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Archive 2023 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

QuietOC wrote:
Thunderbolt hosts and devices never supported the two channel USB 3.2 mode. It is not just an Apple thing. The USB-C ports on your Macbook Pro are USB4/Thunderbolt 4. They support 20 Gbps (and 40 Gbps) in a different way than two channel USB 3. They do support single channel USB 3.2.

The physical USB-C connector doesn't say much of anything about what a device supports. The USB-C cord on my Thunderbolt 3 enclosure doesn't support USB 1, 2, or 3 at all. It only works plugged into a USB4 or Thunderbolt host.

This is important. Because current thunderbolt uses the same connectors as USB-C, some people assume that they are more or less the same thing... which isn't quite the case.

Also, important to keep in mind that, except in edge cases, most of us photographers would not really notice the difference between "the fastest" and a lot of other options that cost less and are also pretty good.

Feb 11, 2023 at 09:39 AM

chiron
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

QuietOC wrote:
Thunderbolt hosts and devices never supported the two channel USB 3.2 mode. It is not just an Apple thing. The USB-C ports on your Macbook Pro are USB4/Thunderbolt 4. They support 20 Gbps (and 40 Gbps) in a different way than two channel USB 3. They do support single channel USB 3.2.

The physical USB-C connector doesn't say much of anything about what a device supports. The USB-C cord on my Thunderbolt 3 enclosure doesn't support USB 1, 2, or 3 at all. It only works plugged into a USB4 or Thunderbolt host.

Given my system, is it possible to get 20 or 40 GB/s file transfers with a bus-powered external drive? How would I do that?

Feb 11, 2023 at 10:07 AM

eyal
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

Before you go too far down the rabbit hole, watch this video. Certain programs won't take advantage of the ridiculously fast speeds now available. I had my eye on an IndieGoGo external that would be able to offer the full speed of the latest and greatest SSDs ("USB4 40Gbps Enclosure • Max 3.8GB/s Read and 3.1GB/s Write Speed • NVMe PCIe Gen 4X4 SSD").

But then I watched this and gave up on superspeeds:

Feb 11, 2023 at 11:09 AM

chiron
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

eyal wrote:
Before you go too far down the rabbit hole, watch this video. Certain programs won't take advantage of the ridiculously fast speeds now available. I had my eye on an IndieGoGo external that would be able to offer the full speed of the latest and greatest SSDs ("USB4 40Gbps Enclosure • Max 3.8GB/s Read and 3.1GB/s Write Speed • NVMe PCIe Gen 4X4 SSD").

But then I watched this and gave up on superspeeds:

That was a very helpful video.

What I took away from it, in terms of my purposes, is that for the photo-editing part of my activity, where the file and even the catalog are stored externally, great speed is not going to improve the working experience over medium (or even less) speed.

For copying large folders or files in and out (what I refer to as the "housekeeping"), higher speed would make a difference but only if the entire chain were very fast. Obtaining that would involve a significant cost in replacing all the drives I use for storage and backup. My housekeeping is intense right now because I am re-organizing everything, but in the future this kind of large file transfer will occur less frequently. So, probably not really worth the trouble and cost of changing the storage devices.

Thank you for the link!

Feb 11, 2023 at 01:37 PM

mcbroomf
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

Just to add a data point to this. I just finished retesting a desktop PC (with an aging i7 7800x) with some HDR/Pano files in Lightroom Classic that I tested last year at the same time as with my new M1 MBP.

When I tested last year I put the LRC catalog on an internal M2 SSD (D: drive) that also has my LR, PS and Topaz caches. I put the images on a pair of SATA SSDs in Raid 0 on SATA connectors from the MB in the desktop box. When I retested today though I put both the LR catalog and the images on the M2 SSD, ie access to the images should be faster (not sure by how much but SATA is noticeably slower than M2).

I got identical times. The shortest test was a 6 shot x 50MP HDR that took 40 seconds, the longest test was 54 shot spherical HDR/Pano that took about 6 mins.

EDIT : I should say that didn't get the same speeds as last year. Different rev of LRC and though I'm still on Win 10 several updates since then. In fact I got times 20-30% or so faster (so yay Adobe?), but it made no difference if the images were on the SATA drives vs the M2 SSD.

Feb 15, 2023 at 02:30 PM

chiron
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

mcbroomf wrote:
Just to add a data point to this. I just finished retesting a desktop PC (with an aging i7 7800x) with some HDR/Pano files in Lightroom Classic that I tested last year at the same time as with my new M1 MBP.

When I tested last year I put the LRC catalog on an internal M2 SSD (D: drive) that also has my LR, PS and Topaz caches. I put the images on a pair of SATA SSDs in Raid 0 on SATA connectors from the MB in the desktop box. When I retested today though I put both the...Show more →

Interesting (if I understand what you are saying here--always an issue for me in these kinds of discussion). Given that you were surprised by your results, what do you think accounts for the finding of "no difference" and what might you do instead to increase speed?

Feb 15, 2023 at 05:16 PM

Scott Stoness
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

2.5" ssd sata is 500mbs
Raided zero to near 1000mbs

NVME gen 4 on TB3 or TB4 is 1800 write and 2500 read but typically this slows down to <500mbs unless you buy really expensive NVME cards (eg KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD) because slower write at 2 state up to say 100gb and then start copying to 3 state and slow down)

see this link https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1776649/1 for much discussion

so
basically a really fast and really expensive nvme would be 2,000mbs - fastest with TB3
and a raided 2x ssd data would be near 1000mbs - fast and reasonable
a economical nvme would be really fast 2,000mbs until it drops down to similar to ssd data after 100gb so for large storage ssd sata is good enough- fast for burst and then slow but reasonable price on TB3
TB3 and TB4 are similar in speed
ssd/sata can't take advantage of TB3 because they are too slow and usb 3.x connection is fast enough

Edited on Feb 15, 2023 at 06:21 PM · View previous versions

Feb 15, 2023 at 06:13 PM

mcbroomf
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

The NVMe (D: drive) was on the MB. A Samsung 970 EVO (C: is the same).

Feb 15, 2023 at 06:19 PM

mcbroomf
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

Scott Stoness wrote:
2.5" ssd sata is 500mbs
Raided zero to near 1000mbs

NVME gen 4 on TB3 or TB4 is 1800 write and 2500 read but typically this slows down to <500mbs unless you buy really expensive NVME cards (eg KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD) because slower write at 2 state up to say 100gb and then start copying to 3 state and slow down)

see this link https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1776649/1 for much discussion

so
basically a really fast and really expensive nvme would be 2,000mbs - fastest with TB3
and a raided 2x ssd data would be near 1000mbs - fast and reasonable
a economical nvme would...Show more →

Thanks for posting this info. It prodded me to do some testing which I've never done before. I downloaded CrystalDsikMark and tested both the SATA Raid drive and the M2 NVMe on the motherboard.

I don't know what the tests do but results from the 1st one in their default settings (SEQ1M Q8T1)

8TB Raid SATA drives 1109 / 1044 Read / Write
2TB NVME on board 3551 / 3341 Read / Write

To answer your question Chiron. On this system I don't plan on doing anything. It's pretty much CPU bound I think. There is one slightly better CPU I can switch out with the same pins but it's not a whole lot better.
Also realistically against my M1 MBP (both 64GB) I get these numbers;

6 x 50mp HDR 0:41 / 0:14 (Win / MBP)
15 x 50mp HDR/Pano 2:15 / 1:25
54 x 50mp HDR/Pano 6:04 / 3:45

These are all from LRC 12.2 and show a 20-30% improvement from the same tests, same files as a year ago on LRC 11.1

I can live with those times until I decide, or have to replace the desktop. The only thing that I have to switch to the MBP for is if I want to auto-align a massive stack of layers (80 or so 50mp files, a 33GB file). The desktop stalls (and the MBP does for layers >> 80).

Feb 16, 2023 at 06:30 AM

jhapeman
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

So, lots of good advice here and some confusion between interface (USB-C) and the protocol (Thunderbolt vs. USB 3.x, USB 4, etc.).

On your Mac, it will be Thunderbolt. I'm assuming you'll be getting either a new M1 or M2 Mac; they all support Thunderbolt 4, and USB 4, which finally has been converged to match Thunderbolt. Both can do up to 40Gb/s. They are backwards compatible with previous USB generations, but you do need a Thunderbolt cable to use Thunderbolt devices. It *looks like* a regular USB-C cable, because USB-C is is the interface, but Thunderbolt requires a special chip in the cable, so always buy quality Thunderbolt-certified cables, and you'll be fine. They do cost more of course.

Right now there are very few USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 external drives, but there are plenty of Thunderbolt 3 drives, and that's just fine--the throughput speed on your Mac is identical to Thunderbolt 4. You can get some crazy fast speeds with some external enclosures, in particular the Acasis enclosures. My newest favorite is this one; it's tiny and pocketable, great for travel:

Acasis Thunderbolt/USB NVMe Enclosure

You can put any of a wide range of NVMe SSD drives in there, but I prefer the Sabrent TLC drives; TLC is rated for better longevity/durability and costs a little bit more but prices continue to come down. On a Mac you'll get R/W speeds in the 2900-2800 MB/s range--crazy fast, and pretty much near the practical limit of the Thunderbolt interface. This is the 4TB NVMe drive I recommend:

Sabrent 4TB NVMe TLC SSD

The combo will set you back about $700 but it's crazy fast, built to last, and very portable. What I've done is just moved to buying these for any new drives, and then when I need to age out an old drive, I replace it with one like this. You can actually splurge and get up 8TB NVMe SSDs, and I have a pair of those I use when I am traveling--one week in Costa Rica photographing birds with an A1 can chew up 3-4TB of space pretty fast, and I have one with the images and one as a backup. I prefer to invest for the future, so I want drives that are fast now knowing that in five years they'll still be pretty fast.

As for performance when using applications, Lightroom really doesn't need it to be all that fast, nor do most other photo-editing applications, so the main benefit is copying large numbers of files, so depending on how often you dot that, the benefits will vary. Because of how I shoot, I often need to do so, and then the fast speeds are very much appreciated.

Avoid anything that says it's USB 3.2 2X2, the Mac won't support that, and actually it was never supported on a ton of PCs either. It was a stopgap on the road to USB 4, so kind of a dead end. I highly recommend sticking to Thunderbolt 3 or 4 only for your new Mac external drives, as with the final conversion of USB 4 on the Thunderbolt 4 spec, everything going forward is going to be in that class, and you get maximum performance.

Edited on Feb 17, 2023 at 08:25 AM · View previous versions

Feb 16, 2023 at 08:24 AM

QuietOC
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

jhapeman wrote:
So, lots of good advice here and some confusion between interface (USB-C) and the protocol (Thunderbolt vs. USB 3.x, USB 4, etc.).

On your Mac, it will be Thunderbolt. I'm assuming you'll be getting either a new M1 or M2 Mac; they all support Thunderbolt 4, and USB 4, which finally has been converged to match Thunderbolt. Both can do up to 40Gb/s. They are backwards compatible with previous USB generations, but you do need a Thunderbolt cable to use Thunderbolt devices. It *looks like* a regular USB-C cable, because USB-C is is the interface, but Thunderbolt requires a special...Show more →

There is one reason to chose USB4 cables instead of Thunderbolt branded ones. USB4 requires speed labelling on the cable ends. Thunderbolt branded cables do not necessarily support 40 Gbps.

Feb 16, 2023 at 09:48 AM

comotionfilms
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

chiron wrote:
I think I can live fine with 4TB SSD drives, even if I wind up needing multiple drives.

I am moving to Macbook Pro based photo editing, so portability is important.

I am envisioning two levels of storage: 1) An archive where everything is stored; and 2) drives that are used with Lightroom, Photoshop, and DXO to actually edit and print images.

I have started my archive on usb disks, but copying large folders is too slow. Trying to move one large folder (about 300 GB) from a usb disk to a ssd drive going through the mac gave an...Show more →

For your 4tb drives that you will be working off of, I’d look into the new Samsung t7 Shield. Avoid the 4tb Sandisks, as there is something up with the current batch. I’ve probably used 30 of these in the past year without issue, and just recently I, along with a bunch of other people I know are having issues with the 4tb ones. I lost 4 out of 4 on a recent job.

Your USB spinning drive that you will archive too will always be slow, unless you go with a RAID or a faster type of storage.. That said, 200gb isn’t a lot of data and shouldn’t take “about a day” so something seems up with that. Try different ports, try different cables. Some usb c cables are only meant for charging, so make sure you are using a cable that supports the faster speeds.

Feb 16, 2023 at 06:05 PM

chiron
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

comotionfilms wrote:
For your 4tb drives that you will be working off of, I’d look into the new Samsung t7 Shield. Avoid the 4tb Sandisks, as there is something up with the current batch. I’ve probably used 30 of these in the past year without issue, and just recently I, along with a bunch of other people I know are having issues with the 4tb ones. I lost 4 out of 4 on a recent job.

Your USB spinning drive that you will archive too will always be slow, unless you go with a RAID or a faster type of storage.. That...Show more →

Yes, I think this is good advice all around. I looked at the Sandisk Extreme and I noted in the B&H review a more than usual number of complaints about failed drives. As for my "about one day" copying speed, I think there were two problems with what I was doing: first, I was doing a drive to drive copy through the computer--it turns out to be much faster to first copy the files from one drive to the computer and then to copy from the computer to the next drive. Second, I was using an adapter to go from a USB A to a USB C. The adaptor was apparently a bottleneck. Thanks for the helpful input.

Feb 16, 2023 at 07:02 PM

chiron
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

Feb 16, 2023 at 07:06 PM

mcbroomf
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

chiron wrote:
.... I looked at the Sandisk Extreme and I noted in the B&H review a more than usual number of complaints about failed drives. ....

Damn, I just ordered a new 4TB Extreme Pro (due here on Sunday from Amazon). Same poor reviews on B&H, many just this month and specifically for the 4TB version. I think it will go back unopened. I already have an 8TB Sabrent which has been fine for a long time now. I guess I'll keep my eye open for a 4TB version on sale.

Feb 17, 2023 at 05:00 AM

comotionfilms
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

mcbroomf wrote:
Damn, I just ordered a new 4TB Extreme Pro (due here on Sunday from Amazon). Same poor reviews on B&H, many just this month and specifically for the 4TB version. I think it will go back unopened. I already have an 8TB Sabrent which has been fine for a long time now. I guess I'll keep my eye open for a 4TB version on sale.

Yeah, it’s a shame because these were my go to drives for the last year plus. I’m still not sure if it’s an OSX thing (APFS) or SanDisk. For me, it happened the same time I upgraded OS, but, it happened for everyone else at the same time as well, and they weren’t all upgrading OS.

Keep in mind that SanDisk, GDrive and Western Digital are all the same company, and I lost a Western Digital the same week, so I’d avoid all of those until we get some clarity from the company.

As much as I disliked the original Samsung T7 drive, I think the new T7 Shield looks promising and will be the next one I try.

Feb 17, 2023 at 06:51 AM

jhapeman
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p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

QuietOC wrote:
There is one reason to chose USB4 cables instead of Thunderbolt branded ones. USB4 requires speed labelling on the cable ends. Thunderbolt branded cables do not necessarily support 40 Gbps.

No this isn't accurate; Thunderbolt 1 and 2 support only 20GB/s but they have a totally different interface, so no one should ever have any issue confusing them with the newer, faster versions. If it's got the the USB-C style plug and the Thunderbolt logo, then it has to be Thunderbolt 3 or 4, both of which do support the 40GB/s. This is one of the reasons Thunderbolt was easier to deal with--really difficult to get confused about what it will do. Also, it used to require certification from Intel to even be able to use the logo.

USB4 is driven by an industry consortium and doesn't require any certification, which means like in the past you'll have fringe manufacturers that produce USB4-labeled products of questionable quality. Personally I'd strongly suggest always paying the slight premium for a Thunderbolt-certified and labeled product, even for your new USB4 devices. That way even older Thunderbolt 3 products are guaranteed to work as well.

Feb 17, 2023 at 07:25 AM

jhapeman
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p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

mcbroomf wrote:
Damn, I just ordered a new 4TB Extreme Pro (due here on Sunday from Amazon). Same poor reviews on B&H, many just this month and specifically for the 4TB version. I think it will go back unopened. I already have an 8TB Sabrent which has been fine for a long time now. I guess I'll keep my eye open for a 4TB version on sale.

I switched to using the Sabrent products a few years ago and now that's all I use. They are less expensive than Samsung, in my experience they are actually just as reliable, and in general they also perform better. Sandisk I dumped a while ago; after the Western Digital acquisition it seems performance and reliability went down and prices stayed high.

Feb 17, 2023 at 07:30 AM

chiron
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p.2 #19 · p.2 #19 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

mcbroomf wrote:
Damn, I just ordered a new 4TB Extreme Pro (due here on Sunday from Amazon). Same poor reviews on B&H, many just this month and specifically for the 4TB version. I think it will go back unopened. I already have an 8TB Sabrent which has been fine for a long time now. I guess I'll keep my eye open for a 4TB version on sale.

I have three Sandisk G-Drives (two 4 TB and one 2 TB) that have been rocks for me. The two 4TB drives are relatively recent. These drives seem to be their premium version with better dust sealing, drop protection, and cooling than the Extreme Drives (see the description at B&H). They only get warm under very long and intensive copying and even then they cool down fast. They are a bit more than the Extreme Drives, but not too much. Same speed specs.

Feb 17, 2023 at 07:55 AM

mcbroomf
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p.2 #20 · p.2 #20 · Fastest Mac external drive & cable set-up?

I really wanted a drive that could be used on both TB and USB-C (for older computers) which is why I've not gone the build your own route with a TB enclosure. The Sabrent XTRM-Q does that but is no longer available other than a 16TB model that is TB only.

I found an OWC Envoy Pro FX that is TB3 and USB that I might get. Twice the cost of the Sandisk but TB speeds (2800). I might wait to see if goes on sale but I don't recall OWC sales (in general).

Feb 17, 2023 at 08:15 AM

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