…or you just buy an external drive that runs just as fast and you save yourself the trouble of potentially jacking up your machine.
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Mac Studio M4 Max and SSD Drive Speed
- Thread starter krell100
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Is tb4 and tb5 through usb-c just as reliable as the older sata ports? The last windows rig I built I use a main nvme drive and a sata “data” drive.
I’ve never relied on constantly connected external storage. I do have multiple t7 shield drives I use for backups as clones of the internal drives though they are plug and play. I’ve never kept a library of files always on to the PC. And it worries me how I hear often that acacis and these third party enclosures have random disconnects on macOS yet not on windows.
TB3/5 aren't as reliable as say an e-SATA with a stable power supply, but it is still much better than the USB3.1 era enclosures that didn't have a controller. But yes power failure, sleep issues, random disconnects do happen.
Also while sequential speed can be pretty good on an external particularly with TB5, yet random speed, and more importantly latency can still be better on the internal. My take away is that TB / USB enclosures can replace *some* storage duties but not all of it. It is easy to find workflows that just demand more internal storage period, especially on a MacBook. For desktops like Studio the extra points of failure don't matter as much but still, there are other issues and concerns.
This is what I was hoping for and why I didn't fork over a enormous amount for BTO upgraded storage.
Some people have had issues with random disconnects with USB-based external drives, but the Thunderbolts appear to do much better. Lots and lots of people are running external drives, including RAID systems, that are connected to their Studio.
I get the exact same on my Mac Studio M4 Max. Although, clearly, read speeds of 40gb/s are impressive, I still think they should be higher.
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How much better is the 1tb internal drive? I thought the 512gb was 4000mb r/w and the 1tb was 6000mb r/w. I have one out for delivery soon. Thought about upgrading the 16/40 cpu and ram though the alisright videos show the gains are marginal, 10% at best for a $500-$700 upgrade.
If you do the test with larger chuncks, i.e. the 5GB test, the speeds will be slower; 4300 write, and 5200 read.
I have a M4 Max with 64GB of Ram and a 2TB SSD. I just ran Black Magic on the internal SSD and my Write/Read are: 8,429.2 MB/S and 5,218.1 MB/S. Repeated tests show them in the 8,000 and 5,000 range respectively.
I also have a TB5 Acasis enclosure with an 8TB WD 850x SSD that is getting Write/Read of roughly: 5,800+ and 5,600+ on average.
Edit: Just ran some follow up tests on the internal SSD and it's getting on average 6,300+/5,200+ Write/Read. So not sure why it was getting over 8,000 earlier. It does seem to fluctuate.
I also have a TB5 Acasis enclosure with an 8TB WD 850x SSD that is getting Write/Read of roughly: 5,800+ and 5,600+ on average.
Edit: Just ran some follow up tests on the internal SSD and it's getting on average 6,300+/5,200+ Write/Read. So not sure why it was getting over 8,000 earlier. It does seem to fluctuate.
With the TB501Pro from Acasis, my Samsung 990 Pro gets 6463 write, 5751 read. It fluctuates with the size of the test and how the speeds differ when the cache is saturated.
