Need either USB-3 or USB-C dock for M1. Assuming USB-C can handle more at once?

[rawdawg]

I'm out of ports on my Mini M1. I have a ton of external HDDs with video files on them for editing. Yes, I have an SSD for active editing. For retrieving the archived files am I correct that using a USB3 to USB-C hub will allow faster transfers from multiple drives to my Mini?

Or is there something I don't realize that means it wouldn't be any faster than doing it through a USB3 hub?

The point is, if I'm going to take up a port on my mini to add a hub requiring to move things around, which is better?

 

[Arctic Moose]

USB-C is a connector type that can host many types of connections such as USB 3, USB 4, Thunderbolt or DisplayPort.

If your computer supports Thunderbolt, you probably want a Thunderbolt hub for maximum compatibility.

My personal favorite is the CalDigit TS3+. (Because it is the only Thunderbolt dock with an optical SPDIF audio interface and 87W of laptop charging.)

 

[Kenny99]

Have you looked here?

OWC 11-Port Thunderbolt Dock for Mac & Thunderbolt PCs

Expand your workstation with the OWC 11-Port Thunderbolt 4 Dock. Connect all your peripherals, displays, & devices with ease. Simplify your setup now!

eshop.macsales.com

Now if only they would add ON / Off Switches to the ports so you wouldn't have
to have the devices active all the time.

 

[rawdawg]

Have you looked here?

OWC 11-Port Thunderbolt Dock for Mac & Thunderbolt PCs

Expand your workstation with the OWC 11-Port Thunderbolt 4 Dock. Connect all your peripherals, displays, & devices with ease. Simplify your setup now!

eshop.macsales.com

Now if only they would add ON / Off Switches to the ports so you wouldn't have
to have the devices active all the time.

I already have one of those for my MBP, but thanks.

I'm more of a question regarding can HDDs being delivering more data at the same time through USB-C docks or not. Seems like an obvious question, but since I don't know the technicals on this I'm wondering if it's true or not

 

[Monotremata]

I already have one of those for my MBP, but thanks.

I'm more of a question regarding can HDDs being delivering more data at the same time through USB-C docks or not. Seems like an obvious question, but since I don't know the technicals on this I'm wondering if it's true or not

As was already mentioned, USB-C is a CONNECTOR, has nothing to do with whether your hard drive will work faster or not. Thunderbolt is "USB-C", USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 is "USB-C", USB-C 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 is "USB-C", hell you can even find USB 2.0 "USB-C" cables.

It all depends on what type of hard drive it is. Is it an SATA drive? USB 3.1 Gen 1/2 is fine. Is it an m2 SSD? Then you'll want thunderbolt to get the most out of it.

 

[theluggage]

I'm more of a question regarding can HDDs being delivering more data at the same time through USB-C docks or not. Seems like an obvious question, but since I don't know the technicals on this I'm wondering if it's true or not

(1) mechanical HDDs are slow - maximum about 160 MB/s - whereas the max speed of a plain old USB 3.0 interface is about 5Gbits/s (~600 MB/s). So for a couple of mechanical drives, it's not something to lose sleep over, and you certainly don't need to worry about using Thunderbolt, USB4 or USB 3.1G2 for each drive.

(2) a "USB 3 hub" (more accurately a USB 3.0 Type A hub) has a single, 5Gbits/s link to the computer. Any devices connected to the dock will have to share that bandwidth (plus, possibly, extra latency etc.) - you'll also have to watch power consumption with an unpowered hub and bus-powered hard drives. You'll get better performance connecting directly to the computer.

(3) most "USB-C docks" use exactly the same single, 5Gbits/s USB 3 link to the computer as a "USB 3" hub. It's just a different shape connector - the only practical upshot is that they can also support a HDMI or DisplayPprt display (...but only up to 4k@30Hz - above that, the shared USB connection has to drop to old school USB 2.0, 10x slower, so many hubs are just limited to 4k@30Hz). If you're just using one for USB it is effectively a "USB 3 type A hub" with different shaped connectors and, again, you'll be better off connecting directly to the computer. More modern docks may be available, with USB 3.1G2, or DP1.4, but mostly they're just USB 3.

(4) A "Thunderbolt dock" with a TB3 connection to the computer, so it has 20-40 Gbps of bandwidth to go around, and actually contains extra USB 3 controllers to drive the USB ports - although some include an additional USB 3 hub to provide loadsa USB ports so you might need to do a bit of research to find out how to get each device on its own controller. This should be a close second to connecting directly to the computer.

So, short answer, first preference is direct connection to the Mac, second is a Thunderbolt dock with extra USB ports but, frankly, mechanical HDs are so slow that there's no need to over think it unless you're going to be streaming video simultaneously from 2 or 3. If you're out of ports between your Mac and TB hub I'd just get a cheap USB 3.0 hub and - if your drives don't have their own power supplies - make it a powered one.

 

[theluggage]

As was already mentioned, USB-C is a CONNECTOR

That's technically correct but practically unhelpful.

In the real world, when advertising products, "USB 3" is typically used to mean "USB 3.0/3.1 with Type-A connectors" and "USB-C" to mean "USB 3.1 and/or DisplayPort over Type C connectors" and only "Thunderbolt 1/2/3/4" are well-defined as to what protocols they support... and don't mention USB4 or I might start to whimper. Yes, it's a mess. Yes, it's pedantically incorrect, but unfortunately it is also reality. Complaints on a postcard to the USB-IF committee for choosing stupid names.

 

[rawdawg]

..frankly, mechanical HDs are so slow that there's no need to over think it unless you're going to be streaming video simultaneously from 2 or 3. If you're out of ports between your Mac and TB hub I'd just get a cheap USB 3.0 hub...

Thanks for all this information. You seemed to understand what I was getting at.

I want to reserve my Thunderbolt connections for SSDs. The thunderbolt bandwidth may be enough to allow multiple SSDs on a hub. But specifically for the HDD drives I need to be available, I was wondering if bandwidth through a thunderbolt hub would offer better performance than through the MacMini's USB-A hub.

For example, if I have (4) 7200rpm HDDS and I wanted to simultaneously dump a 1TB file from each of them to a SSD, would doing this through a hub connected to the Thunderbolt port on a Mac Mini be faster than the USB-A port on a Mac Mini.

I'm assuming the answer is no based on your detailed reply. Although you did say "unless you're going to be streaming video simultaneously from 2-3 (HDDs), and that may be a real world example considering I do video editing.

 

[Monotremata]

Thanks for all this information. You seemed to understand what I was getting at.

I want to reserve my Thunderbolt connections for SSDs. The thunderbolt bandwidth may be enough to allow multiple SSDs on a hub. But specifically for the HDD drives I need to be available, I was wondering if bandwidth through a thunderbolt hub would offer better performance than through the MacMini's USB-A hub.

For example, if I have (4) 7200rpm HDDS and I wanted to simultaneously dump a 1TB file from each of them to a SSD, would doing this through a hub connected to the Thunderbolt port on a Mac Mini be faster than the USB-A port on a Mac Mini.

I'm assuming the answer is no based on your detailed reply. Although you did say "unless you're going to be streaming video simultaneously from 2-3 (HDDs), and that may be a real world example considering I do video editing.

Running your HDDs through a Thunderbolt port as opposed to the USB-A port would definitely be faster if the drives themselves are, but if they're plugged into a hub, you may run into some limits due to the hub type as previously mentioned. Thunderbolt 3/4 have LOADS more bandwidth available then either flavor of USB 3, so multiple drives would definitely be quicker as opposed to fighting for the space over a USB connection. But if they are plugged into a USB hub going into a Thunderbolt port, you'll still run into the limitations of the USB hub itself. SATA is right around the full speed of a USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection, so going TB directly will only give you a tiny bit of a boost (if any), but with multiple drives you'll have more lanes so to speak for them to work without running into each other. When I bought my enclosure for my Mac Mini last year, it was down to the OWC TB 2 drive bay, and the Oyen Mobius 2 bay USB-C/3.1Gen2 cases. The OWC was about twice as much at the time, and since both drives were SATA HDDs coming out of my Mac Pro, there wasn't any need to spend the extra money for the Thunderbolt case. I did replace one of the drives with a Samsung SSD later (think its the EVO860?) but both the Samsung and the OWC SSD in my Mac Pro are SATA so there still wasn't any reason to move to a TB case yet. If you're using blade type m.2 SSDs though, you want those in a TB enclosure so they can fly like they should. Either way with the HDDs, you're pretty much at the limit of the drives themselves with either USB 3.1 and TB, so in your case the connection type does matter if you want multiple drives running at full speed without having to stop and wait for 'traffic' to clear up and get moving again.

 

[Arctic Moose]

For retrieving the archived files am I correct that using a USB3 to USB-C hub will allow faster transfers from multiple drives to my Mini?

Faster compared to what?

EDIT: Sorry, didn’t realize there were more posts below the huge ad.

 

[theluggage]

Running your HDDs through a Thunderbolt port as opposed to the USB-A port would definitely be faster if the drives themselves are, but if they're plugged into a hub, you may run into some limits due to the hub type as previously mentioned.

No, this is the USB-C Kool Aid effect I mentioned. If you plug the typical external mechanical hard drive into a thunderbolt socket it uses a single USB 3.1 Gen 1 stream which is effectively the same as you’d get from a USB 3.0 Type A socket. Not that it matters because a mechanical hard drive will never use more than about 1/3 of the bandwidth of USB 3.0, so 2 HDs per USB 3 port should be fine. For more, it depends how the ports are implemented - sometimes both computers and TB docks use the internal equivalent of a USB 3 hub to share USB controllers - but good luck finding out that sort of detail.

If you put three or four HDs in an (expensive) Thunderbolt multi-drive RAID enclosure (in JBOD mode) you might see an improvement when they’re all running but only after doing a lot of research to make sure that you’re not buying a tarted up USB product that still only provides a single USB stream’s worth of bandwidth.

Reality is, for HDDs, the drive itself is usually the bottleneck. OP is probably right to conserve the TB ports for SSDs - but even then, only higher end NvME SSDs actually need better than USB3.1G1 speeds, so you could happily run several off a single TB3 port.

 

[theluggage]

For example, if I have (4) 7200rpm HDDS and I wanted to simultaneously dump a 1TB file from each of them to a SSD, would doing this through a hub connected to the Thunderbolt port on a Mac Mini be faster than the USB-A port on a Mac Mini.

In either case, the main bottlenecks are going to be the same - (1) the speed of each individual mechanical HD itself - less than 200 MBytes/s - and (2) the max speed speed of USB 3.1g1 itself - 5Gbits/s (~ 600 MB/s), because even if you connect your drives to a TB hub they're still connecting via the USB 3 protocol.

Even if you've got "proper" Thunderbolt enclosures, or USB 3.1g2 10Gbits/s, your mechanical HDs are connected via, at best, SATA 3, which has a comparable max speed - 600MBytes/s - to USB 3.1g1, which is irrelevant for a single < 200MB/s max hard drive.

Bottom line is that good old USB 3.0 is plenty fast enough for a couple of mechanical hard drives per port, or even most single "economy" SATA-based SSDs, and you don't need to start worrying about TB or USB 3.1G2 unless you have a premiumNvME SSD.

NB: If you're talking about one of the new USB4/TB4 hubs with multiple downstream thunderbolt ports I don't actually know what the cap on USB3.1 bandwidth per port is (I'd hope it can deliver the full 5Gbits/s, if not 3.1G2 10Gbits/s to each port) - but since you're only going to be using USB 3.1g1 it's not going to be more than 5Gpits/s per ports and with mechanical hard drives, as long as each pair of drives gets to share 5Gbits/s they'll have bandwidth to spare and it isn't going to get any better.

I think, if you want optimum speed for 4+ hard drives, the answer might be to get a 4-drive Thunderbolt or 3.1 Gen 2 RAID enclosure (you could use it in so-called JBOD mode) and connect it to a single TB3 port - but even then, you'd need to do your homework to make sure the enclosure in question could actually deliver more bandwidth than a USB 3.1g1 device. It could just be an expensive way of getting a very marginal - if any - improvement on the rare occasions that you were streaming from all drives at the same time.

P.S. the video below isn't really an answer to your question (the "10G Ethernet" in the title may be a clue to that) but it does talk about loading up a M1 Mini with an insane number of fast SSDs and where the bottlenecks come from.