I've a number of external SSDs slowdown to far slower speeds than they are capable of. Here's an example of an SSD that was operating about 5 times slower than it had been and the super easy tip of what I did to fix it.
OMG! This worked! I recently upgraded from MacBook Air M1 256 to Macbook Pro M1 1 TB and when I transferred all my files with my external SSD drives they both turned into snails. I thought they were trash and couldn't understand how this happened with both of them nearly simultaneously. This coincidence seemed a bit suspicious to me, hence my not throwing them away so swiftly. I am happy to report that after allowing it to stay connected, unused and remain that way for 10 minutes my ADATA 1 TB SSD is transferring again at regular speeds via USB ~350 MB/s. My 2 TB hasn't "repaired itself" yet. But I'm leaving it plugged in and looking forward to seeing how it performs tomorrow. Thank you so much Matthew for making this cool video and giving us this amazing tip! You rock!!!
I can confirm that incredibly, this worked for me on a 2020 M1 macbook pro with a new Acasis TB3/USB3.1 enclosure and an Intel 760p installed. Initial speeds using certified TB3 cable were about 650w/750r despite anything I did. So I came across this video and gave it a shot, left the enclosure plugged in for about 20-30 minutes on battery. Eventually plugged the laptop in to power for about another hour while I did some other work then came back and saw that Blackmagic disk speed test was getting about 2400w/2800r. The only additional odd thing I can point out is that when I closed Blackmagic and opened up Amorphous Disk Mark, the measured speeds reverted to about 650/750 until I left that app sitting open for another 5 minutes or so. Reran that test and results were back up in the 2GBps range. I can only guess that there must be some kind of throttling process going on in the background at the OS level that must be vetting the new hardware and/or apps that are allowed to access it. In any case, glad to have come across this tip and hope my additional info helps in someone finding the root cause.
yah, it's so frustrating. i just bought a new SSD and an enclosure with USB C. took me more than 2hrs to transfer about 300 GB. was expecting faster. thanks for the tip.
My crucial X8 2tb runs like garbage. It barely gets over 50MB/s for 98% of the time. It only hits the 900+MB/s for the first 10 seconds. I've only had this problem with Crucial's X series SSDs. My sandisk extreme pros do not have this problem.
I have a problem where after a spike of 500~ MBps it just drops to 0 KBps with the better performance policy; with the quick removal setting it switches between 13 MBps and 20 MBps... any help?
not sure what kinda nonsense this is but uh, if you have to let the drive sit for 20 min, you need to add 20 min to transfer time because you're intent to transfer started 20 min BEFORE you plugged in the drive.
Plus my drives are on an OWC Thunderbolt dock and my iMac’s set to NEVER sleep. Between Google INTENTIONALLY breaking the web to control their false paradigm and Cook destroying Apple you can’t find any fkg info ever anymore to fix shit that used to never occur. I fix one problem on this p.o.s. and there’s always another one - literally get zero work done. So “top of the line”. And Apple Tech Support? Forget it. They’re the ones who told me to break my firmware device iD chain by deleting fkg containers. And I don’t even know if it’s not intentional to weaponize shit against us at this point. Unreal. So sick of it all.
You genius. I have no idea why this worked but it did. I have two small internal SSDs in small caddies. Wanted to try in new MBP using USB-C. One was as fast as usual, c.250 MB/s, the other had dropped to less than 10. Left the slow one connected for 10-15 mins and it's back over 250. Cheers for that. Ganpati bless.
Well, mine are always connected and always on and this has grown to a permanent problem that neither shutting down nor recovery and restore - nothing fixes. I’d love to know how if the dock is always on and the Max never sleeps this is supposed to help. So enjoy it while it lasts, and long may it last for you, best, truly.
I’m enjoying this issue, 10gb files transfers at 17mbs on Samsung SSD connected to pc with USB 2, and then through SD card adaptor to SDHC 128gb card. My SSD is permanently attached, not sure if it’s SSD, PC or SD adaptor that’s slowing it down
I have a WD elements Hard drive it is extremely slow. I changed the cord and updated the drivers for Mac. WD only has up to the big slur. Still nothing fixes the issue. I will let the drive sit on my computer for a while like you recommended. Very sad as people are just trying to preserve their data. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
So I have a 2018 15 inch fully maxed out MacBook Pro with the i9 processor and the pro Vega 20 graphics card. Ever since I updated it to the Mac OS seqouia beta update, all my usb type c adds and hdds all have a listed read and write speed of around 30mbps per second when tested in blackmagic. Why the heck is this happening. I’ve tried everything like switching cables and using powered dongles and stuff. Nothing works. How do I fix this??
No, I'm finding my external USB slows down when Windows Explore is trying to browse it, or other programs are accessing data from it. Not necessarily large files either. 1TB drive at 300GB capacity.
Hi I recently bought an m1 pro 14" macbook pro with Ventura already installed and I also updated to Ventura 13.1 cause my older macbook pro started to slow down. I also purchased new ssd external hard drive to transfer files from an older external hard drive. After having transferred all the files over to the new ssd external hard drive I plug it into the usb c port on my new m1 pro macbook pro. it then shows up on my computer screen. but when I double click it to see the files in it. I click on a file I the word "loading" with a spinning gear and it didnt stop loading I waited up a half hour and it was still loading. How do I fix this problem?
But SSD external drives get very hot (i have two, one is a Sandisk Extreme Pro 4 TB and the other one it is a WD Black P50 4 TB) so do you think it will shorten its life span living the SSD 30 minutes?
They do get so hot, right?! A good one should have a chipset to throttle to prevent it from cooking itself and be designed to transfer that heat away from the chipset. Time will tell who has not done an adequate job. These have been out a while now.
I just bought two SSD drives from Aliexpress... 8TB each, USB-C connector. The transfer speed is appalling. 4Gb estimate transfer was 3 hours; it is now 4 hours after copying the first 300 MB... I tried both ExFAT and NTFS formats, there is no difference, and the performance is terrible. Any suggestions? Their support said the speed depends on the device, I use top equipment (one-year-old top-of-the-range computers), both Mac and PC... thank you in advance!
These could be fake drives and may not even contain SSDs. Get some software and verify that you got what you paid for. 8TB sounds ripe for being conned unless you paid a very high price.
I looked on Ali Express and real 8TB SSDs are £600. Did you really spend £600 on a SSD from China? I doubt it. They also sell 4TB ssds for £3.51. There are videos all over RU-vid about fake external HDs from Ali Express.
@@stevebleasethey were fake. I opened it, there was no ssd inside, only a cheap 64 gb card, nothing even closer to 8 TB. They refunded one of the 2 drives, that was all; the price was 10 usd, I should have known it was a scam…
Maybe this from Apple might point you in the right direction. “Note: The entire APFS volume is reserved for Time Machine backups. If you want to store files other than the Time Machine backup on the same physical device, use Disk Utility to create an additional APFS volume on the disk. The two volumes then share the available space.” support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/mac
I have seen that when i use a USB C connection for SSD drives it gets hotter than when using a USB 3, so for writing i connect to a USB C and for reading i connect to a USB 3 (blue)
