Samsung T7 drives write speed at 10mb/s

[pi6xjdskfa]

Im on Sonoma 14.6.1 on 14" M3 Max and all the Samsung T7 drives I own can't write to the T7 drives at more than 10-20mb/s. What is going on? I downloaded Samsung Magician but my T7 does not show up on the app. I don't even see any firmware updates on the Samsung site. I am using the same USB C/Thunderbolt 4 cables I used before and all the drives are slow to write. Anyone know what changed?

I reformatted the T7 to APFS and still have the same problem. I have the Samsung 990 Pro M2 in a Hyperdrive T4 enclosure and getting 2.9gb/s write speeds btw.

 

[Bigwaff]

Are your T7 external drives connected directly to the ports on your MBP?

 

[mfram]

One thing to check is the USB connection of the drive. Maybe you have a bad cable or something else like a USB hub is forcing to drive to connect at a lower speed than expected. You can see the connection speed from the System Information app on your system. You can get to that by clicking on the "System Report" button on your About this Mac panel.

Go to the USB selection on the System Information app. You should see your drive show up on that list. Click on the drive. On the information section you'll see line that says 'Speed'. I'm guessing it should read "Up to 10 Gb/s". If it says something other than that, then let us know what it says. That may be a reason why the drive is acting slowly.

 

[sublunar]

Restart the Mac, do an SMC reset?
Try Magician on a windows pc? Try the T7 on another Mac?
Try connecting to a USB-C port on the end of a thunderbolt dock?

 

[pi6xjdskfa]

Are your T7 external drives connected directly to the ports on your MBP?

yes. i have had them for years. now they all suddenly have write issues. very weird. i connected the drives to Macbook Pro 14" M1 Max on sonoma too and same write speed issue. I am using all usb-c cables with high data capacity.

 

[pi6xjdskfa]

One thing to check is the USB connection of the drive. Maybe you have a bad cable or something else like a USB hub is forcing to drive to connect at a lower speed than expected. You can see the connection speed from the System Information app on your system. You can get to that by clicking on the "System Report" button on your About this Mac panel.

Go to the USB selection on the System Information app. You should see your drive show up on that list. Click on the drive. On the information section you'll see line that says 'Speed'. I'm guessing it should read "Up to 10 Gb/s". If it says something other than that, then let us know what it says. That may be a reason why the drive is acting slowly.

i only buy high quality usb-c and t4 data cables. usb-c cables are Cable Matters (40Gbps Short USB 4 Cable 1ft, 8K Video, 240W Charging, USB4 Cable/USB C Display Cable PD 3.1). i have also tried cable that came with the samsung t7.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've seen nearly the same problem the OP seems to have with my own t7 drives.

That is:
If I run a speed-testing utility on them (I generally use "AJA System Test Lite"), read performance originally starts out as terrible -- sometimes as low a 2-3MBps.

Almost as if the drive won't "respond" at all:

If I let it run, the write speeds will increase a little, then it jumps to read speeds which are excellent:

I tried running disk utility's "first aid" feature on the drive, it doesn't seem to improve it.

Then, I discovered that if took an old copy of Drive Genius (v.3), and used the "rebuild" feature, it would note some irregularities:
- invalid volume file count
- invalid volume directory count
- invalid volume free block count
... and then would "repair" the volume:

Now I run AJA System test lite on it again:

Much better, as it should be.

Not sure where the "invalids" noted above are "coming from".
I try to be careful about ejecting the drive when done using it (eject from desktop, wait until icon disappears, then physically disconnect).

I sense that something in the lower-level driver software/firmware/whatever is not being "set" properly at the time of dismounting. I could be completely wrong.

Suggestion:
If you have any drive repair utilities that are capable of repairing/rebuilding the drive directory -- any at all -- try them. I'm thinking that these might include:
- Drive Genius
- TechTool Pro
- DiskWarrior

See if that helps.

IMPORTANT:
This will work ONLY on drives that are formatted to HFS+.
That's because 3rd party drive utilities work ONLY on HFS+ formatted drives, and cannot "repair" drives in APFS (due to Apple's refusal to release full specs on the APFS system).
If I'm wrong about this, I welcome correction.

 

[pi6xjdskfa]

I reformatted the T7 to APFS (non-encrypted) and nothing changed. Still stalls when trying to copy a 100mb file to T7.

I've seen nearly the same problem the OP seems to have with my own t7 drives.

That is:
If I run a speed-testing utility on them (I generally use "AJA System Test Lite"), read performance originally starts out as terrible -- sometimes as low a 2-3MBps.

Almost as if the drive won't "respond" at all:
View attachment 2416454

If I let it run, the write speeds will increase a little, then it jumps to read speeds which are excellent:
View attachment 2416455

I tried running disk utility's "first aid" feature on the drive, it doesn't seem to improve it.

Then, I discovered that if took an old copy of Drive Genius (v.3), and used the "rebuild" feature, it would note some irregularities:
- invalid volume file count
- invalid volume directory count
- invalid volume free block count
... and then would "repair" the volume:

View attachment 2416456

Now I run AJA System test lite on it again:
View attachment 2416458
Much better, as it should be.

Not sure where the "invalids" noted above are "coming from".
I try to be careful about ejecting the drive when done using it (eject from desktop, wait until icon disappears, then physically disconnect).

I sense that something in the lower-level driver software/firmware/whatever is not being "set" properly at the time of dismounting. I could be completely wrong.

Suggestion:
If you have any drive repair utilities that are capable of repairing/rebuilding the drive directory -- any at all -- try them. I'm thinking that these might include:
- Drive Genius
- TechTool Pro
- DiskWarrior

See if that helps.

IMPORTANT:
This will work ONLY on drives that are formatted to HFS+.
That's because 3rd party drive utilities work ONLY on HFS+ formatted drives, and cannot "repair" drives in APFS (due to Apple's refusal to release full specs on the APFS system).
If I'm wrong about this, I welcome correction.

 

[sublunar]

I reformatted the T7 to APFS (non-encrypted) and nothing changed. Still stalls when trying to copy a 100mb file to T7.

Could they have reached the write limit if you’ve had them years and used them a lot? I’d also try them on another mac or a windows pc (formatted to NTFS or Fat32) to eliminate your Mac.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I reformatted the T7 to APFS (non-encrypted) and nothing changed. Still stalls when trying to copy a 100mb file to T7."

Have you tried HFS+ (you may have done this already)?

 

[Boyd01]

I have three 4tb T7 Shields, one 2tb T7 Shield and four 2tb regular T7's. The oldest of these go back to 2020 and they're all nearly full. Some of them contain a small number of huge files (100 to 400gb each) while two of the 4tb ones are backups of my website and contain almost 100 million small files each. I reformatted them all as unencrypted APFS when I first got them. I have only used the original cables that came with the drives.

Never had a problem with any of these, r/w speeds in the 800-900MB/sec typically when I've tested. But I would notice right away if any of them were that slow. So, I really don't understand what could be happening here - and hope it doesn't happen to me! But I'm still on 2018 Mini with Monterey. Will want to move to a new(er) operating system soon with Monterey support ending, hope I don't encounter this!

 

[MilaM]

Interesting observation. I want to buy the T7 soon for backups. Will test it with my old Intel Mac as well as a newer M2 mini.

 

[Fishrrman]

MilaM --

A suggest re your reply 12 above:
You might consider the Crucial X9 instead.

I have both (t7 shield and X9).
My experiences with the t7 are posted above in reply 7.

I've had no such difficulties with the X9.
None at all.

 

[MilaM]

MilaM --

A suggest re your reply 12 above:
You might consider the Crucial X9 instead.

I have both (t7 shield and X9).
My experiences with the t7 are posted above in reply 7.

I've had no such difficulties with the X9.
None at all.

Thanks. I'll consider that. I went down this rabbit hole quite extensively and it appears that there are many performance and reliability problems with USB drives and Macs, also from other manufacturers and especially with external NVMe cases.

Sometimes firmware update are enough to fix those bugs. Have you checked if Samsung provides firmware upgrades for the T7 line of products?