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External 1TB SSD Solution for nMP

C

carrerascott

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 18, 2009
241
0
Thought I'd share what I've done. This isn't cheap but it's much cheaper than what's out there, and gets very nice speeds.

I was looking for an external 1TB SSD Thunderbolt solution. Everything was crazy expensive, the "cheapest" being LaCie's $999 external 1TB (2X500GB) SSD. However I didn't like that solution, especially since it was a powered case (more wires).

What I did (successfully) was purchase a MiniPro Thunderbolt 128GB from Amazon ($200), so that I could swap a 1TB SSD (around $520 for Crucial, or $530 for a SamSung. The drives comes with a 128GB SanDisk U110 which I can get close to $100 for, so the Thunderbolt case comes to $100 after that, which isn't too bad. It's a nice small aluminum, cable-powered case.

When I ordered a few days ago, the Crucial was much cheaper than the Samsung. Today the prices are almost identical. I got the Crucial but may have to get the Samsung to see how it performs. I ran BlackMagic on it, and it was getting about 350Mb/s Write and 370Mb/s Read speeds. Not close to the internal PCI drive but not too shabby. The Samsung is rated a little faster so I'll post those scores when I get them.

FYI I also tried the Akitio Neutrino that Amazon sells, and I'm not sure if it's the SSD it came with or the controller on the inside, but it tested very slow so I didn't even bother putting my SSD in it. I believe it was at about 140MB write and 300MB read. The two drives had the IDENTICAL cases other than the face, so it's very possible the controller is the same, but that the Intel SSD it comes with is just much slower (which I expect would mean worse retail).

What it comes down to is about $600-$650 for a small, portable, cable-powered 1TB SSD drive. Not too shabby considering the options. I'll post a screenshot in a bit, I'm in the middle of copying 350GB over to the new SSD from my slow external HD...

POwp5Fi.jpg
 
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Cool. Nice solution. Thanks for sharing. Blackmagic isn't necessarily the best benchmarking tool I've found. Maybe give AJA a try as well (it's free also). I trust Quickbench but that costs money.
 
VirtualRain said:
Cool. Nice solution. Thanks for sharing. Blackmagic isn't necessarily the best benchmarking tool I've found. Maybe give AJA a try as well (it's free also). I trust Quickbench but that costs money.
Click to expand...

Here you go:

ajtBDzz.jpg


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Here's a pic of the drive with a dollar for size reference. Nice looking, metal enclosure.

201IQ0s.jpg


v5Gc2mt.jpg
 
This really is a cool solution.

I wonder how many more years it will take for SSDs do become as affordable as regular hdds right now..
 
chfilm said:
This really is a cool solution.

I wonder how many more years it will take for SSDs do become as affordable as regular hdds right now..
Click to expand...

I have the Samsung 1TB coming and will test its speed compared to the Crucial in the same Thunderbolt enclosure.

1TB today is what the 500GB was last year ... and the 500GB is at around $300 now. It seems to be accelerating to the point where 1TB SSDs might be pretty close to $200 in a year or two. I love the no moving parts aspect, and the speed is huge especially now that we're stuck with external storage only on the nMP.
 
Here is the test using the Samsung 840. It's definitely a bit faster than the Crucial SSD.

ZxezphN.jpg
 
Looks like a great portable solution. Might have to get one of these.

Thanks for sharing.
 
thanks for posting. do these have a fan? doesn't appear so, so i'm assuming they are dead quiet.

any power issues with 1TB drives (the j4 seems to have this problem)?

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TRAV9614 said:
I'm just curious why you didn't pay the extra 200 or so dollars to upgrade your internal SSD to the 1tb version that would be twice as fast? Do you need it external for a specific reason?
Click to expand...

maybe he did go with the 1TB internal drive already.

also, 256->512 is +$300 and 256->1TB is +$800 (and you really only gain 256 and 750GB, respectively, with those purchases).
 
No fan, so dead quiet. I specifically did NOT want a case with a fan. No power issues I've run into, I assume SSDs need much less power than a disc spinning at 7200rpm.

analog guy said:
thanks for posting. do these have a fan? doesn't appear so, so i'm assuming they are dead quiet.

any power issues with 1TB drives (the j4 seems to have this problem)?

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maybe he did go with the 1TB internal drive already.

also, 256->512 is +$300 and 256->1TB is +$800 (and you really only gain 256 and 750GB, respectively, with those purchases).
Click to expand...


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TRAV9614 said:
I'm just curious why you didn't pay the extra 200 or so dollars to upgrade your internal SSD to the 1tb version that would be twice as fast? Do you need it external for a specific reason?
Click to expand...

I got the stock unit that was in stock. If I ordered I would have gotten the 512GB prob. But I like the external solutions as well, portable and easy to upgrade later (and will for sure be much, much cheaper than the internal drive to upgrade in the future).

I'm just learning to keep all system and "highly accessed" stuff on the internal drive (a good bit faster than even these) and everything else on these. I've gotten rid of all spinning hard drives other than the ones on my Synology Rackstation which back ups various computers.

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shaunp said:
Looks like a great portable solution. Might have to get one of these.

Thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...

Very easy to do -- too bad no one sells the case with no SSD inside. I like the case.
 
First thought was it's only half the speed of the internal ssd but it's actually pretty great. The samsung for sure! Might look into that one as well.
 
I wonder how much faster a Pegasus J4 with two 512GB (samsung, corsair or whatever) drives in it would be.
Bit more expensive though.
 
geta said:
Carrerascott , can you post pics of the enclosure open ?

From the size of the enclosure shouldn't be a problem to install 2.5" SSD, but when i went to the site and checked the specs, looks like they using mSATA SSDs instead of 2.5" version... which SSD you got with yours ?



http://oyendigital.com/hard-drives/store/TNN-SSD-120-SL.html
Click to expand...


I'll post pics later but I used the ssds linked in the first post and they fit fine. I'm sticking with the samsung for the extra speed.
 
Interesting. Thanks for the post!

It still frustrates me how nobody makes BARE external TB enclosures for single drives like that. $120 or so would be a reasonable price, given that FW800 enclosures cost around $80-90. I would love to see OWC do this with the Mercury AL series...

The closest thing we have to this so far is Highpoint's 2-disk TB drive dock, but that one costs $200 and it isn't exactly a portable solution because it needs AC power to work.
 
CaptainChunk said:
Interesting. Thanks for the post!

It still frustrates me how nobody makes BARE external TB enclosures for single drives like that. $120 or so would be a reasonable price, given that FW800 enclosures cost around $80-90. I would love to see OWC do this with the Mercury AL series...

The closest thing we have to this so far is Highpoint's 2-disk TB drive dock, but that one costs $200 and it isn't exactly a portable solution because it needs AC power to work.
Click to expand...

OWC does have a Thunderbolt "Elite Pro Dual RAID" now which holds 2 drives in RAID-0, RAID-1, separate JBOD. It isn't real cheap however, at $300 for the bare enclosure.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/Elite-Dual-RAID

I hope they come out with a Thunderbolt Qx2 RAID box.
 
CaptainChunk said:
Interesting. Thanks for the post!

It still frustrates me how nobody makes BARE external TB enclosures for single drives like that. $120 or so would be a reasonable price, given that FW800 enclosures cost around $80-90. I would love to see OWC do this with the Mercury AL series...
Click to expand...


That would sweet if we could buy empty TB enclosures, but the MiniPro TB is a great deal, for $230 ($200 through Amazon) you're getting TB enclosure, 120GB SSD and TB cable.
 
geta said:
That would sweet if we could buy empty TB enclosures, but the MiniPro TB is a great deal, for $230 ($200 through Amazon) you're getting TB enclosure, 120GB SSD and TB cable.
Click to expand...

The pegasus j4 can be bought empty.
 
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