2012 Internal SSD vs External USB3 SSD Speeds?

[Heat_Fan89]

I think the Amazon Mini i5 sale ends today so I thought I'd start a thread to a question I posted in another thread:

What are the speed differences between an internal SSD and external SSD via USB 3? I ordered an internal Western Digital SSD 250GB for my 2012 Mini. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073SB2MXW/ref=twister_B07WXNPZL3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Mojave takes a little over 1 minute to boot to desktop from the power switch in my 2012 Mini with the stock 5400rpm HDD. What kind of speed improvement would I notice going with an internal WD Blue SSD?

I'm contemplating ordering the 2018 i5 Mini from Amazon for $999. Not sure if it would be better to chug along with my 2012 Mini until Apple does another refresh in a couple of years. Any thoughts?

 

[ruslan120]

In my experience booting from USB is awful. The bus gets saturated quickly so you can forget about multitasking or any useful workloads (in my case). Same goes for copying to and from the boot drive over a few hundred megabytes.

I would go with a better internal drive.

(experimented on booting with an iMac 2017, not a Mac Mini, was terrible in my case regardless)

Edit:
To answer your question, much* better. For read and write speeds, you can google the WD drive’s speeds in Mac. The selling aspect of SSD vs spinning hard disk is seek times - those will be significantly reduced.
In terms of real world performance, you can expect apps to open almost instantly and files are searched for almost momentarily, as opposed to pauses and delays associated with a spinning drive).

 

[Fishrrman]

Just checked my 2018 Mini (512gb) SSD -- 2600mbps reads

USB3 SSD -- will top out at about 430mbps reads

USB3.1 gen2 drive with nvme drive -- will top out around 960mbps reads

Thunderbolt3 SSD -- will top out around 2700mbps reads (depends on size of drive)

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Just checked my 2018 Mini (512gb) SSD -- 2600mbps reads

USB3 SSD -- will top out at about 430mbps reads

USB3.1 gen2 drive with nvme drive -- will top out around 960mbps reads

Thunderbolt3 SSD -- will top out around 2700mbps reads (depends on size of drive)

Wow, thanks for the info. How about an internal standard SSD? Will they be slightly better than a USB3 SSD?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Wow, thanks for the info. How about an internal standard SSD? Will they be slightly better than a USB3 SSD?"

For a standard 2.5" SSD, I believe USB3 will give you about 80-85% of the speed of the same SSD -IF- it were installed internally.

For some folks, that small percentage is worth "tearing into the machine" to achieve.
But... not for me.

 

[iluvmacs99]

I think the Amazon Mini i5 sale ends today so I thought I'd start a thread to a question I posted in another thread:

What are the speed differences between an internal SSD and external SSD via USB 3? I ordered an internal Western Digital SSD 250GB for my 2012 Mini. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073SB2MXW/ref=twister_B07WXNPZL3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Mojave takes a little over 1 minute to boot to desktop from the power switch in my 2012 Mini with the stock 5400rpm HDD. What kind of speed improvement would I notice going with an internal WD Blue SSD?

I'm contemplating ordering the 2018 i5 Mini from Amazon for $999. Not sure if it would be better to chug along with my 2012 Mini until Apple does another refresh in a couple of years. Any thoughts?

It can be a slight improvement with the internal SSD as the internal SATA port of the 2012 Mini tops out at 6Gb/s. USB 3.0 tops out at 5Gb/s. but USB 3 UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) which Mojave supports very well tops out at 6Gb/s and only USB 3 enclosures that support this fast turbo mode must also be APFS bootable from a clean install. If not, the USB 3 speeds will be very highly compromised.

By the way, in order to get such high USB 3/SATA speeds, you will also need a drive that has a large enough onboard cache and a large capacity. To get faster speeds, you need to get the 1Tb version of SSD as a minimum, because the larger the capacity, the larger the cache and the faster sustained read/write it can do if that SSD comes with onboard case. The cheaper 3D NAND type don't! If you have a smaller drive like 500gb or 250gb, then you're not going get the ideal speeds, so whether it's in your Mini or outside the Mini makes no significant difference. Unfortunately, your WD SSD drive is such the case. If you want fast, you need to stick with either Samsung, Crucial, Toshiba and IBM with a big onboard RAM cache and dynamic garbage collection feature, which helps keep it in tip top shape.

By the way, another downside to having a USB 3 external drive supporting UASP is the radio frequency interference with the WIFI antenna that can cause interference with the 2.4Ghz WIFI band, causing your Mini to not connect to the router. Moving to the other end of the USB 3 port close to the Thunderbolt 2 port will solve this problem. In my case, I use the 5Ghz band with my Macbook Air when I'm using the enclosure in Mojave.

I use the NexStar TX enclosure which supports UASP bootable volume and my Vantec NexStar TX boots FASTER than my Macbook Air 2014 internal SSD! This gives you an idea of what a USB 3 UASP external drive can do. The Samsung T5 is another excellent SSD external drive that supports both UASP, 3.1 Gen 2 and bootable APFS volume and plus it has a decent sized onboard cache for higher sustained speeds.

 

[Boyd01]

With the 2012 Mini, I wouldn't bother opening it up unless you feel you need the absolute highest speed (which is still nothing to brag about in 2019). I have used external Samsung T3 drives (both 500gb and 1TB) on a base 2012 Mini and quad i7 Mini, and here's what I get.

Now, my 2012 quad also has an original Apple 256gb internal SSD and this is what I get.

I use the 2012 quad extensively with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and it works very well booted into Sierra from the external Samsung T3 SSD. I don't think the speed increase justifies the risk of damage from opening up a 7-year-old computer. But, of course, you might feel differently.

With a 2014 Mini, that's another matter because the SSD interface is faster. This is what I get on my 2014 2.8ghz Mini original Apple internal SSD.

BTW, what is the " Amazon Mini i5 sale"? Doi you mean they are still selling new 2012 Mini's? FWIW, B&H Photo still has 2014 2.8ghz Fusion Mini's for $519. You can split the 128gb SSD from the hard drive and boot from it (that's what I'm doing).

 

[Heat_Fan89]

If you want fast, you need to stick with either Samsung, Crucial, Toshiba and IBM with a big onboard RAM cache and dynamic garbage collection feature, which helps keep it in tip top shape.

I did a Google search and the info I saw says that the WD Blue SSD that I bought is right up there in speed with the Samsung 970. It's on its way, so I should have it by the end of the week but with Hurricane Dorian heading towards the East Coast, it could be delayed.

With the 2012 Mini, I wouldn't bother opening it up unless you feel you need the absolute highest speed (which is still nothing to brag about in 2019). I have used external Samsung T3 drives (both 500gb and 1TB) on a base 2012 Mini and quad i7 Mini, and here's what I get.

Now, my 2012 quad also has an original Apple 256gb internal SSD and this is what I get.

I use the 2012 quad extensively with Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and it works very well booted into Sierra from the external Samsung T3 SSD. I don't think the speed increase justifies the risk of damage from opening up a 7-year-old computer. But, of course, you might feel differently.

With a 2014 Mini, that's another matter because the SSD interface is faster. This is what I get on my 2014 2.8ghz Mini original Apple internal SSD.

BTW, what is the " Amazon Mini i5 sale"? Doi you mean they are still selling new 2012 Mini's? FWIW, B&H Photo still has 2014 2.8ghz Fusion Mini's for $519. You can split the 128gb SSD from the hard drive and boot from it (that's what I'm doing).

Thanks for the speed test info. I'm waiting for the WD Blue internal SSD to arrive. No, I was referring to the 2018 base i3 and i5 Mini's BH Photo has on sale. Amazon priced matched them. I'm going back and forth on the i3 Mini but I'm unsure if Apple will refresh the Mini's next year or in 2022. My 2012 Mini with 8GB of RAM and an internal SSD can easily get me another 4 years but I'll miss the yearly releases of MacOS, which I always look forward too.

 

[Boyd01]

No, I was referring to the 2018 base i3 and i5 Mini's BH Photo has on sale. Amazon priced matched them.

Ah, OK... well that's a little confusing, since your thread title was "2012 Internal SSD". I changed it to 2018. Is that right, or am I still confused?

 

[Strelok]

Biggest benefit of an SSD for most users is the access time and random read/write, neither of which will see a significant loss with USB3. If you are constantly transferring large files you will probably see a difference, USB3 is limited to 100MB/s vs internal ~550MB/s.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Ah, OK... well that's a little confusing, since your thread title was "2012 Internal SSD". I changed it to 2018. Is that right, or am I still confused?

Haha, yeah I own a 2012 Mini and was looking to add an SSD to it, that's how the thread got started. And the 2018 Mini was added to the discussion because I'm thinking of buying the 2018 base Mini.

 

[jdiamond]

It really depends what you're doing. I've used external USB 3.0 SS drives at 450+ MB/second and had no issues - for normal use it's as good as my ~1GB/sec internal SSD. But if I needed to edit raw video, I might appreciate it being a little faster, in which case I'd just go with a different port than USB 3. (Note that even USB 3.0 base at 240MB/second really isn't bad - nothing like the hellish 40MB/second experience I used to get booting from an external FW800 drive. The key is always using an SSD in the enclosure - 'cause as pointed out, then you get sub millisecond seek times)

 

[Boyd01]

Haha, yeah I own a 2012 Mini and was looking to add an SSD to it, that's how the thread got started

OK, well I'm still confused. Should I change the title back to 2012, LOL.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

OK, well I'm still confused. Should I change the title back to 2012, LOL.

You could put it back to 2012. That's where I was curious about the speed differences. I bought a 2018 base i3 Mini from Amazon because I'm not sure when the new 30% tariffs will kick in. With the 2018 Mini, I will probably go with a TB3 SSD, kinda looking at the Samsung X5.

 

[Boyd01]

If you are constantly transferring large files you will probably see a difference, USB3 is limited to 100MB/s

What do you base that on? As you can see from the disk speed tests I posted above, I get about 400MB/sec write speed with an external USB3 SSD on my 2012 Mini.

@Heat_Fan89 - I changed the title back to 2012.