# Anyone using Micron 5210 8TB SSD drive?



## gsilbers (Feb 12, 2020)

Id like to have both audio drive and sample libraires on this external drive via usb tb3 drive. (i have way too many libraries lol)

Wondering if anyone has it and is this feasible?


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## gsilbers (Feb 12, 2020)

7.68 tb technically


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## gsilbers (Feb 16, 2020)

im trying to not only stream so much but also using external enclosures like these





and cant find the info on why one says 10gb/s vs the other 6gb/s but both should be 6gb/s. 

and i ask this on this thread cause of the 5210 micron 

with read speeds of 540 mb/s


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## Technostica (Feb 16, 2020)

10Gbs is the maximum theoretical throughput of the 2nd generation of USB 3.
When used with a Sata drive I’m not sure if it offers any extra performance compared to the first generation.
If the price is similar I’d go for a second generation controller in the enclosure just in case.
Otherwise do research to see if it’s worth paying a premium for.


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## gsilbers (Feb 17, 2020)

Technostica said:


> 10Gbs is the maximum theoretical throughput of the 2nd generation of USB 3.
> When used with a Sata drive I’m not sure if it offers any extra performance compared to the first generation.
> If the price is similar I’d go for a second generation controller in the enclosure just in case.
> Otherwise do research to see if it’s worth paying a premium for.



Sata in this case would be most ssd drives 2.5. Something like the new mnve would be faster.
And 6gbs is the max for sata, which is what I have on my macpro5,1 and it seems fine although I have 4 of them spreading the sample and audio drive.

It’s been a while since I upgraded anything and this new thing with tb2, USB-C, tb3 , sata, mnve is kinda of confusing. 
I just want to hold audio and samples on to one drive and be portable. Not doing large templates so in theory it should work? Dunno.


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## Technostica (Feb 17, 2020)

If your system only supports USB 3.0 then this is a moot discussion. 
Buy a decent enclosure that uses a modern controller which will support the full feature set and give it a go.


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## gsilbers (Feb 18, 2020)

Technostica said:


> If your system only supports USB 3.0 then this is a moot discussion.
> Buy a decent enclosure that uses a modern controller which will support the full feature set and give it a go.



woudnt the moot point be that the SSD drive is SATA and only goes up to 6gb/s? So even with a
USB 3 gen2 enclosure that states 10gb/s the max will be 6gb/s?

im getting a new macbook pro and would like a portable drive and there arent that many w/o power adapter.


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## Technostica (Feb 18, 2020)

It's not possible to answer your question accurately as it depends on your actual workload.
The usual bottleneck with SATA and USB is latency unless you are reading one large contiguous file.
So you aren't going to come close to saturating even USB 3.0 let alone 3.1 Gen 2 with a SATA drive when reading loads of small files such as sample libraries. 
PCIe drives offer much better latency so couple that with a TB3 or U.2 connector and the performance will be much better.
Due to the massive price difference it's worth trying the external SATA drive as it should be good enough for many.


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## gsilbers (Feb 22, 2020)

i just tested the clear enclosure mentioned above and its about 500mb/s w evo 1tb.

i think work load would be similar to most in this site; medium template, getting to 100 tracks or more per project. not too crazy. so lots of sample libraries but not that many going at the same time.


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## colony nofi (Feb 27, 2020)

I've struggled with the bus-powered drive thing for a while. Best I ever found were the Glyph 4TB atom raid T/bolt SSD's. Get around 800mb/s from them bus powered. There's no 8TB I can find out there aside from doing what you are looking at - and thats putting a SATA SSD into a usb3 container.
I'd say this is going to work just fine. I run a couple of extra 4TB Samsung QVO SSD's for samples / library / projects, and run them in some pretty cheap enclosures, and get around 350MB/s from them, but really don't notice the difference in speed while working. Like - I've been convinced I'm running off the Glyph (much faster) drive and I've been on the usb drives. (for samples. I carry a "backup" of the glyph... its an easy mistake to make!)

I say go for it for your Sata SSD.

See my other posts regarding interfaces for SSD's.


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## colony nofi (Feb 27, 2020)

Now for ultimate speed, I'd be looking at the 4x2TB NMVE setup from OWC. But they are not bus powered. And cost a decent amount!


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