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Can the Sabrent Xtrm Thunderbolt 3 drive reach it's potential on the new Macbook?

Mike Boreham said:
I tried a 500GB Sabrent Rocket XTRM with my M1 MBA. Returned it after a few days. Main reason was very inconsistent write performance which was way lower than it should be. By design it has a small write cache (25% of total) and writes very slowly once the write cache is full. I felt mine might have been faulty. I had no confidence in it.

I would not get a Sabrent XTRM with the idea you are going to open it up. It might be possible with enough force in the right place, but it seemed well made.

I replaced it with an Envoy Express enclosure and WD SN750 black, which is very well behaved and consistent with a large write cache. I get 1100/1400 on my M1 and 1300/1500 on my iMac. The Envoy Express is not a speed king, nor is the WD. Fast enough for my need which was primarily just to have a TB external.

I liked that the Sabrent was USB as well as TB, which the Envoy isn't (TB only). I have since found out about the ACASIS enclosure mentioned by #BeatCrazy in post#2 which I think is a USB and TB but somewhat large compared to the Envoy Express. Perhaps #BeatCrazy could confirm.
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I have two of those Envoy Express enclosures. I like them, as they only use two lanes, and hence doesn't get very warm. I use one with a Intel 660P SSD. Super stable, but not faster than 1000/1400 write/read. However, I'd like something faster, and may invest in the new OWC Envoy Pro FX TB3 drives, but not before I see if the write speeds are good on an M1 Mac.
 
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Mike Boreham said:
Analysis paralysis! After my experience above I personally would go with the enclosure and WD, between your two choices, but I note that the Sabrent I tried and returned was a XTRM-Q not just XTRM. The XTRM in your post is TB only as far as I can see. Might be a good thing. The WAVlink enclosure and WD blue SN550 look faster than mine, but I haven't researched ("SN750 black" sounds like it ought to be higher spec than "SN550 blue" !)

I also note that the Amazon UK price of the XTRM-Q is now over £100 more than I paid a month ago!
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Iirc, SN550 is DRAM-less so SN750 Black should have better performance and consistency.
 
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With great power comes great responsibility... It seems the slow lane was a lot less complicated 😅
 
Screenshot_20210128-193648549 (1).jpg
 
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I have the wavlink TB3 enclosure with a 1TB Sabrent NVMe SSD inside. Here’s the speeds I get, directly connected to my M1 Mac mini:
F688A488-82B2-4EFE-B8DE-DEF2D9BF843B.png
 
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Interestingly I ran a final cut project from scratch last night, easy 4K 29.9fps clips, images to overlay etc using my crucial mx500 into a 3.0 port on the Anker 8in1 hub. I have the figure in my laptop but it's giving around 330/320 "only"

Even set to optimised, quality (as opposed to better performance) it played back flawlessly and let me edit immediately. Zero proxies. Straight 4K, full quality and rendered pretty fast too.

So getting the Sabrent might give me most benefits on export etc, that and more portable on the road than the hub + drive set up.
 
Ifti said:
Here is my review on the XTRM-Q - a great drive:


However, personally I really like the new Dual TB3 enclosure as it provides the flexibility to run single drives of your choosing - or RAID them together:


And if its raw speed you are after, I also have the Glyph Atom Pro, which is silly fast, but seems to stay rather cool throughout use too:


Ive been through a large variety of drives (as you can see from my channel) and the above are among the best!
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I use this drive on my M1 Mac mini for the scratch drive where my FCPX project file is. No issues, editing and rendering great. Speed is fast.

Black Magic testing seems kind of weird, for sometimes I run the test and it says slow write speeds, but when I do a real write or copy a file etc. it does not slow down. I Can’t trust Black Magic speed test app on M1’s.

No issues with my M1 and the Rocket Pro drive.
 
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Exported said project this morning, only around 7 minutes and honestly forgot to time it but it was minutes. So fast, and that's before my tb3 drive has arrived
 
Heatboy said:
Wauw, those are the fastest speeds I have seen on the new M1's with a TB3 drive, especially write. And these are consistent speeds, also when you do real-life tests? Is this the TLC or QLC version?
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Fairly consistent on the first tests, of course I have to fill it a little and start using it on final cut for example. I let it run a few times and it was almost always over 2000. TLC.
 
Damian Brown said:
Fairly consistent on the first tests, of course I have to fill it a little and start using it on final cut for example. I let it run a few times and it was almost always over 2000. TLC.
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Great, thanks. It'll be either this or the OWC Envoy Pro FX, when it's available in Europe. Oh, and btw, love your YT channel, just realised that I have seen loads of your reviews on Fuji photo-gear. Thumbs up!
 
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Heatboy said:
Great, thanks. It'll be either this or the OWC Envoy Pro FX, when it's available in Europe. Oh, and btw, love your YT channel, just realised that I have seen loads of your reviews on Fuji photo-gear. Thumbs up!
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Thank you! Most of them were done on a 2011 MacBook air 😅 thought it was about time I upgraded though. The difference in speed is unreal now
 
Heatboy said:
Wauw, those are the fastest speeds I have seen on the new M1's with a TB3 drive, especially write. And these are consistent speeds, also when you do real-life tests? Is this the TLC or QLC version?
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I'm getting faster with a bare drive in a small TB3 enclosure: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...s.2027925/page-13?post=29584421#post-29584421

Damian Brown said:
Occasionally it's dropped connection but not while I've been working.
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Is there anyway to remove the drive in your XTRM-Q version?
 
Heatboy said:
Great, thanks. It'll be either this or the OWC Envoy Pro FX, when it's available in Europe. Oh, and btw, love your YT channel, just realised that I have seen loads of your reviews on Fuji photo-gear. Thumbs up!
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Just replying to my own post. I asked OWC if their new Envoy Pro FX TB3 drive has speed issues on M1, and they have acknowledged that, but are still testing. They say that's it's an issue with the new M1 controller, not on their end, as so many other brands seem to be affected too. I asked what the performance hit was (if read/write is still over 2000, then it's fine with me), but they have yet to return with an answer.

So, all of OWC's products are "compatible" with M1's but not working at full speed. Neither is their Thunderbolt dock, which I just received.

It's getting really frustrating – hope that Apple can solve this via software, as I do believe it's on their end.

I am not buying a new TB3/4 drive before this has been resolved.
 
Heatboy said:
Just replying to my own post. I asked OWC if their new Envoy Pro FX TB3 drive has speed issues on M1, and they have acknowledged that, but are still testing. They say that's it's an issue with the new M1 controller, not on their end, as so many other brands seem to be affected too. I asked what the performance hit was (if read/write is still over 2000, then it's fine with me), but they have yet to return with an answer.

So, all of OWC's products are "compatible" with M1's but not working at full speed. Neither is their Thunderbolt dock, which I just received.

It's getting really frustrating – hope that Apple can solve this via software, as I do believe it's on their end.

I am not buying a new TB3/4 drive before this has been resolved.
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I'm thinking the same....I was thinking of getting a TB3 enclosure to get some extra (fast) storage for video editing, but it's not essential (SATA SSD over USB 3.1 is probably good enough), so I can wait it out to see if Apple addresses this.

It's a disappointing shortcoming of an otherwise very promising product.
 
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