Fastest Thunderbolt NVMe enclosure speeds

[winterquilt]

It's 2022 and NVMe speeds creep over 6000GBps now, but even Thunderbolt external enclosure speeds seem to be around a sixth to a third at best, why is this ?

I am looking for an external enclosure with multiple lanes for RAID (admittedly, speeds will take a hit), but what is the point with only a third of the potential speed being taken advantage of ?

 

[MediaGary]

It's 2022 and NVMe speeds creep over 6000GBps now, but even Thunderbolt external enclosure speeds seem to be around a sixth to a third at best, why is this ?

I am looking for an external enclosure with multiple lanes for RAID (admittedly, speeds will take a hit), but what is the point with only a third of the potential speed being taken advantage of ?

A Thunderbolt link is served by 4 PCIe lanes. From within that, a total of ~22Gbit/s is available for PCIe data transfer. That's why all of the peak NVMe speeds have a ceiling of ~2750MByte/s. There are threads here on MacRumors wherein members have created software RAID-0 configurations using multiple Thunderbolt links with independent enclosures to create impressive benchmarks.

 

[winterquilt]

@MediaGary : Many thanks, RAID-0 was actually going to be my followup question.

To confirm your numbers I located Intel's Technology Brief for their third Thunderbolt specification (Page 6, Figure 7), of which the number 40 seems to be a combination of both streams running in parallel. I could well have misinterpreted that, but if so then that 40Gbps is meaningless hype !


ref : https://www.thunderbolttechnology.net/sites/default/files/HBD16235_Thunderbolt_TB_r05.pdf

 

[MediaGary]

@MediaGary : ... if so then that 40Gbps is meaningless hype !

Simplistic impressive numbers are standard fare for marketing a technology. People don't have the patience/training to deal with the minutiae of encoding schemes, reserved bandwidth, and protocol overhead.

 

[winterquilt]

Actually, that turned out to not be true.

I contacted Intel and they confirmed that the throughput was indeed 40Gbps (5GBps).

The bottleneck comes in the figure of what PCIe standard is in use i.e. v3 will limit the throughput to 8Gbps (1GBps), whilst v4 is double that (however, practically speaking, there could be too many variables for potential bottlenecking to guarantee actually seeing a full throughput ?).

 

[MediaGary]

Actually, that turned out to not be true.

I contacted Intel and they confirmed that the throughput was indeed 40Gbps (5GBps).

The bottleneck comes in the figure of what PCIe standard is in use i.e. v3 will limit the throughput to 8Gbps (1GBps), whilst v4 is double that (however, practically speaking, there could be too many variables for potential bottlenecking to guarantee actually seeing a full throughput ?).

You'll have to help me to understand what "that" is being referenced.

- The PDF file you referenced came from Intel, and real-world testing corroborates that data.
- Thunderbolt is normally served by four PCIe lanes.
- PCIe V3 lanes are ~1GByte/s per lane, but no Thunderbolt-connected devices have achieved 4GByte/s throughput
- PCIe V4 lanes are ~2GByte/s per lane
- Reserved bandwidth for DisplayPort traffic is what sets the ceiling of 32Gbit/s for PCIe data in Tbolt-V4 (and 22Gbit/s in V3)

It would also be nice to have some more exchanges with your contact within Intel.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/thunderbolt-4-nvme-m-2-external-storage-read-write-speeds.2340127/post-31258729

 

[winterquilt]

I simply contacted Intel customer services. What I meant was that 32Gbps can basically be achieved, the 40 figure is not halved for bi-directional use, apparently.

I was told by StarTech that their "4 Bay Thunderbolt 3 NVMe Enclosure, For M.2 NVMe SSD Drives" (M2E4BTB3) external enclosure had four dedicated lanes at 1GBps, which would simultaneously reach their potential of 4GBps use.

I haven't seen any examples of this new hardware tested online, but that's what they tell me.

 

[Middleman-77]

If you are looking for a review perhaps this may interest you.

OWC’s Express 4M2 unit is similar to the Startech device in that it uses Thunderbolt 3 with NVMe drives. Performance is said to be very good around 1500Mb/s to 2600Mb/s range. A fast SAS SCSI RAID by comparison is only around 700Mb/s.

 

[winterquilt]

OWC's own page states that the slots are "(4) M.2–2280 “M Key” (PCIe 3.0 x1)" and PCIe gen 3.0 x1 max out at 1GBps. The 2600 speeds were because it was in a RAID-0 configuration, but individually it will be limited to 1GBps by the hardware.

My needs would be to configure it to RAID-1.

That's 2018 tech anyway, and OWC tell me they're looking into gen 4 tech, which would be 2GBps (possibly even 4GB in RAID-1 (which the current 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3/4 standard could handle), but no ETA, yet..

even though gen 5 and 6 specs exist, no NVMe manufacturers support them, so gen 4 is next..


REFERENCES

https://www.owc.com/assets/dealer/slicks/Product_Spec_Sheets/OWC-Express-4M2.pdf

PCIe Gen 4 vs. Gen 3 Slots, Speeds

The speed differences between PCIe 4.0 & PCIe 3.0 are apparent. We discuss those differences in this post, as well as whether to upgrade to PCIe Gen 4.

www.trentonsystems.com

 

[Gaius Vampus]

For a single drive, I can recommend the OWC Envoy Express with Thunderbolt 3 which gives me about 1.3 GB per second read and write speed with a Samsung EVO 960 or a Crucial P3 NVMe SSD. I can’t recommend the OWC MiniStack STX since that device only supports one PCIe lane. Furthermore, the Envoy Express is fanless while the MiniStackas a “whisper silent fan” that always whispers. The Envoy Express costs much less and even in intensive use gets no warmer than 40°C.

 

[Middleman-77]

I just thought to drop this bit of info for anyone interested.

A company called HypeRAID is offering a brand new Thunderbolt 4 based RAID drive currently on Kickstarter.
Capable of storing up to 72TB of space and is Mac/Windows compatible, it has 8x m.2 NVMe slots, 2x 3.5" drive slots, 30s UPS power backup and a plethora of USB-A/C and memory card slots. The most basic unit is about US$199 without any drives. The campaign is currently ongoing and should end in about 9 days. I've pledged for mine already. They said they expect to ship around March 2023.

 

[zantafio]

I just thought to drop this bit of info for anyone interested.

A company called HypeRAID is offering a brand new Thunderbolt 4 based RAID drive currently on Kickstarter.
Capable of storing up to 72TB of space and is Mac/Windows compatible, it has 8x m.2 NVMe slots, 2x 3.5" drive slots, 30s UPS power backup and a plethora of USB-A/C and memory card slots. The most basic unit is about US$199 without any drives. The campaign is currently ongoing and should end in about 9 days. I've pledged for mine already. They said they expect to ship around March 2023.

View attachment 2114807

how did that turn out?

 

[winterquilt]

I would not trust Kickstarter for something like this.

 

[vladi]

Why do you need it to utilize that much speed? You work off of it or you use it for a backup?

If you need NVMe RAID I think it's a lot better solution to get a motherboard with multiple NVMe slots but you would need the latest gen CPU for that.

 

[winterquilt]

This is the Apple ecosystem. One does not just "get a motherboard".

I need the speed because I said so, that's why.

 

[Gaius Vampus]

Recently I found the ANYOYO USB4/TB3 enclosures on Amazon wich deliver transfer speeds up to 2.5 Gigabyte per second with a Crucial P3 or a Kingston KC3000. They are fanless (thus getting really hot), cost about 120€, and fulfill my hopes.

 

[winterquilt]

Recently I found the ANYOYO USB4/TB3 enclosures on Amazon wich deliver transfer speeds up to 2.5 Gigabyte per second with a Crucial P3 or a Kingston KC3000. They are fanless (thus getting really hot), cost about 120€, and fulfill my hopes.

Can you confirm those speeds, because Gen4 only theoretically approaches 2GBps.

The reviewers read speeds top out at 1.5GBps.

 

[Gaius Vampus]

Can you confirm those speeds, because Gen4 only theoretically approaches 2GBps.

The reviewers read speeds top out at 1.5GBps.

Yes, the Kingston SSD has PCIe 4.0 x4 (four lanes) which the ANYOYO enclosure can handle – the OWC Envoy Express only two lanes. The ANYOYO registered itself as Thunderbolt 3 on my Mac Mini M1 with the included USB-C cable. Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.app shows 2400 Megabyte per Second read speed and almost as fast when writing (testing with 5GB files). This seems to be the bandwidth that is achievable over a connection that has a theoretical maximum of 40 gigabit per second.

 

[Middleman-77]

how did that turn out?

Well it's hard to tell at the moment. They announced last month in March that units were being mass produced as scheduled. But we've had no real updates from them since the start of Jan so it has started to worry some of us backers (that it is a scam). Given the extremely 'high-end' nature of this campaign (it is one of the first NVMe-based RAID drives made), I am also a little surprised why there aren't more tech websites covering this campaign's progress on the news.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

I am looking for a dual NVME case that can hold and run two drives separately. I purchased what I thought was this but only one slot in the device is NVME, the other is some type of sata which does not work for me. Any recommendations?

 

[MediaGary]

I am looking for a dual NVME case that can hold and run two drives separately. I purchased what I thought was this but only one slot in the device is NVME, the other is some type of sata which does not work for me. Any recommendations?

I've had this Sabrent EC-T3DN for about a year. I had dual 4TB WD SN700's in there, and now have dual 2TB Sabrent Gen3 drives installed. It's a little hot (~45C) with the two drives in there, so I added an 11mm x 100mm heat sink on top. The power brick is large and clumsy but since it never leaves the shelf on which it's installed, all is well.

SABRENT Thunderbolt 3 to Dual NVMe M.2 SSD Tool Free Enclosure (EC-T3DN)

The Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 To NVMe M.2 SSD Tool-Free Dual Enclosure is the perfect solution for your external storage needs! FEATURES: CONVENIENCE: Turn two NVMe SSDs into two independent, fast, reliable, and portable drives! Plug and play, NO drivers needed. DESIGN: Solid aluminum construction fo...

www.amazon.com

 

[The point and shoot pro]

I've had this Sabrent EC-T3DN for about a year. I had dual 4TB WD SN700's in there, and now have dual 2TB Sabrent Gen3 drives installed. It's a little hot (~45C) with the two drives in there, so I added an 11mm x 100mm heat sink on top. The power brick is large and clumsy but since it never leaves the shelf on which it's installed, all is well.

SABRENT Thunderbolt 3 to Dual NVMe M.2 SSD Tool Free Enclosure (EC-T3DN)

The Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 To NVMe M.2 SSD Tool-Free Dual Enclosure is the perfect solution for your external storage needs! FEATURES: CONVENIENCE: Turn two NVMe SSDs into two independent, fast, reliable, and portable drives! Plug and play, NO drivers needed. DESIGN: Solid aluminum construction fo...

www.amazon.com

Thanks, Exactly what I was looking for. One cable to the PC and 2 ssd

 

[MediaGary]

Thanks, Exactly what I was looking for. One cable to the PC and 2 ssd

Cool. Just FYI: each NVMe drive gets two PCIe lanes. That gives ~1700MByte/s per drive. I played with software RAID-0 for a while, but lately have just let them run as independent drives because my apps are fine, and I prefer the physical allocation rather than using folder organizations.

 

[The point and shoot pro]

Cool. Just FYI: each NVMe drive gets two PCIe lanes. That gives ~1700MByte/s per drive. I played with software RAID-0 for a while, but lately have just let them run as independent drives because my apps are fine, and I prefer the physical allocation rather than using folder organizations.

Thats fine, my project and scratch drives in my XPS are both Kingston A400s. Not barn burners by any means but get the job done.

 

[wojtek.traczyk]

I just thought to drop this bit of info for anyone interested.

A company called HypeRAID is offering a brand new Thunderbolt 4 based RAID drive currently on Kickstarter.
Capable of storing up to 72TB of space and is Mac/Windows compatible, it has 8x m.2 NVMe slots, 2x 3.5" drive slots, 30s UPS power backup and a plethora of USB-A/C and memory card slots. The most basic unit is about US$199 without any drives. The campaign is currently ongoing and should end in about 9 days. I've pledged for mine already. They said they expect to ship around March 2023.

View attachment 2114807

To anyone interested in HypeRAID l‘d strongly suggest to read customers comments on their Kickstarter campaign site. Long story short: scam.