Portable SSD as permanent external storage for my Mac Studio

[danqi]

I need reasonably fast external storage for my Mac Studio and am sort of new to this as before I had all my drives internally in an old Mac Pro (6 drives in total...).

For now I do not want to go with the most expensive options due to budget concerns and I also do not want to "build" it myself (i.e. put an NVMe drive in an enclosure). The reason is simply that I had some bad experiences with drive-enclosure compatibility and reliability issues lately. (My Sabrent enclosure seems to have unpredictable issues with some SSDs.)

So for now, I am looking for a reasonably fast, reasonably affordable pre-build solution.

I started looking at portable SSDs like the Samsung T7 Shield. They seem quite well-liked and rather fast.

But there is one thing that bothers me: These are clearly meant to be portable drives. Having them sit on my desk as permanent desktop storage seems almost "wrong"...

This might be silly, but am I missing something here? Do non-portable external SSDs even really exist?

 

[PaulD-UK]

Quote "I had some bad experiences with drive-enclosure compatibility and reliability issues lately."

The data transfer technology that Apple has been most involved with in the past decade and a half is Thunderbolt - they were co-inventors with Intel.
So I stick to TB - preferably using devices with Intel chipsets, as that is what Apple would have tested their port compatibility with.
Correspondingly, the choice of SSD is best limited to manufacturers who have a relationship with Apple.

Not some random Chinese manufacturer who will be mostly offering their own variety of USB product with no MacOS compatibility history...

So as a budget choice the USB 3.1/2 Gen2 Samsung T7 is a perfectly satisfactory choice.
But it offers only at best a third the data transfer performance of a Thunderbolt 3 + NVMe SSD.

There are desktop TB3 NVMe storage options from appropriate manufacturers, but you have to buy carefully whilst they are offered at a sale price to get budget pricing.

 

[j26]

I've a SanDisk Extreme 1tb and a Crucial X6 2tb attached to my Mini and no issues with either. Both are exFat formatted. I did have to reformat the Crucial one before it would mount reliably, but since then it's been perfect.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I have eight external drives connected to my Mac Studio. Everything is on a stand under my desk so…if it's wrong…I don't wanna be right.

 

[H_D]

The Samsung 4TB are USB3, so not hyperfast, but price and mobility is great and even my older T5 still run without problems. Can’t go wrong with those. For TB3, I have had great experiences with the Thunderblade by OWC, 8TB as a RAID of 4 2TB results in good speeds and so far it has run without trouble (external Dropbox and FinalCut). Not as fast as the internal Apple-Disks are, their 6-7K-Transferrates are not achievable with external drives I think.

 

[Fishrrman]

I have 2 Samsung t7 Shields.
They work very well.
Compact and easily "stack-able".

Good price right now from amazon...

 

[kagharaht]

Wow they are still expensive when it's up to 8TB or higher. I have old 2016 External HDD and now that I updated to M3 iMac, I wanted to replace these with SSD. Until I saw the prices! LOL Checked Amazon and found this. No idea who they are but wow that price! "VectoTech 8TB External SSD USB-C Portable Solid State Drive". I think I'll wait awhile for the prices to go down.

 

[MarkC426]

Wow they are still expensive when it's up to 8TB or higher. I have old 2016 External HDD and now that I updated to M3 iMac, I wanted to replace these with SSD. Until I saw the prices! LOL Checked Amazon and found this. No idea who they are but wow that price! "VectoTech 8TB External SSD USB-C Portable Solid State Drive". I think I'll wait awhile for the prices to go down.

Don't be tempted by the '8TB' size.
The fact that it is cheaper than other makes and an unknown make is asking for trouble.
Did you also notice it says UP TO 540MB/s....

 

[MarkC426]

There are desktop TB3 NVMe storage options from appropriate manufacturers, but you have to buy carefully whilst they are offered at a sale price to get budget pricing.

This is exactly what I did....👆

Was watching Lacie 1 Big SSD Pro on Amazon for about 3 months.
RRP is £1200-1400, I got it for £480.
It's never gone below £900 since....😁

LaCie 1big SSD Pro 2TB Thunderbolt 3 + USB 3.1

LaCie 1big Dock Pro. SSD capacity: 2000 GB. USB connector: USB Type-A, USB version: 3.2 Gen 1 (3.1 Gen 1). Read speed: 2800 MB/s, Write speed: 2100 MB/s. Product colour: Black

www.amazon.co.uk