I tried it on mine and the combination still remains limited to 10 Gigabit/s.
A handful of lucky people with computers and drives that both support USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, or both support USB 4 may enjoy quicker speeds, but most of us will hit a wall with practical rates limited to just under 1000 Megabytes/s.įrustratingly this also includes connecting a 3.2 Gen 2×2 drive like the SanDisk Extreme Pro on any Mac to date including the 2021 14in and 16in MacBook Pros which boast USB 4 ports.
If you are interested I’ve gone into detail in my SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD review, but the bottom line is the vast majority of USB connections are limited to 10 Gigabit/s in practice. I’d originally planned to explain all the standards and issues, but to be honest it’s becoming boring even to a geek like me. The most common portable SSDs connect to standard USB ports, but these run at different speeds and often cause a bottleneck.
In this article I’ll show you how to build the fastest portable SSD I’ve ever tested – and it only took two parts and a few minutes to assemble! See the video guide below, or keep scrolling for the written highlights!Ī portable SSD essentially consists of two parts: the storage drive itself and an enclosure to house it and provide connectivity. Alternatively get yourself a copy of my In Camera book or treat me to a coffee! Thanks! Buy it now! Check prices on the Orico M2V01-C4 at Amazon or the Samsung 980 Pro at Amazon. My combination of a Samsung SSD and Orico housing may have cost roughly double a SanDisk Extreme Pro of the same capacity, but ran two to three times faster on both my new and old MacBooks.
Thunderbolt 3 drives are more expensive, but if your computer has a compatible port, you can typically unlock faster speeds, while building your own drive gives you the flexibility of not only choosing the exact SSD within it, but swapping it for a faster or bigger version in the future, or indeed upgrading the enclosure itself to exploit future connectivity.
(It’s odd that the early write performance exceeds the read performance by so much, however.Summary Portable USB drives may be getting faster in theory, but depending on your port, you may not be achieving anywhere near their advertised speeds.
Short of the PCI-based storage in your Mac Pro this appears to be the fastest storage in any Mac to date. Of course almost no one would have a task that requires this magnitude of data transfer in the real world, and even then the performance is still quite good, even with a slowdown. The results for reads here are in excellent agreement with the test above: a bit over 5GB/sec, which is far above the ~3.3GB/sec achievable in prior Macs. Based on invoking the test a 2nd time, it appears that the SSD speed “regenerates” after the first test, so long as there is some time in-between. But when not degraded, the 7GB/sec figure is pretty awesome.įurther research is needed. Turning to thermal throttling as a theory, why the sudden plummet? With thermal throttling, one would expect a steady degradation, not an abrupt change.Įven the degraded write speed is in line with prior internal Mac SSDs (3.2 to 3.3 GB/sec) on iMac 5K, Mac Pro, etc. Which makes no sense for a 2-tier design (1/3 fast flash, 2/3 slower). The plummet occurs at file 479 of 1000, equating to 1331 GiB = 1430GB, or about 35% of the 4TB flash drive. To see an abrupt breakdown in SSD write speed for sustained writes suggests a 2-tier flash drive. Write behavior is unlike anything MPG has ever seen in an Apple internal SSD.