How Fast Does External Storage Need To Be For Average Users? 

Absolutely, I'm in total agreement with you, like 1000% on point! Most of the time, we end up with way more performance or capabilities than we really need... and the rest is just plain old marketing! Thank you for being rational, honest, and clear.

Thats exactly what I was searching for. Thanks! Now I really know T7 will be enough for music production

Craig, Don't get discouraged. I enjoy watching ALL of your videos even those for which I have no immediate need. I think you do a lot of research and I have learned much from your videos. Often people who argue and/or complain are not "in the arena" as Teddy Roosevelt famously said. Stay true to your own goals and values!

I have a 256GB Mac Mini M1 with 16GB of Ram, the only reason I can think of for buying a really fast external thunderbolt 4 external SSD is to run your OS on it (which is what I do) If I was going to purchase the M2, I would do this also, especially with the slower 256GB one. These SSD's only have a specified length of time before they go bad, I feel like I am able to keep my M1 for a long time by not utilizing the internal/original drive. Apple has made it insane buy making the SSD options so expensive. I would never buy the extra storage from them! Besides if my external SSD that I run my OS on goes bad I can buy a new one but if my Mac mini drive goes bad, well, Apple wins...Not for me! The drive I use is a Sabrent Rocket Xtrm-Q at 1TB and for using over 6 months now, no issues.

Bottom line, does your boss pay you any more money for being 25% faster at the end of the day? No so while your disk is reading and writing files, go have a coffee and enjoy life.

100% agree. Most people don’t need thunderbolt speed. I run virtual machines off a usb 3.2 enclosure at 880 MB/a from a Sabrent enclosure and it works flawlessly. I also have a TB3 orico enclosure that runs at 3000MB/s I run windows 11 VM off, the difference is barely perceptible. The biggest difference is HEAT production. The sabrent stays warm, the Orico gets hot! Unless you are moving massive amounts of Data to your SSD daily (100GB+) or have extra money to burn, it’s not worth it, put that $ into buying a bigger better SSD! Most SSDs have a TBW of only 300TB. You are just tearing up your SSD with all that data! Bigger drives hold up longer. Also a lot of video editing apps can only work so fast anyway, they don’t always utilize all that throughput.

I agree. Over 1000 MBs is overkill for me. I followed your advice and made an external SATA SSD with a $38 Teamgroup MS30 1TB and $12 SSK enclosure and it’s plenty fast. Much faster than my USB 3.0 thumb drives!

To me, speed is nice but value is also part of the equation.

This is exactly what I was looking for! A dual bay enclosure, so I can do backup with time machine on the first one, and use my sound libraries on the second. Since my Mac mini is limited on ports, this one will do a great job 👍🏻. It’s more affordable, convenient and reliable for me. Thanks you!

I'm hoping that some day you do get sponsors. The drives you showcase are lightning fast compared to my old SATA SSDs in USB 3 enclosures (which I'll replace some day but hey, they still work). Don't fret about the complaints, a click is a click so they still support your channel in their own way.

So true! I just connected a Samsung 1TB T5 to my M2 Mac mini that I got cheap on a discount because the T7 came out, set that one up as my home folder and called it a day. Plenty fast for any regular computer user like myself!

I love your honest and practical approach to storage. I use a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB. I also use a Samsung SATA SSD drive. Sometimes I forget that the 4K60 10-but HDR file I am editing is not on my Samsung 980 Pro but on my older Samsung SATA drive. Nothing skips while I’m editing in DaVinci Resolve! Sure when I am done with my video editing and I’m ready to export it might take a minute longer (some of my files are 60GB! And one project might be 250GB!). But I don’t stare at my computer while it renders the video out for RU-vid. I go to the gym or go outside for a run! I agree with your recommendations. If you have the money to burn or a business need for the faster SSDs then get those. Otherwise, even the older SATA SSD can handle 4K60 10-bit HDR with no problems! Thanks for posting this video! ❤️👍

Thanks for the info. I especially like the transparency of the internal storage compared to these external devices

To the POINT !!! nothing to add. Good video. Mac Mini M2 Pro user with "toooooo expensive" 1 TB Harddrive. 512 will do it with a "cheap" t7 2 TB for around 110 Euros. IMO better deal for 95% out there.

I totally agree with you. Let us look at the operative word here "storage", this means what it is storage not the working drive, that drive should be internal and should be as fast as you can afford, even if compromising a little on capacity in relation to speed bearing in mind if you are working on a large file, you need sufficient capacity for your OS & Software along with what you require to work with. As a keen photographer I sometimes work with quite large files but my iMac only has 500Gb internal with 32Gb RAM. Externally I have a 6Tb HDD, 3Tb HDD and a couple of 2Tb SSD's and 1Tb SSD's. Why this set up? easy I find the file's I require transfer them and get to work, the time the transfer takes I get on with some prep or a cup of Java, suits me fine.

Excellent video and fantastic advice

some people have no idea. i used to think my old 386 SX40 was fast. we've just gotten really used to things feeling instantly snappy. Besides most people are not working with video or 50megapixel images for that matter. For web, office, basic video editing, consumer grade photography and even coding, 900MB/s is more than enough, in fact when working with most everyday files, most people would not even notice. It's only a benefit when files are large and contiguous.

Thank you so very much for your knowledge!

Well, the problem is worse than most people realize, mainly because they aren't moving large (>GB) files, but rather moving small blocks of data. The small block file transfer speeds are in the range of 30-60 MB/sec.

Absolutely right! I do a lot of multicam video editing and totally agree with you. On a different topic, I love the way your laptop stand looks! Are you planning on making a video on it or could you at least post a link to it? Thanks, and keep up the good work! The channel is looking better and bettter every time!

Excellent, Craig, thank you.

Very helpfull

Writing files to my 10 Gbps Samsung T7 ssd is only about 10% faster than the 5 Gbps Samsung 860 EVO. WD SN850x nvme on Thunderbolt 3 is about 50% faster than the T7. Not the double or triple as implied by the advertised RW speed.

I am absolutely with you… I think a basic way of “fast” is any (or nearly any kind) of ssd’. They offer fast random access. And a (compared to a hdd) a high throughput about at least 500MB. That thing is fast enough for the most things you do on a daily basis. If you do thinks like (I don’t know anything about that) like high res video editing… fast will be much better. But in the normal usage....the offer things is more important.

I can remember when it took 10 minutes to move 1MB over a dial up modem

I think how fast depends on how you use it. If you are using the external storage as a backup device (i.e. using backup or disk imaging software) for your laptop - the faster the drive, the better. This allows you to complete your backup task to complete ASAP. For those who use it as a data drive for their work data files (e.g. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Acrobat etc), any drive would do. Where it becomes critical is when you work on large data files, e.g. video editing and rendering - you want a drive that is as fast as possible. A lot of this depends on the user as well as their workflow. Some people are more patient than others and some workloads are more demanding than others. I use a desktop PC and enjoy the internal M.2 storage at full speed. I only use external drives when I need to access my data files when I am not at my main desktop PC and can't access my cloud storage - this does not happen often. My external enclosure is a Realtek RTL9210 bridge chip 10Gbps unit with a Kingston A2000 drive. It serves me well and works as intended - no complaints!

For my use, incremental backups & storing a/v files … 900 mb/s for external drive is more than enough

Hi Graig, great video as always. I would rather keep my data on a USB drive that doesn’t over heat. It might be slower but I would rather the reliability of a cooler drive. Looking forward to your next video. All the best. Regards Peter.

Hi :) Thanks for this upload. I was wondering about this due to it being my first encousure-build today, and what i should buy. Getting one of those Yottamaster 10-in-one USB-c hub with built in SSD slot and fan-cooling. I just bought an SSD that is able to run over 3000 mbps, but the hub will slow that down, and if i for any reason need faster (Reeeeally doubt it) i can always get a second 2000 or so enclosure. So thanks, this really put me at ease :)

Craig Neidel! Thanks Much !....... Not a bot!😅

I read that NVMe SSDs only have SMART support when connected to macOS by Thunderbolt.

I have a 1TB Crucial SSD ($79) that I'm using for a boot drive while I evaluate Ventura. I'm getting a little over 900 read/write. Bootup is just a little longer and after that can't really tell a difference.

The one thing that makes me not regret getting an external nvme enclosure is backups. I can definitely watch content, game, edit videos etc from even my spinning HDD over usbc at usb3 speeds. No problem. But my nvme just backed up my entire 150GB of my Mac Mini into a bootable clone in three minutes. Even with a slightly faster sata ssd I still would have spent at least a half an hour to 45 minutes just because of the bandwidth being over saturated. So it’s not something people “need”, but it is nice to shave hours off of your week. It adds up.

When you look at device specifications, marketing, and it says up to 10 GBs, 1K is still up to 10 GBs. They didn't say equal to 10 Gbs and therefore haven't lied to you. I use the SATA M.2 and SSD's as well as 2.5 inch drives as local backups because I want to backup the backup because too many "things have happen" with the promoted backup software; restoring an image is not the time to tweak. I'm okay with some people who are into benchmarking and when Adm. Grace Hopper told her engineers "please cut off a nanosecond and send it over to me", that was a model for benchmarkers in that she was trying to teach and explain, not trounce. I downloaded a 9 GB video from RU-vid and use it to do the speed test. The only thing I'm interested in is whether or not it's "fast enough". Computer scientists and the like know that there is a CPU speed limit, but don't want to get into a gaggle of PC gamer benchmarkers who want to squeeze that .0005% more FPS out of the GPU. The GPU manufacturers are looking for the increase in the share price so they can talk to the shareholders, not us. I'm okay with that, because if the company succeeds, we won't have to keep shopping for new stuff every six months.

Its like the people who have a lawn care business that have a push mower and a weed eater and think they need a 1 ton dually and tandem trailer. Sorry I dont know why this is sparking so much with me lol

yup, there is a sweet spot where by the cost is just insane for the few seconds you shave off, I took your advice and got an m2 sata instead of an nvme for heat purposes and i get about 370mb read and write. Mainly throtled by the laptop itself but its ok i am happy with it. Its an upgrade from the spinning WD external HDD that came before it.

you usually dont get the full its and UPTO Rating which does not mean its going to do what its rated for but its got the potental, you best bet would be thunderbolt but not all computers have it, how ever intenral sotrage will always be way faster then the same drive external reguadless of the speeds internal is the fastest over external.. how mich speed someone needs in a drive really does depend on the users needs for there ueses..

Graig, I bought this set up . I am going return it as I can’t ( 1 can’t get the sod to stay in the slot , 2 can’t get the rubber hold down button the stay in the hole. Great idea but doesn’t work for me. Thanks for the video. Larry

Hi. I really like this channel. You know a lot about storage. I have a request…. It seems like the landscape has changed since cloud storage and smaller hard drives in most iMacs. It use to be get a big internal hard drive and than 1 or 2 similarly sized back up drives to back up. What do you do now? Much of my day to day needs is stored in iCloud which is good. But I have lots of large family video files presently on my old sata internal imac HD and some back up drives. How do i manage this on a new 500 gb imac and still use it and protect it. It seems like it would be to expensive to put all this on iCloud. It would be nice to get your philosophy on managing a families storage and back up needs…. Thanks

Craig … in your opinion, how fast of an SSD enclosure would you suggest that a 2017 iMac OS / Ventura need to run effectively? I currently have a Samsung SATA SSD that I put in an enclosure, and runs 480 mb/sec. It seems to run fine, but I don’t edit 4K vids either. BUT … I if I did, would that suffice for those types of projects? I understand speed is king. Another informative video, btw. Thanks for the effort. 👍🏾

Craig I have WD_Black SN770 NVMe SSD game Drive 2tB Gen 4 Larry

Too many people simply get off on running black magic speed tests. But in reality that's the only time those ultra fast drives are ever pushing data at those speeds. RAM does all the heavy lifting, especially for editing video. The theoretical speed of an SSD makes no difference after about 300MB/s for anything excepting booting up and even that we are talking about differences of seconds. But RU-vid and Reddit are full of people telling you that faster is always better.

Love Craig's videos and like his approach. There are cases when a fast external drive is helpful, so choose wisely. For example, if you need an external drive to be a bootable clone of your main drive, you will want at least 1,500 MB/s and probably 2,500 MB/s when booting from it( unless you don't mind waiting for a long boot time - and that's cool if you do ). A lot of new mac internal drives are 3,000 to 5,000 MB/s by comparison. For folks using their macs to make a living, time is important and they will choose accordingly. Thanks for the videos Craig. Like your honest approach.

Question: PCIe 3.0x4 should be enough for a type-c 10gbps enclosure right? Maybe one with dram cache just to cover my bases...? Because price/performance 4.0 seem a bit of a waste in such enclosure.

Pl s tell for daw users using library from external how much speed should be?

Single thread random read (often called RND4K QD1) is what makes a drive to "feel" fast for usage more complex than merely copying large media files. Sadly, most reviews only focus on sequential speed. Please run CrystalDiskMark (Windows) or AmorphousDiskMark (MacOS) and compare supposedly "fast" drives by their single thread random read.

Using both a 4tb samsung evo ssd in an orico enclosuer and a 2tb nvme samsung 980 pro in an orico thunderbolt enclosure. Obviously the more expensive thunderbolt access files instanously. The ssd option no slouch. I also bought a 4tb seagate eco ultra touch for pure back , as platter sata hds are still most reliable for archive purposes. Now Im considering the acasis thunderbolt enclosuer with a wd 4tb nvme as next drive for fast access.

Speed is not all what it is drummed up to be. Think about a time, not so long ago, we used USB-3 and then all of a sudden we got all these weird, very confusing, USB-C "standards". But where a lot of people get into the main confusion is the capabilities of their laptops. USB-C 3.2 10Gb is optimal, I built many enclosures myself and right now I am pushing 915 MB/s and that is more than fast enough. The rat race for "stupendous" fast external storage is of course driven by Apple. Soldering the storage, making it non-upgradable and offering too small of a size. So the internal drives of your computer is of course much faster, but buy a Lenovo T14 and upgrade your internal drive on the PCIe Gen4 bus to an aData and all of a sudden it scores 7300 MB/s. But Craig, why don't you talk about IOPS 😀. I manage many PB (no, not peanut butter) in our datacenters, on cloud storage and on prem. Most of the NetApps can run many circles around stupid fast SSD, but at what cost? Because all I care about is IOPS and the amount of storage I can offer. I can talk for days about storage, protocols, pros and cons, cost and maintenance. Yeah, I am also a sysadmin in my day-to-day work, VMware and such, you know the kind of work that you still cannot afford a nice EV on - lol. So my external storage is more in size, because size matters.

I’m buying a Quiizlab UH25 max for my new Mac M2 mini I takes two different cards the 2.5 card and MMED card what do you recommend or should I just skip it and go with your suggestion in this video

Love your video, just subscribed! So is it okay to buy a cheaper ssd (wd sn750 se) if it’s only for storage since speed of the enclosure is only up to 1gbps, or do I buy a better ssd such as Samsung 980 pro?

Fast is never fast enough… the Acasis Nvme 40 gigabit thunderbolt enclosure with a Samsung 980 Pro is amazing! Fairly cheap, and up to 2800 megabytes per second, read and write, sustained!

Hi Craig , Thanks for all your work and expertise ! I have iMac 2017 5K 27 inch with Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) . Of course the Fusion Drive 3.8 . I am looking to install an external ssd to run MacOS. Please advise what enclosure and ssd would give me performance for the price . I am a consumer user .

Can you please advise which one should I get for external storage with 4TB with a links. Thanks

Hey Craig, what stand is that for the MacBook ?

Can it be used with a firestick TV?

if im just storing games(and play on them) and school works, is the ~500 mb/s is enough? And if im gonna buy a SSD for a SSD enclosure, is it ok to use an SSD with no DRAM cache?

i have the need, the need for speed - so i'm 40gbps all the way

You can comfortably edit 4K videos on an external SSD with only 900MBps? Awesome... BUT did you consider that you CAN - at least with a Mac - use that SSD enclosure in a RAID config & get 'twice' the speeds? Just imagine 8TB of editing space with up to 1800MBps...

On my iPad Pro 12.9" I tried to download apps like Black Magic speed test. So then I clicked on app store on my iPad nothing showed up, then I tried AmorphousDiskMark and nothing came up to download. So what app can you use to Check speed of External SSD, on a 5th Generation iPad Pro 8GB 256 GB ? Have you every done a Video using iPad to check out speeds of SSD.

Hello. I'm looking for dual NVMe M.2 or dual sata 2.5" via 1 cable + RAID, high speed is not needed, but it is necessary to support 4tb ssd (total 8tb). I don't want a NAS, they're all bulky and rated for 3.5", although I want to put a pair of 2.5" or m2 ssd. I know about the asus for 6 m2 ssd, but so far such a volume is not required. it is very surprising that ssd has been around for a long time, but there is nothing designed only for 2.5 ". P.S. I hate hdd, lonies are noisy, bulky, fragile, and die like flies.

Yes, this is an excellent, cost-effective single user solution. What if one needs multi-user shared storage such as Plex, DaVinci Resolve, PostgreSQL, PostGIS or JupyterHub? I have looked at NAS (Network Attached Storage) which are barely multi-user (Intel Celeron), but brain dead or Apple which is brilliant but famously expensive to add internal storage or RAM at time of purchase. What about a low end Asustor NAS SSD RAID array connected by a USB 3.2 cable to a low-end Apple Mac Mini and the Mac Mini connected to the LAN network by Ethernet? The Mac Mini acts as a server to Apple and Windows clients running the appropriate client software such as DaVinci Resolve, ArcGIS, QGIS or a data science environment such as Jupyter/Python? If one only needs RAID, Asustor Flashstor or if also need backup Asustor Lockerstor Gen2 which has both SSD and spinning disk support. How would one manage Dr. Frankenstein's creation?

I been using an external deive to boot macos for a few months. it does make the laptop cooler not having to use the internal ssd. however macos crashes when I turn on the laptop after a sleep cycle. I now save my work before hitting sleep 😢

I'd be interested in a metric that measures temperature vs data transferred. We know that chips throttle down when certain temperatures are reached, A slower drive that transfers more data before throttling may be a better value than a fast drive that slows down quickly. Plus, high heat reduces the life of electronics in general.

Big Number Syndrome.

Top speed is not as important as consistency in transfer speed. I bought the SK Hynix X31 Beetle, it is around 950MB/sec no matter the amount of files and stays cool.

Have a question I have a Mac mini 2012 with an I five and an upgraded SSD how can I take advantage of the thunderbolt to? I have the Apple adapter but I need an enclosure or a dock that’s not going to break the bank.

Great video.

As someone who just bought a new MacBook Pro and is now looking for external SSD to expand the storage, I admit that I am one of the people who believed I need "at least" 20Gbps enclosure for my (basic) video editing with CapCut. But after watching your honest and informative clip, I suddenly asked myself "do I really need to pay that much when external SSD like Samsung T7 should be fast enough at 800Mbps?" And the answer is "Hell, no." So thank you for a wake up call, Craig. You just earned one more subscriber. Cheers!

I agree and disagree - but as you said, it all depends on your use case. I've got an M2 Pro Mac Mini with the minimum built-in SSD storage because I don't want to pay Apple's prices for storage. Currently I'm using this built-in storage for Davinci Resolve, but my end plan is to fit something like the Acacia Thunderbolt 4 enclosure you introduced and run the Resolve app from my Mac Mini, but have all the assets/proxies etc. on the T4 external drive. Thus, reducing strain and extending the life of the built-in SSD. I've currently got a cheap ("slow") 2TB external SSD for backups and static file storage, which is fine. However there's no way I can use this for Resolve proxies - playback is horrible when I do. Keep up the good work! I just discovered that I wasn't subscribed, so I am now. 😁

Well said as always sir. People are out here thinking they are doing NASA level work when really they are playing in swimming pool. If you need it, you know you need it and you probably are not even looking at ANY of the stuff in this video. The highest level storage (space and speed) are probably not even a blip to the ones playing with the real toys.

Some REAL analysis, thank you!

This video was recommended while I was searching info on this topic. I am interested in using an external enclosure to make a portable version of Windows to be used in testing my PC builds and I do have an NVME enclosure but my old Samsung 961 kicked the bucket recently so waiting on a cheapy 256 GB NVME to arrive. I am also interested in how to make use of my PC's e-SATA port to run my external drive but I am confused on what cable adapter to get. Some come with an added USB and others do not. I appreciate the information you provided in this video, liked and subbed.