I stopped before the 2 minute mark knowing I’m not the audience for this video. I’m a pro photographer so reliable internal storage from my MacBook Pro is worth the extra money but if you don’t depend on your hard drive professionally and don’t have priceless memories to store then this could an option for you. Oh and iCloud storage is the icing on the cake, don’t be left without it. I have a Windows laptop also but only for two specific softwares that I use it for so my internal hard drive is more than enough for that plus I can access my iCloud files from it also so that’s another bonus.
The problem with more than 1 SSD enclosures/NAS is that they don't give all 4 PCIe lanes to each M.2 SSD. For example, this QNAP TBS-h574TX provides PCIe Gen3 x2 for each SSD slot. It means that any single SSD speed in the best-case scenario could be around 750 MB/s x 2. But in real life it will be around 1000 MB/s - basically operational speed of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Port or 10Gb USB-C. And there is no reason to use RAID to increase speed since limitation is not in SSD or PCIe but in the Ethernet Port. So, it's enough to buy old PCIe 3 SSD. All PCIe 4 SSD cards are overkill.
While lane count and generation is the ultimate bandwidth governor it isn’t the only factor. Gen4 nvmes most of the time have newer better performing controllers. Premium tier drives will have Dram cache greatly improving random read/write performance along with larger SLC caches which will maintain full speed for longer while increasing TBWs. Most TLC read/write speeds plummet to 5-700MB/s so lane count stops being a factor anyways. 2x gen3 lanes will see 1500s not 750MB/s. Another benefit of raid 0 is it effectively multiplies SLC cache capacities. My 4x enclosure acts like a single drive with 2.4GB of SLC cache. Even if the drives drop down to TLC speeds individually their combined speeds are still enough to saturate a thunderbolt connection. The unit you mentioned has 10 pcie lanes. RAID 5 with 5 drives will have more lanes available than the 4X available to one drive. All of your assumptions are simply incorrect.
Thanks for this video but I really need to say this out loud: As much as I love MacOS to me there's no rationale where apple can justify the current entry storage/memory prices. In 2012 I had an external storage solution via a thunderbolt in my Mac Mini due to my line of work - despite having 2 internal drives, one external Time Machine and 16gb memory. All custom upgrades, bought the drives, bought the memory and boom, the Mac mini lasted for 10 years and still works as a support machine. Marvelous era where things were upgradable and gave us a long term perspective. I then moved to an iMac 2020 mainly due to the screen and the aging HD4000 of the Mac mini - was only able to upgrade the memory. It pains me to see that in 2024 apple continues to regress, no matter the performance increase of the latest and greatest we are at this point where 8gb/256gb is still the base offering (and no possible upgrades). Even the 16/512 configuration shouldn't even be an option in the "pro" line. Oh and if anything fails "paperweight" mode activated! Love turning into hate...
Outstanding video! If you haven't already done it, could you make a video showing how to make an external SSD my boot disk? And I mean everything. The operating system, applications, all folders and files, the whole kit and caboodle. Thank you for your time and consideration.
I basically selected an external SSD, then made that my boot up. And I use Time Machine weekly on ALL drives. I might loose a tiny bit of speed….unsure. But I know I was able to expand my iMac and Mac Mini to 2TB for way less than ANYTHING Apple offered.
I have a 2023 M2 Mac Mini 16 GB Ram, 256GB SSD. I went with a WD SN770 1 TB and a Acasis TBU401. Fast! REAL FAST!...But Hot, REAL HOT! I tried adding Heatsinks, just too darn hot. Being an Old timey Field Engineer working on Computers when Dinosaurs walked the earth, I understand well how heat can rob electronic equipment of life and data. I ended up ditching the Acasis and going with a Qwiizlab hub. It took the WD SN770 with no data loss, plus gave me additional USB Ports that I found out I really needed for MIDI Controllers, Cameras, and other peripherals. It's slower, cooling running, but way faster than the storage in internal storage in my old 2012 Mac Mini. I'm happy.
I just place the enclosure on top of the Mac Mini and let the heat transfer from the enclosure to the Mini. No issue the past 2yrs. I don’t know about the fan’s longevity though. Is it replaceable and how loud is it?
You could show how to relocate the user’s home folder to the external. Also might be useful to show what happens if you try to boot without the external connected and the home folder missing.
Right. This hints at a stumbling block for Mac users and external storage, which is that the Apple ecosystem, which includes iCloud and specifications for where other cloud storage (i.e. Dropbox) is located, and how the Mac OS handles file links, is not designed to work with external storage devices. Yes of course power users familiar with the command line and mounting drives, etc., can easily work around the Mac OS, but I bet most people are not that skilled.
The acasis thunderbolt nvme external enclosure is the best balance between price and performance - it consistently delivers 2800 megabytes/second in both read and write, when used with the included, or an actual thunderbolt 4 cable… the cable makes a huge difference!
I have the ACASIS TBU 401 Pro (40gbps) which was an upgrade from my SABRENT EC-SNVE (10gbps), moved from PCI Gen 3x4 to Gen 4... and 2TB.. way faster in benchmarks (800mbps -> 2800mbps), but honestly I don't notice any speed difference, in any day to day things, from 4k video editing to large projects for programming. Another item to point out, fill up that drive then benchmark, those write speeds tank even with only 1/2 filled up. I was sometimes getting write speeds of 100mbps when having 900GB of 1000GB.
I will say there is added value for the Apple storage for laptops because you can move around easier without the added effort of a dangling storage device attached. Plus external enclosures will never be as fast as the internal storage. Maybe that’s not a big deal to everyone but it is important to compare cost for the speed. You have to look into good TB4 enclosures to get decent speeds and then the price gap gets a lot smaller. Even then at best it’s 3,000MB/S vs the internal that can go up to 6,000 MB/S. While everyone may not need that speed it’s important to factor that into the cost. The internal storage is more expensive because it does provide the maximum speed and is not bottlenecked. I will also point out storage rarely fails on Mac’s. The same can not be said of external drives which can either fail or slow down with age. I have owned name brand SSDs that started off at 500MB/S and after two years slowed down to 150MB/S. Not all flash storage is created equally. Not all enclosures are created equally either and can sometimes fail and lose data. You are adding two new failure points to your computer. The SSD and the enclosure. The internal storage tends to be very robust and built to last a really long time without slowing down. This is the pro level of flash storage and not the average version. External storage is great and for a desktop Mac it’s probably a good way to go if one is ok with the slower speeds. For a portable Mac however there is value in always having everything with you no matter where you take your laptop. Plus over the lifespan of the computer the extra couple hundred bucks likely will not mean much. It’s initial sticker shock but when you have it it is worth it. The point of a laptop is it can move around and be used anywhere. At a cafe, on the couch, in bed, on the toilet, on the bus/train, on a movie set, even while walking or standing in a hallway. Not being held back by messing around to plug and unplug an external drive which can also be dangerous is convenient.
When you say “(usb 4 is) faster than thunderbolt”… you are clueless ! It is not only about the speed of the interface 10, 20, 40 gigabits per second, it is about blocking versus asynchronous transfer … USB is a bus-technology, it uses blocking transfers - reads in one direction, waits for read/write in the opposite direction, and then sends data the opposite way. Thunderbolt is asynchronous, it can send data in both directions at the same time. Thunderbolt is thus not a bus technology.
@@mortenthorpe I'm not clueless, I have a degree in computer science. The new USB 4 enclosures are in fact significantly faster than the previous thunderbolt nvme enclosures on the market.
@@definingslawek4731 you having your CS degree or not, doesn’t in either case have anything to do with the fact that you did not know about the bus technology of USB, and the asynchronous nature of thunderbolt… which is fair enough… but at least admit it, instead of changing your statement to “faster than previous thunderbolt”, which for the technology difference between usb and thunderbolt, and for the use in question (storage) is still not necessarily true… depends if you only read and only write in a test, but this is (dependent on the operating system), not a valid test case in many cases. Most file-transfers (all should), are validated as they are transferred, forcing data transfer to occur in both directions, so USB will be slower. A blocking bus at 40 gbps may be faster in use than a 10gbps thunderbolt, and it may not. In my own testing the NVME Acasis thunderbolt 40 gbps enclosure provides 2800 mbps read and write consistently and the same provides around 930/950 mbps using a usb-4 cable. This is the real world difference between thunderbolt and usb of same generations
Great info! I added a 1TB Samsung SATA III 6 Gb/s SSD with a USB 3.0 enclosure back in 2019 when I bought my M1 Mac Mini. I only use it for storing music files so speed is not important. After 5 years it still works perfectly and I avoided the outrageous Apple memory tax.
You gave polar opposite specs. First NVMe can be faster than internal. Second you said max external rates are about 3gig/sec. Ive done lots of testing and the 3g/sec is correct. However, my internal 1TB on my M2 Mini pro is 5500 to 6500 g/s. So externals are not faster . However, in daily use, maybe would not see much difference.
Just got an Acasis and a WD 2tb for my MacBook thanks to one of your old vids 👍🏼 Amazon prime day had a decent sale on them. Sort of wish I had shelled out an extra $100 for the 4tb, but this gives me plenty of space for now
No one mentioned this, well, I managed to snag one of these babies for cheap, Seagate Firecuda Gaming Dock, added a fast M.2 4TB SSD used the internal builtin 4TB for real time Time Machine backups on my 2TB Mac Mini M1
Thanks for the video. Very informative. Could you do an evaluation of the various mac mini hub where you could put in a nvme and sata SSD. Which brand gives you the best bang for the buck and which ones has the best transfer rate? Many thanks.
Hi mate how's things? I worked with you years ago on a wedding not sure if you remember. I'm having massive issues with my external hardrive and wondered if you can help. Apple can't seem to figure it out and you probably know more than them about drives
@@mychannel9161 you can still do it on the M series systems. the install procedure is the same as the Intel, but you need to select the external as your default disk from within macOS and not the bootloader. I currently have working bootable macOS installations on both the internal and external drives of my M1 MacBook Pro. Just head into macOS System Settings > General > Startup Disk and choose which drive you want to boot from next reboot.
Got the base M2 Mac Mini 256gb for Web and App development...got the OWC Express 1M2 USB4 on the way. Going to use it with a 1TB NVME I already have and make it the main drive. Velcro the enclosure to the top of the mac mini. Tuck it behind the monitor out of sight...Not paying Apple hundreds for 1TB...
Thank you for the outstanding video! At 8:19, regarding the ACASIS SSD & Dock, I have a question about the dual DP feature. Would it work for a dual monitor setup on the Mac mini M2? From what I understand, Thunderbolt alone may not support two monitors without DisplayLink. Thank you!
I run my M1 Mini (short for minimal RAM & HD) from a Satechi USB4 enclosure Hardest migration (from a 2014 Mini) I've ever experienced in 30+ years ! It just _didn't_ work It still refuses to update automatically too
I’m disappointed that you didn’t test the 1st gen acasis tb3 enclosure. I’ve been using it for around 2yrs and the read/write speed on a gen3 WD 1tb green is the exactly same speed as the “newer controller” Acasis with the bells and whistles.
All this seems pretty tiny. Do you have anything in the 10TB-20TB range or how do we do that? For those of us who are RU-vidrs and Music Producers etc? Thank you :)
One thing affecting performance is the cable. Not all USB-C cables are created equal and often they are not clearly marked to indicate their abilities. Some are barely good enough to charge your phone and others will drive a monitor and multiple SSDs attached to a hub. It's important to match the cable with the drive's capabilities, and not simply connect a new enclosure with a cable that you may already have connected to your computer.
Hi Lauri, thanks for the video. How about the Satechi M.2 Enclosure 40Gbps. Do you know if it is any good and how does that one compare to the ones you mentioned on L3? Thanks!
@tomdfrog. I would use cloud storage for your particular needs. This suggested option is not expensive and, providers often keep several copies to provide resilience for you at no cost. Additionally, if you have "an event" at your abode then all your data is safe in the cloud, for easy retrieval...
Exactly what I did - Brought the Mac Mini M2 Pro with 16 gigs and 512gb ssd, then brought 2 X 2 TB ssd's and put them in external usb4/thunderbolt4 enclosures then modded ( told ) the programs too use the external ssd's " sorted " Saved 100's £/$ on this solution ......
There are also now available for some macbook laptops a daughter board the connects to the space where the soldered on ssd that when replaced with the adapter you can now use normal ssds for storage. External case now in most cases nolonger required and these adapters cost about 50 dollars and simply needs to be soldered on in replacement of old ssd storage
I bought orico enclosure with Thunderbolt 6months ago. The quality super low. I had to modify it! It could not close the cover had to cut the plastic holder it uses instead of standard screw. Then it started overheating. Reason for this. The chip has no cooling. Had to cut thermal pads to make 0.5-1cm high stack so it would touch the metal casing for cooling. Also placed it on top of usb 120mm fan to keep it cool. Now it works around 2000-2500mb sek. With 2tb drive as my main system drive. Formatted and hiding internal Mac mini drive so it will never be used.
And just to add to what is being said below, I have had MacBook pros since the beginning of their existence and Apple computers before that; NONE of their hard drives have EVER failed, so I really don't care what their warranties say. On top of that, when anything goes wrong, they do their best to fix it for you and for free if they can. Hard to beat with any other maker!!
One major flaw in apple's design, or maybe intentional. If the ssd dies in these mac machines, then it's a brick, boat anchor, door stop, paper weight, whatever you want to call it. It won't even power up
The big problem is that you cannot set an external drive as the boot drive. Back in the Intel Mac days, you could. Internal storage will suffer from excessive wear and tear due to Apple's stingy RAM options.
We can't have nice things like that in the US because corporations pretty much own the politicians who would be the ones making consumer friendly laws.
The advantage of internal drives is the lower latency. USB / Thunderbolt connections have overhead which most impacts latency - not bandwidth. Things tend to run faster on internal drives even when those drives are tested to have lower bandwidth. This is because the majority of read / write calls are to small files which are more impacted by latency. So that internal drive is still desirable and one should definitely run their OS from the internal drive. External drives are best suited for larger data files where high bandwidth is desirable and higher latency will not be noticed. Or better yet - Apple, include M.2 slots in your Macs!!!
I bought a 500gb M2 Mac Mini pro not because I don’t want to pay their hiked prices but mostly because I want modularity that their storage does not offer. Even if I had 2tb of storage I would have had my data backed up on external carriers anyway, so why pay more in the first place if SSDs and RAIDS is where you live as a professional anyway, and your internal storage is simply there for software running
Important!!! Last November I bought 3 Orico 2.5 case and All of them failed on every 2.5 months period! Yes they're cheap, but now you know the reason! Do no buy these Orico external cases! 🤬🤬🤬
@@theTechNotice no, no data loss. The ssd is Samsung 870 QVO 4TB and everything with the disk itself is normal, but the controller in these cheap Orico cases are crap!
18:05 APFS is not journaled like HFS+ was. I uses redirect-on-write. Apple File System is designed to avoid metadata corruption caused by system crashes. Instead of overwriting existing metadata records in place, it writes entirely new records, points to the new ones and then releases the old ones, an approach known as redirect-on-write. This avoids corrupted records containing partial old and partial new data caused by a crash that occurs during an update. It also avoids having to write the change twice, as happens with an HFS+ journaled file system, where changes are written first to the journal and then to the catalog file. ALSO, HFS+ should be considered if drive is to be connected to a Mac running 10.11 (El Capitan) or older.
Personally, I hate all of these external options when using my machine on the go. Having to walk around with my SSD attached - in its metal case which I can't hold against my laptop without scratching it - is a real pain. And I have to hope I don't bump the cable and disconnect it (if not break the port, though I have not done that so far. I have caused momentary disconnects, though).
I’m horrified by the idea of finally shaking off mechanical drives only to be offered SSD Drives with fans in. I’ve used external SSDs for years and never had one with a fan, a decent amount of heat sink design is more than enough. Fans always fail in the end.
My experience as well. I have a thunderbolt external enclosure with a fast SSD, and it is about half the speed of the internal disk. Also it needs to be connected to the computer, so not so practical when working while commuting. I think a good advice for Mac users is to get a big enough internal disk for what you want to bring with you everywhere, and use external disks for storage intensive jobs like video editing, research on big data sets and things like that. Keeping your data alive should be handled by some kind of backup even if you use external drives, whether it is another external drive, mirroring to the cloud or some other solution.
@@Maksitto Need is kind of a relative term. We don't really need computers at all, right? But we still enjoy using them, and we don't enjoy waiting for them to finish working, and as computers become faster we find more ways to make them work so we still wait for the computers to finish and we always want faster computers.
Does anyone know if I should be able to run 2 of these 40Gbps Enclosures on a Mac Studio. I have 2 with WD 4TB drives but the Mac Studio only sees one at a time. Not I can even run 2 simultaneously?
Not sure - But I can not see why not, you have 2 or 4 thunderbolt 4 ports on the back..... unless there is some sort of hardware cap on the studio 1 that I do not know about!! = The Mini M2 Pro has 4 thunderbolt 4 ports on the back and I run 2 ssd's from them without a problem..
Man, Orico and Ugreen are total junk😅 I picked up their USB 4 SSD enclosures 'cause they were cheaper than the Thunderbolt ones. Big mistake. They keep disconnecting and get crazy hot. Talk about a waste of money.
@@pureheartvisuals you should be ok then, do not understand why you are having problems - each port has its own independent chip - so you should be able to run 4 enclosures, unless there is a maximum hardware limit, that I do not know about ????
The problem is, most people are stocked with apple because of their huge photo library, this library can not be moved to an external drive at all, thus rendering any of this completely useless, I had that same set up, did not work. But the easy and convenient of accessing your photos on all your devices is there so you keep buying Apple products, I decided to build my system and just have the Microsoft app download the photos , don’t have Apple Mac’s anymore
You can move the Apple photos library to external storage. I have the 2014 Mac mini with 8tb aftermarket SSD, while the drive can support 4-5000gbps, the bottle neck is the machine so I get around 900MB/sec. They really should just put a bank of Nvme ports in these units - we can but dream.
I’ve been a Mac user since 1987 but because their hardware philosophy amounts to a box that is configurable but only on checkout. Upgrading hardware down the road is literally not possible because RAM is soldered in place, NVME data storage is either hard coded or soldered or both, to the motherboard, the CPU is an apple design and soldered to the motherboard. Apple has done everything they can to lock you into your purchase for the life of that unit. Nothing internal is user configurable. For this reason I am switching to a PC build where everything inside the box can be configurable throughout the life of the device. Apple lost me completely.
Compltely unrelated but I've been having to export DCPs (mfx video file) at 200 mbits and it's been too much for my current machine even at 2k. Can you test theese kind of exports on you futuro tests? Do you think a core 5 and rtx 4060 would randle this type of export just fine with 32 ou 64gb of ram? I can't aford things beyond that as I live in Brazil and don't get that much money
Btw, i corrently have a ryzen 5 2600 and an rx 6600. I did not know that AMD isnt good for this type of work. I was thinkin about upgrading to a ryzen 7 5700x as its a more realistc scenario to me, but if that isnt enough to export theese files than it might be better to save up until the end of next year to get something good.. thing is, I kinda need theese thing now!!😊
Already covered in great detail by David Harry over the last few years, so much so that MaxTech stole his content. Anyhoo, it's not internal storage so it doesn't solve the problem of OS bloat, so Apple still have you there.
Tech reviewers- "APPLE storage is overpriced and you can use external storage for cheaper" Also Tech Reviewers- "Dongles are for loosers". I hate tech sometimes.
Is there any way to hi light something like a thunderbolt 4 DAS storage solution? I was close to purchasing the terramaster DAS 6 bay but I just couldn’t bring myself to the fact that it wasn’t thunderbolt 4.
There is a huge problem with your approach. I have a mac mini with low storage and I use an external storage and jt is a nightmate. Your applications are on the mac storage, same for your user files. I transfered my main user files on an external hd and its slow and it is not sync with icloud properly. 1tb locally is mandatory
Honestly saying 40 Gbbt is pretty hot. It has a chance to die.Why do we need that super fast speed? 10 Gbbt is enough for all. Also i think m2 nvme is not supposed to work with those enclosures so its out of warranty boundaries
A) I’ve got this and it’s not that good. B) in no way is this faster or even close to the same speed as the internal ssd, just trust me, I’ve done this. C) if the Mac breaks? This doesn’t happen, the internal hd built by apple isn’t going to fail or at least, I doubt it’s more risky than the Chinese made factory for all the others. That’s where the ACASIS ones come from. They’re not powered, if you’ve got the other 3 TB occupied it almost always won’t mount. Don’t do this expecting any of these results in terms of numbers.
Agree. The internal drive in my Macbook Pro is about double the speed of a fast external SSD in a thunderbolt ACASIS chassis. Still happy with the external chassis, but it does not invalidate the need of a decent size internal drive, even though I agree that it is overprized.
@@torejorgensen5344finally someone on the internet with some sense. There’s just nothing accurate about the title image here. What did it say, 5x faster? FIVE TIMES? Hahahah.
As a loooooong time Apple User, Apple Silicon has been a revelation. Look for the rest of the Windows World to follow the Apple design philosophy and "lock down" their upcoming ARM-based offerings.
It is just Microsoft being more delusional than usual. The first Windows on ARM device launched 12 years ago and every generation has been a failure. Now Snapdragon ganged up with Microsoft...From what I have seen so far, the new product line got a long way to go before it becomes a success.The fundamental issues with Windows is all the bloat/spyware that Microsoft is implementing into their OS. Fix that, and people won't complain.
Apple pricing policy is insane and pure nonsense. Same with basic ram/ssd spec. Ask 1600-2000eur for a laptop with just 8GB/256GB in 2024 in pathetic. Especially when you consider how much does it cost them to boost the capacity. It’s matter of few bucks. MAC revenues are just 10% of total revenues, they could afford boost the ram/ssd specs.
yes, the storage that apple offers is a lot more expensive than external storage, however if they are selling it is because there are people buying those. some people want the convenience of not having to carry external storage with you, and for video editing on the go, is more convenient to have it integrated, and if you can afford it and you are not a brokie like us, why not.
Why are you naming drive speed in bits per second, that's what is generally used for coax, ethernet, wifi. All my life, storage drives are measured in bytes per second and the ethernet connection to a nas in bits per second because it is ethernet. Is this truly how the industry has become, I've been out for 5 years and we now measure in bits? wack.
If inadvertently you move external SSD connector and get connection out, you will loose your data, processed files and work time, and if you have 8gb of ram anyway system OS that use "memory pages" in internal non replaceable SSD write over and over in that media and it dies. This video is a Scam, just as apple is.😠
The reason why your "solution" is NOT a solution you give within the first minute in your video: You can't install it IN your Mac... Who wants an external storage that always has to hang outside your Mac? - On mobile Macs you can be shure that your USB-Port (or the case of the SSD) has to be replaced regularly (I guess at least once a month) and on your desktop Mac you also need additional space on the desk (or you let the SSD hang loosely under your desk, putting stress on the USB-Ports, so they also have to be replaced soon. If you want more storage for your Mac buy the upgrade or get a NAS (and if you need local storage build iSCSI-Target(s))... and if you want it cheap don't get a Mac, buy a PC instead, which you can expand internally (even my Low-End Dell has the capabillity to swap out the NVME or to add an addtl SATA-Drive)... But I never come to the idea plugging such an ugly SSD-Case to my Mac and have to look at it everytime I sit at my desk.
