drive. On M1/M2 Mac you can't. So you'll still need to use internal storage for OS.

[WaveHunter]

On 12/13/2022 at 2:08 PM, tomazbodner said:

Just as a response on Sandisk. It came with 5 year warranty as well, and is rated 2000/2000 MB/s though my speed tests showed 1650-1750 MB/s usual results writing/reading to a folder in root of the drive. I don't know how much of the limitation comes from iMac's back ports, though, so despite 40Gbps (5 GB/s) may be theoretical max speed of the enclosure, you might not get that actual speeds out of it, but even if you get half that, it's already same or faster than internal storage.

 

So whichever way you go, I think it'll work for you. And with M1 CPU having storage integrated, so if it degrades, you need new notebook, it's good to use external storage for heavy storage tasks. That's actually the reason I use external drives for most of software and all files. 27" iMac 2020 has flash soldered on mainboard.

 

One difference, though - on Intel based Mac you can boot from external drive. On M1/M2 Mac you can't. So you'll still need to use internal storage for OS.

Good advice; thanks.  I am starting to feel pretty good now about my strategy.  Instead of a Passport for backing up, I decided just to bt a 3.5" Western Digital hard drive (A blue version) and back up to that for weekly backups.  I don't like TIme Machine, and these days, most of my data is cloud-based anyway (with exception of my media library), so weekly backups is all I really need. 

 

Passport is attractive but I just feel like a 3.5 internal type hard drive is more robust and reliable for system wide +media backup.  I have one 4tB drive but will buy another (the Blue) just to have three copies of everything.

 

As for the SSD's.  I like the idea of one external one devoted to my image library, and then the internal 500gB one for the system drive and applications, and other everyday data.