# M.2 enclosure recommendations for Mac Studio



## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

I know you can spend $150 for a Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 enclosure, or $30 billion for something OWC offers, but I'm looking for a reliable USB 3.1 gen 2 one for now.

If I ever need faster transfer I'll get a USB 4 enclosure then - which is an indication of the price range I'm looking in: maybe $30 or less.

Also, the Mac Studio doesn't support USB 3.2 gen 2, it jumps from 3.1 Gen 2 to USB 4. At least that's my understanding.

TIA


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## Technostica (Nov 19, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If I ever need faster transfer I'll get a USB 4 enclosure then - which is an indication of the price range I'm looking in: maybe $30 or less.
> 
> Also, the Mac Studio doesn't support USB 3.2 gen 2, it jumps from 3.1 Gen 2 to USB 4. At least that's my understanding.


I would think that USB 4 encapsulates 20Gbs USB 3.xxx, but the price might be above $40.
I found this in the UK for ~£40:



I found this:
"USB4 products must support 20 Gbit/s throughput and can support 40 Gbit/s throughput"


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

Just confirmed with Apple - it does jump from 10 gbit/s to 40 gbit/s.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

Technostica said:


> I would think that USB 4 encapsulates 20Gbs USB 3.xxx, but the price might be above $40.
> I found this in the UK for ~£40:
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks, but as I wrote, the USB C ports on the Mac Studio don't support 20Gb/s.

However, I see that the difference in price is small until you go to USB 4.0.


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## Technostica (Nov 19, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Thanks, but as I wrote, the USB C ports on the Mac Studio don't support 20Gb/s.
> 
> However, I see that the difference in price is small until you go to USB 4.0.


Well, if you are going to use cheap non standard equipment this is what you get!


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## Technostica (Nov 19, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Thanks, but as I wrote, the USB C ports on the Mac Studio don't support 20Gb/s.


They are all USB-C ports, just that some are TB4 and some are USB 10Gbs.
TB4 encapsulates USB4 which has a minimum rating of 20Gbs.
But does that mean it supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2?
Seemingly not.
The usual USBullshite.


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## Justin L. Franks (Nov 19, 2022)

Are you looking for an enclosure for a single M.2 SSD, or multiple? If single, just get an OWC Envoy Express. Thunderbolt 3, $79.

If multiple, there is the OWC Express 4M2. Four bays, TB3, $249.

I have two of the Envoy Express connected to the two Thunderbolt ports on my 2019 iMac, they work great.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> Are you looking for an enclosure for a single M.2 SSD, or multiple? If single, just get an OWC Envoy Express. Thunderbolt 3, $79.
> 
> If multiple, there is the OWC Express 4M2. Four bays, TB3, $249.
> 
> I have two of the Envoy Express connected to the two Thunderbolt ports on my 2019 iMac, they work great.



Thanks, but if I were going to spend $79 for 15 gbps (rather than $20 for 10) I'd spend $150 for 40.

Actually, I'm not even sure the Mac Studio supports TB 3 at that speed, just TB 4?

In the past I haven't been interested in the speed of an SSD, but I've become addicted to how fast things open on the internal storage (which reads and writes at about 55 gbps). The SATA external SSDs I have (in older USB C enclosures, I don't know what speed) test at under 300 mbps - a fraction of the speed.

Apple charges way too much for the internal storage, but it is very, very fast.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

Technostica said:


> They are all USB-C ports, just that some are TB4 and some are USB 10Gbs.
> TB4 encapsulates USB4 which has a minimum rating of 20Gbs.
> But does that mean it supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2?
> Seemingly not.
> The usual USBullshite.


Yes, that's right.

After reading Wikipedia, I think the reason they skipped USB 3.2 gen 2 is that it's dual-lane, which presumably would require a different chip.

I dunno, maybe I'm just being cheap and I should just spend the damn money for the manly enclosure.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

Yah. This is what real men and women order.


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## rnb_2 (Nov 19, 2022)

If you really want the fastest possible current external storage, that Acasis enclosure is probably among your best options (I'm sure there are others that use a similar chipset, but I haven't looked at this market in a while). The OWC at $79 is very good, but is limited to ~1.5GB/s, while the theoretical maximum for TB3/4 is 2.8GB/s (which the Acasis appears to reach).


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## HCMarkus (Nov 19, 2022)

One nice thing about TB... it supports Trim on Apple computers. If using the storage for VI samples, not a big deal, as that use case is pretty much Read Only. 


Justin L. Franks said:


> I have two of the Envoy Express connected to the two Thunderbolt ports on my 2019 iMac, they work great.


Ditto for my Mac Studio.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 19, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> If you really want the fastest possible current external storage, that Acasis enclosure is probably among your best options (I'm sure there are others that use a similar chipset, but I haven't looked at this market in a while). The OWC at $79 is very good, but is limited to ~1.5GB/s, while the theoretical maximum for TB3/4 is 2.8GB/s (which the Acasis appears to reach).



USB 4.0/TB4 actually supposed to go up to 40GB/s. The drive I'm looking at is "up to" 48GB/s, so it should be okay.

I had to confirm, and this is from the Apple site:

Four Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for:


Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
DisplayPort
USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)


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## HCMarkus (Nov 19, 2022)

One more comment re: Envoy Express... the reason speed is limited to about 1500MB/s is it uses a Two-Lane PCIe connection, hence it is about 1/2 the speed of a Four-Lane device. That said, the Envoy Express is a true Thunderbolt, as opposed to USB, device.


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## Justin L. Franks (Nov 19, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Thanks, but if I were going to spend $79 for 15 gbps (rather than $20 for 10) I'd spend $150 for 40.
> 
> Actually, I'm not even sure the Mac Studio supports TB 3 at that speed, just TB 4?
> 
> ...


Seems like a 20 Gbps port speed on the Envoy Express. You never get the maximum amount of actual throughput the port supports. The 1553 MB/s speed listed is actual real-world speed. I consistently get results between 1530 MB/s and 1565 MB/s on mine in speed tests. And 15-16 Gbps on a 20 Gbps port is the most you are going to see real-world.

TB4 is fully backwards-compatible with TB3, and runs TB3 at the same speeds.

In the end, you are not going to see much of a difference between the internal SSD and a fast external SSD when it comes to actual real-world use loading samples. I've run libraries off my iMac's much faster internal SSD (not as fast as the Mac Studio's, but still a lot faster than my externals), and all of the libraries I tested load exactly the same.

Worrying about benchmarks and theoretical limits for SSD speed is just going to end up wasting money IMO for zero actual gains.


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## creativeforge (Nov 19, 2022)




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## rnb_2 (Nov 19, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> USB 4.0/TB4 actually supposed to go up to 40GB/s. The drive I'm looking at is "up to" 48GB/s, so it should be okay.
> 
> I had to confirm, and this is from the Apple site:
> 
> ...


40Gb/s (or 5GB/s) is the total bandwidth on a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 bus, but some of that is reserved for display usage, so storage is limited to ~2.8GB/s.


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## Technostica (Nov 20, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> 40Gb/s (or 5GB/s) is the total bandwidth on a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 bus, but some of that is reserved for display usage, so storage is limited to ~2.8GB/s.


The reserved amount has changed with TB4, so there is more bandwidth available to other devices.


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## benwiggy (Nov 20, 2022)

My M1 Pro MBP has an internal 1TB SSD, and Blackmagic benches it at c. 5.5 Gbps. Is a throughput of 10Gbps to an external going to be a limiting factor for any external SSD?


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## Vik (Nov 20, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> Are you looking for an enclosure for a single M.2 SSD, or multiple? If single, just get an OWC Envoy Express. Thunderbolt 3, $79.


I have an Envoy Express, but if I should buy a new enclosure today, I would have bought the 5GBPs Acasis (since it's more 'future proof').


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## rnb_2 (Nov 20, 2022)

Technostica said:


> The reserved amount has changed with TB4, so there is more bandwidth available to other devices.


Thanks - I hadn't seen that. I assume that enclosures would have to be TB4 as well to see the benefit? I haven't seen any external actually benchmark faster than 3GB/s, and most benchmarks with the Acasis enclosure still come in <2.8GB/s. I'm wondering what the theoretical TB4 performance would be.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> 40Gb/s (or 5GB/s) is the total bandwidth on a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 bus, but some of that is reserved for display usage, so storage is limited to ~2.8GB/s.


On every bus, even if you don't have a display connected? That's weird.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> Seems like a 20 Gbps port speed on the Envoy Express. You never get the maximum amount of actual throughput the port supports. The 1553 MB/s speed listed is actual real-world speed. I consistently get results between 1530 MB/s and 1565 MB/s on mine in speed tests. And 15-16 Gbps on a 20 Gbps port is the most you are going to see real-world.
> 
> TB4 is fully backwards-compatible with TB3, and runs TB3 at the same speeds.
> 
> ...


Seriously, I never pay much attention to benchmarks. More than that, it annoys me to read meaningless stupid numbers that only serve to make people think they sound intelligent when they quote them.

But in this case there's a *major* difference between the incredibly fast internal storage in the Mac Studio and external SSDs in regular USB 3 enclosures. I've become addicted to that and want to get as close to it as possible.

Also, I don't only load samples off drives, I do other things too.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

benwiggy said:


> My M1 Pro MBP has an internal 1TB SSD, and Blackmagic benches it at c. 5.5 Gbps. Is a throughput of 10Gbps to an external going to be a limiting factor for any external SSD?


Giga, Mega, bytes, bits... on Mac Studios the comparison is 5500 (internal storage) to as little as 250 (old USB C enclosures).


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## rnb_2 (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> On every bus, even if you don't have a display connected? That's weird.


Yes, unfortunately. Thunderbolt has always been like this - a certain number of PCI lanes are reserved for video, but video can take more than what is reserved. On Thunderbolt 3, ~8gb/s is reserved, which would support a 2k display, though up to 4k is typically usable without negatively effecting storage on the same bus. See this article if you want more technical details. It's probably best to think of Thunderbolt 3 and 4 as a combination of different technologies (PCIe, DisplayPort, USB) that add up to ~40Gb/s in each direction, though no single bit of the whole has access to all of the bandwidth.


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## Technostica (Nov 20, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> Thanks - I hadn't seen that. I assume that enclosures would have to be TB4 as well to see the benefit? I haven't seen any external actually benchmark faster than 3GB/s, and most benchmarks with the Acasis enclosure still come in <2.8GB/s. I'm wondering what the theoretical TB4 performance would be.


I only read the info on release. I have never bought a TB device even though my current and previous laptops support TB3. I don’t have the need for particularly fast external storage for my laptop.

I picked up the info here:









Intel's Maple Ridge (JHL8540) Thunderbolt 4 Controller Now Shipping







www.anandtech.com


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## Jett Hitt (Nov 20, 2022)

I have the Acasis. It’s the fastest external drive I have. The only thing about it is that some NVMe drives work much better with it than others.


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## Vik (Nov 20, 2022)

Jett Hitt said:


> The only thing about it is that some NVMe drives work much better with it than others.


Which work better?


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## Jett Hitt (Nov 20, 2022)

Vik said:


> Which work better?


I knew that I didn’t want to write that because I knew someone would ask. I’ll see if I can figure out which one I bought. There are YouTube videos about it.


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## Jett Hitt (Nov 20, 2022)

Vik said:


> Which work better?


This one was the one I bought and is said to work the fastest with the Acasis, and it is fast.

WD_BLACK 2TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen3 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 3,400 MB/s - WDS200T3X0C https://a.co/d/bLMf64z

I don’t know why that won’t show as a URL.


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## Vik (Nov 20, 2022)

Jett Hitt said:


> There are YouTube videos about it.


Thanks for the tip. Here are some I just found, I'll check them out later.







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZBef3eQok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO36zgqouCs


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## Vik (Nov 20, 2022)

Jett Hitt said:


> WD_BLACK 2TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen3 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 3,400 MB/s - WDS200T3X0C https://a.co/d/bLMf64z


Thanks, that's the one I have now. Good to know that it works well with the Acasis too.


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## BassClef (Nov 20, 2022)

Jett Hitt said:


> This one was the one I bought and is said to work the fastest with the Acasis, and it is fast.
> 
> WD_BLACK 2TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen3 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 3,400 MB/s - WDS200T3X0C https://a.co/d/bLMf64z
> 
> I don’t know why that won’t show as a URL.


I have the Acacsis with the 4TB version of the Western Digital SN750 NVMe connected to my Mac Studio. Here is a speed test I just ran:


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## rnb_2 (Nov 20, 2022)

Technostica said:


> I only read the info on release. I have never bought a TB device even though my current and previous laptops support TB3. I don’t have the need for particularly fast external storage for my laptop.
> 
> I picked up the info here:
> 
> ...


Thanks - that was very informative. Looks like part of the tightening of the spec so that the TB4 really only reserves 8Gb/s for video, whereas TB3 was supposed to but actually reserves ~18Gb/s (for reasons that still aren't terribly clear to me). Also, enclosures like the OWC Envoy Express would not be able to be certified for TB4 because it only uses 2 PCIe lanes instead of the 4 that TB4 requires.


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## Jett Hitt (Nov 20, 2022)

https://a.co/d/584mtF1


BassClef said:


> I have the Acacsis with the 4TB version of the Western Digital SN750 NVMe connected to my Mac Studio. Here is a speed test I just ran:


That is about the same as I get with the 2TB version.


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## davidson (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Seriously, I never pay much attention to benchmarks. More than that, it annoys me to read meaningless stupid numbers that only serve to make people think they sound intelligent when they quote them.
> 
> But in this case there's a *major* difference between the incredibly fast internal storage in the Mac Studio and external SSDs in regular USB 3 enclosures. I've become addicted to that and want to get as close to it as possible.
> 
> Also, I don't only load samples off drives, I do other things too.


Out of interest, have you compared the loading times for a large kontakt patch (1gb+) on the internal vs your sata3 ssd?


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## Technostica (Nov 20, 2022)

The review below shows a drive which supports both TB3 and USB 10Gbs.
Even for very heavy random reads which use less bandwidth than 10Gbs offers, in USB mode the performance difference is 113 v 422.
This probably highlights the underlying issue which is that the NVMe protocol is important to maximize random I/O on PCIe drives.
The move from SATA wasn't just at the physical transport level, but also at the higher protocol level from AHCI to NVMe.

For sequential I/O, the bottleneck isn't the lack of NVMe but the raw bandwidth.
So even with USB 40Gbs, for random I/O, it's probably not faster than USB 10Gbs.
For random I/O, the drive in the test below in USB mode tops out at 465MBs which is not much more than 5Gbs.
So if you want to get close to an internal drive with demanding workloads, you need TB3.

This begs the question as to whether USB4 encapsulates PCIe/NVMe?
Also, do Apple even use NVMe on their internal AS PCIe SSDs.
I think not.

*SanDisk Pro-G40 SSD Review*


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

davidson said:


> Out of interest, have you compared the loading times for a large kontakt patch (1gb+) on the internal vs your sata3 ssd?


No, because I don't have the same libraries on both drives.

What I have noticed is that everything on the Mac is amazingly fast - and it still feels fast after having the machine almost three months. Logic launches in three seconds, Affinity Photo in two (vs. :25 on my previous machine, not that it's apples/apples).

Now, I don't have programs on external drives, but I'm still sold on having fast drives.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

Vik said:


> Thanks for the tip. Here are some I just found, I'll check them out later.


Can you say what the bottom line is?

Eleven minutes of someone saying what you could skim in about ten seconds is a little beyond my level of patience.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

BassClef said:


> I have the Acacsis with the 4TB version of the Western Digital SN750 NVMe connected to my Mac Studio. Here is a speed test I just ran:


I wonder whether the one I'm looking at is in the same ballpark. Its specs are a little higher, I guess just because it's newer:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/crucial-p3-plus-4tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-0-nvme/6509710.p?skuId=6509710


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## Justin L. Franks (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Giga, Mega, bytes, bits... on Mac Studios the comparison is 5500 (internal storage) to as little as 250 (old USB C enclosures).





Nick Batzdorf said:


> No, because I don't have the same libraries on both drives.
> 
> What I have noticed is that everything on the Mac is amazingly fast - and it still feels fast after having the machine almost three months. Logic launches in three seconds, Affinity Photo in two (vs. :25 on my previous machine, not that it's apples/apples).
> 
> Now, I don't have programs on external drives, but I'm still sold on having fast drives.


There is a huge difference between an old SATA SSD in a USB3.0 enclosure, versus a fast NVMe SSD on a 10 Gbps or higher port.

Once you get to that point, there isn't much difference for our use case of loading and streaming samples (only the first portion of an instrument's samples are loaded into RAM, when a note is played it starts with that and streams the rest of the sample from disk).

On my 2019 iMac, the internal SSD averages 2700 MB/s read in benchmarks. My external SSDs range from 1100 MB/s to ~1550 MB/s in the same benchmark, and I cannot tell a difference loading the same libraries between the two. I only tested a couple of libraries, so there may be some edge cases where the extra available speed on the internal drive makes an actual difference.

But just because a drive is capable of reading at a blazing 5500 MB/s in a synthetic benchmark does not mean it will offer advantages in the real world. At least not for running sample libraries.

The Acasis enclosure is pretty reasonably priced though, so I'd go for that if you are concerned. Plus you are future-proofing yourself too in case the extra speed does eventually become usable.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> There is a huge difference between an old SATA SSD in a USB3.0 enclosure, versus a fast NVMe SSD on a 10 Gbps or higher port


Right, I do get that.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> Once you get to that point, there isn't much difference for our use case of loading and streaming samples (only the first portion of an instrument's samples are loaded into RAM, when a note is played it starts with that and streams the rest of the sample from disk).



Sure, and as I wrote, that's only one of my use cases.

To be clear, I'm the guy who kept posting that putting an SSD on my previous Mac's half speed SATA 2 bus vs. putting it on a SATA 3 card made zero difference in the real world.

But look below and you'll see that this is many times faster.



Justin L. Franks said:


> On my 2019 iMac, the internal SSD averages 2700 MB/s read in benchmarks.



This is my 2022 Mac Studio's overpriced internal storage, and sometimes it tests a little higher. I promise you I'm not posting it to brag about the size of my hands, just to show why I'm sold on drive speed.












Justin L. Franks said:


> My external SSDs range from 1100 MB/s to ~1550 MB/s in the same benchmark, and I cannot tell a difference loading the same libraries between the two. I only tested a couple of libraries, so there may be some edge cases where the extra available speed on the internal drive makes an actual difference.
> 
> But just because a drive is capable of reading at a blazing 5500 MB/s in a synthetic benchmark does not mean it will offer advantages in the real world. At least not for running sample libraries.



It's synthetic, but as I wrote above, I'm still constantly surprised at how fast everything happens three months later, whether it's loading programs, opening System Preferences, and so on.

Again, I don't have programs on an external drive and I'm not a benchmark pervert, I'm just enjoying how fast this machine is, need some more external storage, and don't want to create bottlenecks.




Justin L. Franks said:


> The Acasis enclosure is pretty reasonably priced though, so I'd go for that if you are concerned. Plus you are future-proofing yourself too in case the extra speed does eventually become usable.


I'm pretty sure most of it is usable right now.

In any case - haha - I just ordered the Crucial P3 Plus. We'll see how much I hate it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 20, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> Yes, unfortunately. Thunderbolt has always been like this - a certain number of PCI lanes are reserved for video, but video can take more than what is reserved. On Thunderbolt 3, ~8gb/s is reserved, which would support a 2k display, though up to 4k is typically usable without negatively effecting storage on the same bus. See this article if you want more technical details. It's probably best to think of Thunderbolt 3 and 4 as a combination of different technologies (PCIe, DisplayPort, USB) that add up to ~40Gb/s in each direction, though no single bit of the whole has access to all of the bandwidth.


So does that mean there's no penalty for using a hub on a port you're using to drive a DisplayPort monitor?

I'm not likely to up and buy one, just curious.


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## rnb_2 (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So does that mean there's no penalty for using a hub on a port you're using to drive a DisplayPort monitor?
> 
> I'm not likely to up and buy one, just curious.


It depends on the total bandwidth needs of what you plug into the hub, but generally speaking, that's correct. Also, it depends on whether everything plugged into the a single port actually gets used at the same time. I have a ton of things plugged into a single Thunderbolt port on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, including four different SSDs, but I'm hardly ever using more than one SSD at a time, and most of the other things are low bandwidth.


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## utopia (Nov 20, 2022)

Has anyone figured out the best way to connect multiple external NVMes?


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## BassClef (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I wonder whether the one I'm looking at is in the same ballpark. Its specs are a little higher, I guess just because it's newer:
> 
> https://www.bestbuy.com/site/crucial-p3-plus-4tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-0-nvme/6509710.p?skuId=6509710


That’s a pci gen 4 ssd. Mine is a slower gen 3 pci ssd. I did not get a gen 4 because that faster drive would be wasted on the Acasis enclosure… no faster.


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## Justin L. Franks (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> This is my 2022 Mac Studio's overpriced internal storage, and sometimes it tests a little higher. I promise you I'm not posting it to brag about the size of my hands, just to show why I'm sold on drive speed.


Yup, the internal storage on the new Macs is absolutely incredible.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> It's synthetic, but as I wrote above, I'm still constantly surprised at how fast everything happens three months later, whether it's loading programs, opening System Preferences, and so on.
> 
> 
> Again, I don't have programs on an external drive and I'm not a benchmark pervert, I'm just enjoying how fast this machine is, need some more external storage, and don't want to create bottlenecks.


A lot of this is due to the CPU, not the speed of the internal SSD. The Apple Silicon Macs are a lot "snappier" in day-to-day usage than the Intel Macs. This is noticeable even on the base model Macbook Airs which don't have the SSD performance of the M1 Pro/M1 Max Macbook Pros or the Mac Studio.


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## Justin L. Franks (Nov 20, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So does that mean there's no penalty for using a hub on a port you're using to drive a DisplayPort monitor?
> 
> I'm not likely to up and buy one, just curious.


If you are driving a 1440P monitor, then there is no penalty. The monitor can use the portion reserved for display bandwidth (the part that is _always_ reserved for display, even if no display is connected)

At 4K and up, however, the monitor needs more bandwidth, and will start to eat into the amount available for other devices.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 21, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> A lot of this is due to the CPU, not the speed of the internal SSD. The Apple Silicon Macs are a lot "snappier" in day-to-day usage than the Intel Macs. This is noticeable even on the base model Macbook Airs which don't have the SSD performance of the M1 Pro/M1 Max Macbook Pros or the Mac Studio.



Absolutely, but surely Logic launching in 3 seconds and Affinity Photo in 2 would be mainly because of the storage.



Justin L. Franks said:


> If you are driving a 1440P monitor, then there is no penalty. The monitor can use the portion reserved for display bandwidth (the part that is _always_ reserved for display, even if no display is connected)
> 
> At 4K and up, however, the monitor needs more bandwidth, and will start to eat into the amount available for other devices.


Thanks. If I ever need more TB4 ports, that's good to know.

It may or may not be squirrely, because auxiliary monitor is running at 1080p even though it's a 4K monitor, and it's reported to macOS as a 4K monitor


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 21, 2022)

BassClef said:


> That’s a pci gen 4 ssd. Mine is a slower gen 3 pci ssd. I did not get a gen 4 because that faster drive would be wasted on the Acasis enclosure… no faster.


This one is on sale. The one that's a little slower is still at its regular price, which is actually a little more than this one.

Actually, if anyone is in the market for a 4TB m.2 SSD, $300 is a very good price - especially for one with a 5-year warranty. The link to Best Buy is above.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 24, 2022)

Update: I'm putting my recommendation for the Crucial P3 Plus on temporary hold. (It's sold out at Best Buy, by the way, but available elsewhere for the same price.)

The hold is pending the arrival of the Acasis enclosure I ordered. While this is their latest model, the one Acasis told me is the right one to pair with the Crucial P3, I've read reports from people saying that they only get 500 MB/S write from this particular drive.

Were they using an older model enclosure? I don't know, but I do know that the temporary USB 3.1 gen 2 one I got from Amazon (free - they will send things to some people to get reviews) is reading at almost 1000 MB/S, it's also writing at 500.

Hopefully it will work better in the Acasis, or I'm returning both.


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## Technostica (Nov 24, 2022)

That seems odd but it depends on the precise benchmark. 
The issue with low end drives is that the sustained write speed can drop off a cliff once the cache is full. 
This one will drop to 100MBs but the cache is large so it's rarely an issue, unless you want to write to more than a quarter of the drive in one go. 









Crucial P3 Plus SSD Review: Capacity on the Cheap


The P3 Plus is a good first effort at a faster budget SSD with Crucial’s new QLC.




www.tomshardware.com


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 24, 2022)

Technostica said:


> That seems odd but it depends on the precise benchmark.
> The issue with low end drives is that the sustained write speed can drop off a cliff once the cache is full.
> This one will drop to 100MBs but the cache is large so it's rarely an issue, unless you want to write to more than a quarter of the drive in one go.
> 
> ...


Most likely I won't be saving a lot of 1TB files. 

To me, $425 for a drive + enclosure isn't low-end or budget, it's just that others are more expensive! It should be able to read and write at acceptable speeds (2500 or so) according to the specs, and it has a 5-year warranty.

But if it doesn't work, I'm returning it right away. Hell with that.


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## Technostica (Nov 24, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> To me, $425 for a drive + enclosure isn't low-end or budget, it's just that others are more expensive! It should be able to read and write at acceptable speeds (2500 or so) according to the specs, and it has a 5-year warranty.


Low end in terms of all-round performance, because its QLC and DRAM-less and has a 'native direct' write speed of 100MBs.
That doesn't make it a poor drive for hosting samples or other uses.
I mentioned it because it might help to explain your low write speeds.
Although that seems unlikely unless you tested it with a very large dataset.
If it was due to thermal throttling, I suspect the read speeds would also have been impacted.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Most likely I won't be saving a lot of 1TB files.


It's only an issue if you want to fully fill the drive quickly as it would take around 9 hours.
Not exactly an everyday task.


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## Justin L. Franks (Nov 24, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Update: I'm putting my recommendation for the Crucial P3 Plus on temporary hold. (It's sold out at Best Buy, by the way, but available elsewhere for the same price.)
> 
> The hold is pending the arrival of the Acasis enclosure I ordered. While this is their latest model, the one Acasis told me is the right one to pair with the Crucial P3, I've read reports from people saying that they only get 500 MB/S write from this particular drive.
> 
> ...


The P3 is a QLC drive with no DRAM cache. Read speeds should be better in the Acasis, but write speeds will be limited due to the nature of how these specific types of SSDs function.

Most manufacturers have three SSD lines:

The budget line like the P3, or Samsung QVO, is QLC* with no cache. Slowest speeds, significantly slower write speeds, lowest TBW*, lowest cost per GB (sometimes by a large margin).

The midgrade line like the P5, or Samsung EVO, is typically TLC and may have cache. Better read speeds, significantly better write speeds, better TBW, higher cost per GB.

And the high-grade line like the Samsung Pro, is typically MLC and will almost always have cache. Highest speeds, highest TBW, highest cost per GB.

The speed difference between the midgrade and high-grade lines usually is not all that much. Often, read speeds will be identical and write speeds will get a small bump.

For an SSD that will purely be used for samples, QLC drives are often fine. This use case is 99% reads, the only time data is written is when installing a new library or updating a library. So the slower write speeds doesn't matter all that much. But for mixed use like what you want, you definitely want to go with a TLC or MLC model.


*QLC = Quad level cell. Four distinct bit values can be stored in one physical cell on the SSD. This allows more data to be stored, at the cost of longevity and performance, especially write performance. When one cell of a QLC SSD is written to, the existing 4 bits need to be copied to an empty cell, then the original cell is erased, then all 4 bits are re-written with one of them updated with the new data.

TLC = Triple-level cell. Three distinct bit values can be stored in one physical cell. Less writes are required to update one bit compared to QLC because there is one less bit stored in each cell.

MLC = Multi-level cell. Two distinct bits per cell. Technically TLC and QLC are also multi-level. But MLC SSDs with two bits per cell were the first to be developed, were called MLC, and the name stuck instead of being changed to DLC / dual-level cell.

*TBW = Terabytes written. It is a measure of the SSDs expected endurance. SSDs degrade whenever they are written to. Writing the same amount of data to a QLC model will require more physical writes than a TLC or MLC model due to how they function, so they have the lowest endurance.


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## Technostica (Nov 24, 2022)

Samsung Pro have been TLC for years now.
They mask that to a degree by still using the term MLC, which is true in the original sense of the M standing for multi and three is multiple.
So this might be part of the reason why this erroneous information is propagated.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 25, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> The P3 is a QLC drive with no DRAM cache. Read speeds should be better in the Acasis, but write speeds will be limited due to the nature of how these specific types of SSDs function.




The advertised spec is sequential read/write speeds up to 3500/3000 MB/S.

I'm just a dumb customer who doesn't know from DRAM. Of course I don't expect it to reach the maximum, but 1/6 of that (if it really is that bad in the Acasis enclosure) is false advertising and it's going back. Pity the poor foo at Best Buy who has to deal with me.

It doesn't help that I contacted Crucial to ask them for a recommended enclosure and they stonewalled me. F that.

Also, I wrote Acasis and asked them pointedly whether they had a model that would perform properly with this specific drive.
​


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## Technostica (Nov 25, 2022)

The P3 Plus is the same as the P3 but supports PCIe 4 as opposed to 3.
So used in an enclosure the performance should be the same.
Even in a desktop system that supports PCIe 4, I wouldn’t pay the current UK premium of £50 as I’d rarely if ever see a significant difference.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 25, 2022)

Technostica said:


> The P3 Plus is the same as the P3 but supports PCIe 4 as opposed to 3.
> So used in an enclosure the performance should be the same.
> Even in a desktop system that supports PCIe 4, I wouldn’t pay the current UK premium of £50 as I’d rarely if ever see a significant difference.


The P3 Plus is less expensive than the regular P3 right now in the US. It's on sale in multiple places.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 25, 2022)

Justin L. Franks said:


> The P3 is a QLC drive with no DRAM cache. Read speeds should be better in the Acasis, but write speeds will be limited due to the nature of how these specific types of SSDs function.



Well, good news: it works well in the newest model Acasis.

I revved myself up to get mad at Crucial for nothing.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 30, 2022)

By the way, there are posts about “the” Acasis.

They have more than one model. The one I have is the latest version. Older ones may or may not fare as well with the Crucial P3 Plus.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 30, 2022)

Every once in a while I get a reading that makes me feel MACHO!

Don't I have anything better to do with my time?


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## ssnowe (Dec 17, 2022)

There are two models of the Acasis TB4 enclosure, TBU401 and TBU405, which one is the preferred enclosure? It looks like the TBU405 has better heat dissipation vents than the TBU401.


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## HCMarkus (Dec 17, 2022)

Testing drives is fun but, on the write side, of limited use because the duration of the test is rather short. Justin and Technostica have laid it out perfectly. QLC is excellent for "Read Mostly" VI Data.


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## Michael Antrum (Dec 26, 2022)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Well, good news: it works well in the newest model Acasis.
> 
> I revved myself up to get mad at Crucial for nothing.


@Nick Batzdorf 

Hi Nick,

I've read this thread through a couple of times, and I'm a little confused,

Did you get the P3 Plus in the end - I'm thinking of getting one myself as they are £ 278 for the 4TB version at them moment - and if so, which enclosure did you get to achieve these speeds....?

I'm not exactly clear on what you ended up with.

(I take it the 7197 Mb/Sec was the internal drive.)

Thanks in advance.

Michael.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Dec 26, 2022)

Michael Antrum said:


> @Nick Batzdorf
> 
> Hi Nick,
> 
> ...


I did get the P3 Plus and the Acasis enclosure (but it has to be the right Acasis enclosure). It's working very well.

And yes, the internal storage is much faster.


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