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Best Ex-SSD to buy!

H

HMB13

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Original poster
Dec 31, 2017
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3
Hi folks,
I have iMac 21.5 Retina 4K with 1TB Fusion Drive, and I want to buy external SSD drive to speed up the performance of my machine so which one the best SSD drive to buy?

I found the:
1- Samsung T5 Portable SSD - 500GB with $149 from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-P...15180389&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+ssd+t5+500gb


2- Transcend 512GB Thunderbolt Solid State Drive StoreJet 500 for MAC with $369.99
https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-512GB-Thunderbolt-StoreJet-TS512GSJM500/dp/B00NV9LSEE



Is there a big difference between the Thunderbolt and USB 3.1?

thanks :)
 
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Yes, the big difference is in the bandwidth of the connection. You will be able to move larger files to and from the mac and external drive much faster with the TB drive, hence the higher cost.
 
SecuritySteve said:
Yes, the big difference is in the bandwidth of the connection. You will be able to move larger files to and from the mac and external drive much faster with the TB drive, hence the higher cost.
Click to expand...

but I don't usually have big files to move or transfer, how about the performance?!
 
You'll get more performance out of the TB connected one. The fact that the drive is an SSD is a larger factor in performance, but the TB connection will give you speedup too. The larger volume of reads/writes you do on the drive, the more performance gains you'll notice.
 
SecuritySteve said:
You'll get more performance out of the TB connected one. The fact that the drive is an SSD is a larger factor in performance, but the TB connection will give you speedup too. The larger volume of reads/writes you do on the drive, the more performance gains you'll notice.
Click to expand...

Thank You!
 
There are certainly reasons to go Thunderbolt but I doubt they will impact you unless you are looking for a much more expensive and faster drive. There are a whole bunch of Thunderbolt SSDs that are coming on the market now for example these.

https://www.sonnetstore.com/products/fusion-tb3-pcie-flash-drive-1tb?variant=2553661292578
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Lacie/STFF2000400/
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVPR20/

I assume you are on more of a Budget than that, so I'd just go with a USB 3.1 SSD like the Samsung T5 you linked to above. You are really not going to benefit that much from TB3 interface instead of USB 3.1 on a standard SATA SSD
 
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danielwsmithee said:
There are certainly reasons to go Thunderbolt but I doubt they will impact you unless you are looking for a much more expensive and faster drive. There are a whole bunch of Thunderbolt SSDs that are coming on the market now for example these.

https://www.sonnetstore.com/products/fusion-tb3-pcie-flash-drive-1tb?variant=2553661292578
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Lacie/STFF2000400/
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVPR20/

I assume you are on more of a Budget than that, so I'd just go with a USB 3.1 SSD like the Samsung T5 you linked to above. You are really not going to benefit that much from TB3 interface instead of USB 3.1 on a standard SATA SSD
Click to expand...
Note that the drive he linked was TB1 / TB2. I don't believe TB3 bleeding edge costs should apply to him. If he's looking for speed, he should go with the TB1 / TB2 drive, and based off his initial reply I assume he feels the need .... the need for speed! *queue top gun theme*
 
HMB13 said:
Hi folks, I have iMac 21.5 Retina 4K with 1TB Fusion Drive, and I want to buy external SSD drive to speed up the performance of my machine so which one the best SSD drive to buy?

I found the:
1- Samsung T5 Portable SSD - 500GB with $149 from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-P...15180389&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+ssd+t5+500gb

2- Transcend 512GB Thunderbolt Solid State Drive StoreJet 500 for MAC with $369.99
https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-512GB-Thunderbolt-StoreJet-TS512GSJM500/dp/B00NV9LSEE
Click to expand...

The Thunderbolt SSD drive above doesn't appear to be any faster than a normal USB SSD drive. It looks like it has a standard SATA SSD inside so you're limited by its internal interface, regardless of Thunderbolt externally.

Basically... both those drives are in the same speed-class. (though the T5 is a little faster in many benchmarks)

The only advantage of the Thunderbolt drive is that it would use a Thunderbolt port thus freeing up a USB port. But you're paying over twice as much (and it's also physically bigger)

My advice: get the Samsung T5 drive. It's faster and more portable. And over half the price. :)

You could buy two of those T5 drives and still be cheaper than the Transcend SSD.

Frankly... I'm not sure why that Transcend SSD is on the market.
 
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SecuritySteve said:
Note that the drive he linked was TB1 / TB2. I don't believe TB3 bleeding edge costs should apply to him. If he's looking for speed, he should go with the TB1 / TB2 drive, and based off his initial reply I assume he feels the need .... the need for speed! *queue top gun theme*
Click to expand...

The TB interface is faster than USB 3 but as the poster above stated, the bottleneck is the SATA 6Gb/s interface rather than USB 3. So practically there will be no difference in performance between the two. No point getting the TB for the jump in cost.
 
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keysofanxiety said:
The TB interface is faster than USB 3 but as the poster above stated, the bottleneck is the SATA 6Gb/s interface rather than USB 3. So practically there will be no difference in performance between the two. No point getting the TB.
Click to expand...
You're correct, I overlooked the SATA controller. However in principal if he found an external SSD with a better controller interface it would matter.
 
Michael Scrip said:
The Thunderbolt SSD drive above doesn't appear to be any faster than a normal USB SSD drive. It looks like it has a standard SATA SSD inside so you're limited by its internal interface, regardless of Thunderbolt externally.

Basically... both those drives are in the same speed-class. (though the T5 is a little faster in many benchmarks)

The only advantage of the Thunderbolt drive is that it would use a Thunderbolt port thus freeing up a USB port. But you're paying over twice as much (and it's also physically bigger)

My advice: get the Samsung T5 drive. It's faster and more portable. And over half the price. :)

You could buy two of those T5 drives and still be cheaper than the Transcend SSD.

Frankly... I'm not sure why that Transcend SSD is on the market.
Click to expand...

That makes sense for me, I'll go with T5 because of the price and the speed almost the same!
 
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SaSaSushi said:
Just read about the soon-to-be-released Plugable Thunderbolt 3 external NVMe SSD and am quite interested. No SATA bottlenecks here. ;)

I expect more and more devices like this will follow.
Click to expand...
Yup that is just like the 3 I linked to earlier only in a smaller capacity. What I would really like to see on the market is a TB3 enclosure that houses two M.2 NVME SSDs in a single enclosure. That way you could drop in one or two standard M.2 drives with great performance. So far I’ve seen a handful of TB3 PCIe drives but they are all sealed and very expensive right now.
 
Thunderbolt isn't worth the expense.
USB3 is all you need.

A Samsung t5 drive ought to give as good results as you're going to get.
512gb is "all you need".
You could even get by with 256gb.
You'll see reads around 430mbps and writes 300-350mbps.

BUT...
Important questions to ask first:
How fast is the iMac fusion drive running NOW?
Have you tried running BlackMagic Speed Test on it?
What results do you get?

You may be getting better speeds right now, than you'll get with an externally-mounted SSD...
 
Fishrrman said:
Thunderbolt isn't worth the expense.
USB3 is all you need.

A Samsung t5 drive ought to give as good results as you're going to get.
512gb is "all you need".
You could even get by with 256gb.
You'll see reads around 430mbps and writes 300-350mbps.

BUT...
Important questions to ask first:
How fast is the iMac fusion drive running NOW?
Have you tried running BlackMagic Speed Test on it?
What results do you get?

You may be getting better speeds right now, than you'll get with an externally-mounted SSD...
Click to expand...

I just tried my friend's SSD hard drive "SanDisk Extreme 500" 480GB and installed macOS High Sierra. I found the startup time on the fusion drive faster than SanDisk !!!

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extr...059&sr=8-2&keywords=sandisk+extreme+500+480gb

the startup time is too slow!!
I don't know why is that because of the brand or what?
I am not sure if I bought the T5 the result will be the same??
 
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HMB13 said:
I just tried my friend's SSD hard drive "SanDisk Extreme 500" 480GB and installed macOS High Sierra. I found the startup time on the fusion drive faster than SanDisk !!!

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extr...059&sr=8-2&keywords=sandisk+extreme+500+480gb

the startup time is too slow!!
I don't know why is that because of the brand or what?
I am not sure if I bought the T5 the result will be the same??
Click to expand...

The Fusion drive is an SSD and HDD. The SSD partition on the Fusion drive is tiny; 24GB I think. It dynamically moves files between the two drives and most accessed bits will be on the SSD.

As the OS sits on the internal NVMe SSD with the Fusion drive it’ll be significantly quicker for boot up, but as soon as you’re booted into the OS and loading files/applications then it’ll need to read from the HDD (depending on the size of what you’re loading) and as such the performance will be slower as a result.

So for medium load, the external SSD would be quicker with real-world usage but slower to boot.
 
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keysofanxiety said:
The Fusion drive is an SSD and HDD. The SSD partition on the Fusion drive is tiny; 24GB I think. It dynamically moves files between the two drives and most accessed bits will be on the SSD.

As the OS sits on the internal NVMe SSD with the Fusion drive it’ll be significantly quicker for boot up, but as soon as you’re booted into the OS and loading files/applications then it’ll need to read from the HDD (depending on the size of what you’re loading) and as such the performance will be slower as a result.

So for medium load, the external SSD would be quicker with real-world usage but slower to boot.
Click to expand...

thanks keysofanxiety make sense!
 
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