If you're on an M1 Mac, then no, it's not a rip off. If you want speeds close to the internal SSD, there'e very few options available right now, since the new TB3/USB4 ports on the M1's aren't very compatible.
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Review: OWC's Envoy Pro FX is an Ultra Fast, Expensive Portable SSD for Macs
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This is nothing new TBH.
The Glyph Atom Pro has been around for well over a year and has around the same speeds as the Envoy Pro FX.
These drives are crazy fast - for an external bus-powered portable solution.
The Glyph Atom Pro has been around for well over a year and has around the same speeds as the Envoy Pro FX.
These drives are crazy fast - for an external bus-powered portable solution.
A m.2 could be another TB4 port which benefits more people. An internal SATA port would work, but that would only be good for much slower drives.
I have a couple of Western Digital HDDs with 12TB capacity, and you can get them up to 18TB. The larger ones tend to be expensive - for home use, you might find it cheaper to just use Disk Utility to connect multiple 4TB/6TB disks into a RAID disk array (JBOD) - if it's still good and you have decent backups, you could even keep using your Lacie and just add another disk to expand its capacity
As someone who bought drives for $300 in the mid-1990s, I find this OWC price to be reasonable.
In 1996, my $500 expenditure in today's dollars got me a 500MB drive.
In 1996, my $500 expenditure in today's dollars got me a 500MB drive.
SSD's should NOT be this expensive now.
We should be paying HDD prices for these things. And HDD's should be like $99 for 6TB.
We should be paying HDD prices for these things. And HDD's should be like $99 for 6TB.
The nose bleed high prices on these drives are a total deal breaker. Save your money because more portable drives are pushed out monthly as the competition is staggering. A great place to check is Costco, btw.
I agree. Here's what my X5 500GB achieves on M1 Mac mini.
Attachments
I can't seem to locate a YouTube video that claimed their external SSD drive(s) were faster running through an OWC dock vs. directly connected to the M1 MacMini. How can this be? Wouldn't you think a direct connection to the M1 would be faster?
I've been eyeing up external SSD drives for my M1 MacMini and the market totally confuses me on price vs. performance.
I've been eyeing up external SSD drives for my M1 MacMini and the market totally confuses me on price vs. performance.
This is a common misconception caused by misleading marketing by Intel and Apple. Thunderbolt 3 (and 4) are actually limited to ~20Gbps for data transfer, with the remaining ~20Gbps of bandwidth always being reserved for the display streams, even with no displays connected. See the image below for the details on the bandwidth split across common use cases.
This is the main reason why all 10Gbit USB3.1 drives tend to perform almost exactly half, not 1/4, as well as a TB3 drive, usually for a fraction of the price.
After a little more research, The Aura P12 Pro does have an 8 TB model. However, you'll need to come up with $1,349 plus the cost of an enclosure.
OWC 8.0TB Aura Ultra III PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 2280... at MacSales.com
S4DAQ12ST80 (*) 8.0TB OWC Aura Ultra III PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 2280 Solid-State Drive. High-performance SSD for for any PC, drive enclosure, or expansion card that supports NVMe M.2 2280.
eshop.macsales.com
With that said, I'm not seeing many "Add your own drive/SSD" enclosures that push the limits of TB3/4. Looking at reviews, most top out at ~2,300 to 2,500 MB/s read and ~1,700 MB/s write. I did come across one...
Avolusion SSDTB900-PRO Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) Portable SSD External Enclosure Case (for M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD, Turn Internal PCIe SSD to External SSD, SSD Not Included.) Compatible with Mac Pro & MBP
Avolusion SSDTB900-PRO Thunderbolt 3 External Portable SSD Enclosure is an external hard drive storage solution featuring in Thunderbolt 3 interface with transfer rate up to 40Gbps. This is the value SSD upgrade kit provides the best and easy solution to expand your Mac device's storage capacity ...
www.amazon.com
My point being, apparently, the Envoy EX and FX Pro series aren't insanely overpriced for what they offer -- a premium indeed but as Apple product users/fans, aren't we all accepting of that by now anyway? 😉
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Hey! Stop griping.
The ultrafast enclosure is what makes the 240GB come in at $200. The 480GB is $230, the 1 TB is $320 and it’s $500 for the 2 TB.
The ultrafast enclosure is what makes the 240GB come in at $200. The 480GB is $230, the 1 TB is $320 and it’s $500 for the 2 TB.
I like OWC products but barely buy them due to the overpriced nature.
It's a shame but until they come down to earth, I'll keep finding cheaper solutions.
It's a shame but until they come down to earth, I'll keep finding cheaper solutions.
Fine with me. I've had just about enough eye-wateringly bright LEDs installed on electronics, thanks. I like being able to use gadgets at night without them blasting light clear across the room like a cheap little flashlight I didn't ask for. (If anyone needs a clue that "status lights" have gone way overboard, check out the aftermarket solutions for stick-on things for dimming them.)
I don't know why product designers suddenly all forgot that LEDs can be sourced in good old eye-friendly red.
Sorry for the rant, but it's truly time for this trend in product design to die.
Fair, but you have to realize there are people out there for whom the time to research and buy the best parts is better spent just billing another hour's work and buying the more expensive off-the-rack solution.
Care to share what components you used? The research really can be a PITA and if you've come up with something good it might be helpful to others!
There are many 30+ page threads in the Apple Silicon section of the forum about this. The summarized version is that Apple released M1 Macs with an absolutely abysmal I/O implementation, which becomes the most obvious at the 2 most popular port use cases - connecting external displays and external drives. Basically, many drives you connect to your M1 Mac will perform significantly worse (often >50% slower) in comparison to older Intel Macs or PCs. This is especially bad with 10Gbps USB drives like the super popular Samsung T5. People discovered that they can alleviate this issue somewhat by unintuitively plugging external USB drives into their thunderbolt docks because the docks contain a separate off-the-shelf USB3 controller to drive their USB ports, which works as expected.
You might think that Apple simply missed out on implementing the USB aspect of the thunderbolt protocol properly (even though thunderbolt is, by definition, a superset of USB3.1 spec with 40Gbps bandwidth and DisplayPort streams and must support all USB devices), since all Apple engineers only use TB3 drives or something, but you'd be wrong. Many TB3 drives exhibit similar speed issues, with some even causing instant kernel panics and shutdowns (while working completely fine everywhere else, including Intel Macs). Head-scratchingly, many NVMe drives that seem to not work well with M1 are some of the most popular ones on the market, so it's an issue that really should've been caught during development. Nonetheless, I'd say that there are somewhat less reports of issues with TB3 versus USB drives, but this might simply be based on less people having them.
I just spent last 2 weeks trying to figure out which external drive to buy, reading through basically all material available on the internet regarding people's experiences focusing on speed and compatibility with AS Macs. The most compatible and performant option seems to be a self built drive using a WD SN750 SSD in an Acasis USB4.0 NVMe enclusure, which reaches about 2500MB/s write and 2700MB/s read speeds. However, you will only save about $50-$100 when compared to the 2TB version of the OWC drive, so I'd say that the price isn't completely insane in the current market. A cheaper, but slower option would be going with WD SN550 DRAM-less SSD and the same Acasis enclosure, which has also been reported to work fine.
One thing I would definitely note that the review above is done using an Intel Mac so this might not be an accurate representation of its performance on M1 (although it would be extremely embarrassing for OWC to release a drive that doesn't work perfectly with M1 at this point).
I've had the opposite experience. For me, the compatibility and consistent performance versus several no-name brand products I've tried has made the premium acceptable.
Agreed. The pricing really isn't horrendous.
In the context of bare SSDs, OWC's Aura P12 Pro is ~$30 premium. The enclosure upwards of ~$30 as well.
However, if you compare the Envy Pro FX to the Samsung X5 (as mentioned by some to be an equal performer), the 1 TB and 2 TB capacity X5 models cost more (from Amazon) than the Envoy Pro FX:
SAMSUNG X5 Portable SSD - 2TB - Thunderbolt 3 External SSD (MU-PB2T0B/AM) Gray/Red
Samsung Portable SSD X5 is a revolutionary external storage with integrated cutting-edge NVMe and Thunderbolt 3 technologies. The X5 is designed for content creators and high-tech professionals who need fast and secure access to data in a lightweight and compact storage solution.
www.amazon.com
That's okay. Some products I feel are worth it, some I don't.
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True, but the Envoy Pro FX has both USB and TB3 support. And the price is way below the Glyph Atom Pro.
That’s what a lot of posters are missing when they complain about the price. On the other hand a DIY version that does support both Thunderbolt and USB4 can be built for about $270. An Acasis USB4 NVMe enclosure goes for about $140 and a fast 1TB NVMe SSD is about $130-150.