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Samsung X5 Portable SSD - 2TB - Thunderbolt 3 External SSD for a reasonable price

Dr. Stealth

Dr. Stealth

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 14, 2004
814
740
SoCal-Surf City USA
Just posting this for general information in case it may help others in the same situation.

I needed a fast high capacity external SSD for my new 2018 Mini for storing and editing a very large number of digital images. I was looking at the Samsung X5. The Samsung X5 2TB Version is currently selling for around $1,200.00 down from $1,400.00 but still very pricey.

So after doing a little research online I found it possible to upgrade the internal NVMe M.2 SSD. So I bought the 500GB version of the X5 for $300.00 and replaced the SSD with a 970 EVO 2TB ($540.00). I was able to sell the new original 500GB NVMe SSD for $100.00.

So I ended up with a 2TB X5 for a total cost of $740.00. A substantial savings of $460.00.

The SSD swap was very simple and took maybe 15 minutes.

X5.jpg
 
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Dr. Stealth said:
Just posting this for general information in case it may help others in the same situation.

I needed a fast high capacity external SSD for my new 2018 Mini for storing and editing a very large number of digital images. I was looking at the Samsung X5. The Samsung X5 2TB Version is currently selling for around $1,200.00 down from $1,400.00 but still very pricey.

So after doing a little research online I found it possible to upgrade the internal NVMe M.2 SSD. So I bought the 500GB version of the X5 for $300.00 and replaced the SSD with a 970 EVO 2TB ($540.00). I was able to sell the new original 500GB NVMe SSD for $100.00.

So I ended up with a 2TB X5 for a total cost of $740.00. A substantial savings of $460.00.

The SSD swap was very simple and took maybe 15 minutes.

View attachment 812253
Click to expand...
Awesome! Good to know the NVMe can be swapped out.
 
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Neat, good to know it can be done, i wondered if these have proprietary storage or nVME blades.

I just bought the Leidian nVME case for 100$ :p it's a little bit smaller as well.
 
Did you have to pry apart the plastic case?
Or did it come with screws that were "reachable" and easy to undo?
 
Fishrrman said:
Did you have to pry apart the plastic case?
Or did it come with screws that were "reachable" and easy to undo?
Click to expand...


The disassembly begins by prying off the orange bezel around the TB port. It's attached with a small amount of adhesive and two tabs on either side. The adhesive is like soft rubber cement. It's not there to keep you out but to help hold the bezel on. A small screwdriver popped it off very easily. There are two screws under the bezel. From that point on it's all screws, the case is not glued. Screws were all reachable and easy to undo and standard phillips screws. Nothing weird.

Very much unlike any Apple device.

X5-2.jpg
 
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Prices are continuing to drop on these and I have just ordered a 1 TB Samsung X5 -- all the extra capacity I need right at the moment -- to use as an external drive with my 2018 15" MBP. I've been lusting after one of these things ever since they were first announced and of course had to wait until I'd purchased a MBP with Thunderbolt 3 so I could actually use it. I'm not going to take anything apart, not doing any "transplants" of parts anywhere, either on the machine itself or on the external SSD, as for me there is no need or desire for that. When the drive arrives I'm just going to plug the thing into one of the Thunderbolt 3/USB-C type ports on my lovely new (just over a month old now!) machine and if need be, reformat to APFS while clearing out any "security" or special files Samsung may have included, as I don't need those, and I'll be good to go!

I have been more than happy over the past several years with Samsung's T1, T3 and T5 respectively, so I am expecting to be even more pleased with this newest addition to their external SSD family. When over the next few months prices on the 2 TB X5 drop beyond the current $999.99 mark, I'll be shopping again.....and right about then is when I'd need to increase my storage capacity again anyway.
 
Dr. Stealth said:
Just posting this for general information in case it may help others in the same situation.

I needed a fast high capacity external SSD for my new 2018 Mini for storing and editing a very large number of digital images. I was looking at the Samsung X5. The Samsung X5 2TB Version is currently selling for around $1,200.00 down from $1,400.00 but still very pricey.

So after doing a little research online I found it possible to upgrade the internal NVMe M.2 SSD. So I bought the 500GB version of the X5 for $300.00 and replaced the SSD with a 970 EVO 2TB ($540.00). I was able to sell the new original 500GB NVMe SSD for $100.00.

So I ended up with a 2TB X5 for a total cost of $740.00. A substantial savings of $460.00.

The SSD swap was very simple and took maybe 15 minutes.

View attachment 812253
Click to expand...


Brilliant!!
 
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WilliamG said:
In the System Report SATA/SATA Express (depending on your connection type). My Thunderbolt 2.5" SSD shows up there as TRIM enabled after enabling TRIM.
Click to expand...
There's no "TRIM:" (like it was in HS) on any drives in the system report. SATA/SATA express is empty (i have a usb3.0 sata drive connected, a tb3 nvme drive and internal)
 
Ploki said:
There's no "TRIM:" (like it was in HS) on any drives in the system report. SATA/SATA express is empty (i have a usb3.0 sata drive connected, a tb3 nvme drive and internal)
Click to expand...

USB doesn't do TRIM on MacOS as far as I've ever been aware.
 
The way that Thunderbolt works is that it sends/receives the native data stream of whatever it's trying to emulate (SATA, FireWire, Ethernet, etc.) enclosed in Thunderbolt packets to/from the device in question. So if the SSD supports TRIM natively, it should support it with Thunderbolt. I don't have a Thunderbolt 3 NVMe drive so I can't say that definitively. However, on my 2012 and 2014 Mini's with 2 different Thunderbolt 1/SATA drives, TRIM is supported. You need to look in the native protocol section to see if TRIM is enabled. So for me, that mean's looking under SATA/SATA Express. For the 2018 Mini with an external Thunderbolt 3 NVMe drive, you should look under the NVMExpress - look for "TRIM Support".

If you don't see "TRIM Support" for an external NVMe SSD in the NVMExpress section, that's an anomaly that I would be interested in knowing about.

Incidentally, I've don't know if people have reported this in this or the other forums (so sorry if this is redundant), but I just noticed (after reading this thread) that TRIM was not enabled for my internal SATA SSD or my external Thunderbolt 1 SATA SSAD on my 2014 Mini running Mojave. It was enabled at some point with a previous OS (that Mini has had El Capitan, Sierra and High Sierra previously). On my 2012 Mini which was upgraded to High Sierra from El Capitan a few months earlier, it is enabled (I don't recall running trimforce after upgrading to High Sierra) for both the internal SSD and when I connect a Thunderbolt 1 SATA SSD, so based on that my guess is that it happened in Mojave (which may also be the beta). It's not the case where it was disabled because they were non-Apple SSD's because for the Toshiba NVMe SSD in my 2014 Mini, TRIM was enabled - this was installed when I was running High Sierra.
 
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Has anyone tried the X5 with a Thunderbolt 3 -> 2 adapter on an older Mac? Curious what speeds it gets if it works!
 
Didn't you guys immediately reformat your new X5 or the EVO 970 when you received it? That is the first thing I did right out of the box -- reformatted to APFS since this is an all-Mac household and I don't have any Windows anything here. Actually, if I recall correctly the X5 came formatted as ExFat..... No idea about the EVO 970, though. That is weird that the file system would be stated as being FAT 32. ???

Anyway, I'm loving this X5 -- it is fast, fast, FAST!!! Expensive? Yes. Worth it? YES.
 
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