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Samsung X5 SSD upgrade.

D

dcmaccam

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 14, 2017
275
53
West Coast of Scotland
I use a Samsung X5 as a boot drive on my Fusion equipped 2019 iMac. Runs great and get around 1530MB/s Write. 2500MB/s Read but I could do with some extra capacity. There is a good deal on with a 1TB WD 750. I just wonder if the X5 will run with a WD drive.

Also is it the controller on the Thunderbolt interface board that keeps track of the SSD temp? Or is it a controller on the actual SSD.
 
In the case of the X5, I believe there are internal sensors that keep track of drive temps.

If you just need more external "data storage" (a drive that is not intended to be a boot drive), just about any USB3 or USB3.1 gen2 drive will do the job.

What do you intend to use "the extra capacity" for...?
 
At the moment I keep my photographs, Lightroom, Premier Elements, etc on my 500GB boot drive. I have 240GB left. My 200GB video files are on another external drive. So I would like to keep both on the same drive.
 
You want the applications to remain on the boot drive, in the applications folder.

I'm not familiar with how Lightroom stores photo files.
It may be best to keep "the catalog" on the same drive as the Lightroom app (which would be the boot drive).

As to where the actual photos are stored... well, not sure.
But I believe that could be moved to another drive, and referenced therefrom.

There's a digital photography sub forum here... you might ask in there what components of Lightroom can be moved to another drive, and which are best "left alone".

But with 240gb of space still remaining on the boot drive, this isn't really a critical decision yet...
 
I have Lightroom on my system setup with the catalogs,photos,presets and preview on my boot drive and I want them all to stay there. Now although there is 240GB left this will not let me move my video files which I have on a slower external drive. My intention would be to have these on the Thunderbolt boot drive along with any cache/temp files that are created during video editing. I know I can change the SSD inside the Samsung X5 to a 1TB Samsung EVO But because of the deal on the 1TB WD 750 that would be preferable as I believe it runs a bit cooler. The thing is I don't know if the 1TB WD 750 will be recognised by the Thunderbolt controller ok. My thoughts are it would be. Looking to see on here if anyone has tried it.
 
dcmaccam said:
Not yet still to get the WD750. Still unsure if it will work.
Click to expand...
I haven't checked the dimensions of the WD drive but unless it's thicker than a normal 2280 drive I'm pretty sure it will work.

But the write speed could be limited, this is the interesting part. People in the youtube comment section who have tested with the Samsung Evo Plus and Crucial P5 (if I remember correctly) inside the X5 say the maximum write speed is capped to 1300 MB/s.

The original 512GB drive in X5 is reaching 2200 MB/s write speed connected to my MBP 16" (intel) and 1600 MB/s connected to my iMac 2019.

I've ordered a second X5 with 512GB storage because it was on sale, and I'm planning to upgrade the NVME drive to 2TB in the future. It would be nice to know what drive is fully compatible with the X5 controller.
 
dcmaccam said:
I use a Samsung X5 as a boot drive on my Fusion equipped 2019 iMac. Runs great and get around 1530MB/s Write. 2500MB/s Read but I could do with some extra capacity. There is a good deal on with a 1TB WD 750. I just wonder if the X5 will run with a WD drive.

Also is it the controller on the Thunderbolt interface board that keeps track of the SSD temp? Or is it a controller on the actual SSD.
Click to expand...
Hello, have you noticed any lag/throttling when using the x5 as your boot drive on Catalina? Recently just got one for my 27-inch 2019, 3.0 GHz i5 24GB 1TB Fusion Drive iMac. Tested it as boot drive on Monterey today off a fresh install and noticed that it was speedy upon boot. After opening some apps and doing minimal tasks, there is a steep drop and everything starts to lag horribly. Also did speed test connected using ethernet and noticed the speeds drop from max around 450-500 mbps to around 50-200 mbps when the imac begins the lagging.
 
Not had any problem with any lag. I am getting around 1600 MB/s write and 2500 MB/s read. That was using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. You are using the Thunderbolt 3 cable that came with it? I do know that some people have said there is a bit of throttling when the drive heats up, but have not seen any myself.
I use my machine for Adobe Lightroom and other Photo Apps.

My config is X5 as boot drive with all my programs on it also my Photos. Got a 1TB external SSD for my video files. External HDD for Time machine backups and at the moment I just unmount the internal Fusion drive.

What capacity of drive did you get? It may be a Monterey. Could you try a fresh install of Catalina on it and see if that makes any difference.
 
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Ah I see, not sure why I'm having issues. Yup using the default thunderbolt 3 it came with. The drive does get warm a little and around the same time, the throttling occurred.

Just to clarify, you erased the x5 and formatted it into AFPS and proceeded to reinstall Catalina on there to boot the iMac off of while using the external SSD as extra storage for other files?

I bought the 500GB version. Had similar issues so swapped it out for the 2TB Samsung Evo 980 pro. Still had the same issues as mentioned above. Might swap it back to the default 500GB drive and do some more testing. The weird part is I tested the x5 as a boot drive for a 2019 21.5" iMac and had no issues with throttling/lagging. I'm wondering if the fusion drive plays any factor maybe? Did you leave your fusion drive as is or unlink it to use as separate storage or leave it linked for storage?
 
What I did when I purchased the drive was to format it. Booted the iMac into recovery mode. Did a restore from my TM backup onto the X5. Rebooted the iMac and made sure the x5 was now the boot drive.

At the moment my photos are on the X5 for maximum performance when editing in Lightroom. Video files are on external SSD due to the size of the files.

As for the fusion drive I went into disk utilities and unmounted the fusion drive which still had the currently installed OS on it. Note when you switch off the machine on restart the drive is re-mounted. I just sleep my machine so this is not an issue for me.

At the moment my 500GB X5 drive is 50% full.

Have you tried Catalina to rule out the issue may be Monterey?

When are you seeing the lagging? Are you transferring a lot of very large files? Or is it just in normal use.

Have tried Blackmagic speed test?

When you tested the drive on the 2019 21.5 iMac was it running Monterey? if so was it the same version.
 
Find attached a screen capture of the firmware of my drive
 

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dcmaccam said:
What I did when I purchased the drive was to format it. Booted the iMac into recovery mode. Did a restore from my TM backup onto the X5. Rebooted the iMac and made sure the x5 was now the boot drive.

At the moment my photos are on the X5 for maximum performance when editing in Lightroom. Video files are on external SSD due to the size of the files.

As for the fusion drive I went into disk utilities and unmounted the fusion drive which still had the currently installed OS on it. Note when you switch off the machine on restart the drive is re-mounted. I just sleep my machine so this is not an issue for me.

At the moment my 500GB X5 drive is 50% full.

Have you tried Catalina to rule out the issue may be Monterey?

When are you seeing the lagging? Are you transferring a lot of very large files? Or is it just in normal use.

Have tried Blackmagic speed test?

When you tested the drive on the 2019 21.5 iMac was it running Monterey? if so was it the same version.
Click to expand...
Ah, thank you. I did something similar except did a restore from the current newly setup copy from the fusion drive as well as using recovery mode to install the os onto the external SSD directly.

Interesting, I'll give that a try for unmounting the fusion drive. Is your fusion drive os the same as the external SSD boot drive? I've even tried where I erased the fusion drive data and left no boot drive on the iMac to boot off the external SSD but still faced the same issues.

I've tested with Mojave, Catalina, and Monterey. On Mojave and Catalina, the throttling and lagging were a lot less frequent or to be exact took much longer to occur. Drive does get hot and seems to be when the throttling occurs.

Lagging occurs randomly. Usually when opening a program, watching a youtube video, etc. Doesn't seem to be a consistent trigger.

Yup, been using Blackmagic speed to test check. When throttling, speeds drop drastically.

On the 2019 21.5", it was the same boot drive copy/os I was using on the 2019 27" iMac. Shut down on the 27" iMac due to the lagging, plugged it into the 21.5" and booted from there. No issue after 1.5 hours of use. Also not sure if this actually works since the boot drive was installed while connected to the 27".

Have not had time to take out the 980 pros 2TB and put it back in the original drive it came with. Hopefully, I can tomorrow or the weekend to test
 
First, Yes the OS on the Fusion drive is the same as the ssd. Not sure what you mean by this “Also not sure if this actually works since the boot drive was installed while connected to the 27"”

I think if you are watching large, say 4k video files that may cause a bit of overheating due to the large data transfers. I believe the X5 has a heat sensor that kicks in quite low to protect the drive from overheating. What kind of programs are you using.

I don’t know if it would make any difference but might be worth trying a complete reset.

Reinstall Catalina with just the base programs that came with it on the Fusion drive with the X5 disconnected.

Try watching videos and try using some of the base OS programs that came with it to confirm no lag. Don’t install any other programs at this point.

If all OK I would backup using Time Machine.

Then I would plug in the X5 and erase it.

Next I would restore the backup onto the X5

You now should have a bootable version of the bare OS on both drives.

Then you should reboot and make sure you set the boot drive as the X5

This will give you a minimal systen on which removes any possibility of any other program causing the problem.

If no lag, you could update just the X5 to Monterey again with just the base system and test again.

If still no luck it may be better to try your 2TB in an external Hi Speed USB 3 enclosure and try and boot from that.
 
dcmaccam said:
First, Yes the OS on the Fusion drive is the same as the ssd. Not sure what you mean by this “Also not sure if this actually works since the boot drive was installed while connected to the 27"”

I think if you are watching large, say 4k video files that may cause a bit of overheating due to the large data transfers. I believe the X5 has a heat sensor that kicks in quite low to protect the drive from overheating. What kind of programs are you using.

I don’t know if it would make any difference but might be worth trying a complete reset.

Reinstall Catalina with just the base programs that came with it on the Fusion drive with the X5 disconnected.

Try watching videos and try using some of the base OS programs that came with it to confirm no lag. Don’t install any other programs at this point.

If all OK I would backup using Time Machine.

Then I would plug in the X5 and erase it.

Next I would restore the backup onto the X5

You now should have a bootable version of the bare OS on both drives.

Then you should reboot and make sure you set the boot drive as the X5

This will give you a minimal systen on which removes any possibility of any other program causing the problem.

If no lag, you could update just the X5 to Monterey again with just the base system and test again.

If still no luck it may be better to try your 2TB in an external Hi Speed USB 3 enclosure and try and boot from that.
Click to expand...
So for the first point, I meant restoring from say the 27' 2019 iMac onto the x5 to make that a bootable drive. Was not sure if I'm able to take that boot drive x5 and boot it up on the 21.5" 2019 iMac since the two iMacs are different etc. A compatibility issue is what I was concerned about.

Am doing that now. No issues with lag on fusion drive. After backing up using the time machine and wiping the x5, do I need to first reinstall Cataline onto the now wiped x5 and proceed to set it up as new until I get to the screen that allows me to select the time machine as a source of transfer?
 
OK, I get your first point.That might not be a good idea for compatibility.

If you have a clean install of Catalina on the Fusion drive and you have backed this up to another drive. You could boot into recovery mode and do a restore of the backup onto the X5. Then set that as the boot drive. Then test for any lag when running that. Depend on what you find you could then try to update the X5 to Monterey and retest.
 
A further development. I decided to update to Monterey which enables me to use Final Cut Pro. My write speed of my Samsung X5 dropped from over 1500Mbps to 1300Mbps, read speed stayed at 2500Mbps

However I managed to purchase a a 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus at a good price.

So I cracked open my Samsung X5 removed the 500GB drive and replaced it with the 970 EVO Plus and got my system transferred over.

Now I tried the Black Magic speed test and I am now getting 800Mbps write and 2500Mbps read.

I guess the original drive fitted was better, write wise and it also takes a further hit because of Monterey.
 
Looking for further info. So I gather from my reading that the 500GB I removed from my X5 was actually a Samsung 970 EVO (faster in X5 enclosure) with a Samsung 970 EVO PLUS (slower in X5 enclosure)

What I probably should have purchased was a Samsung 970 PRO which should have given me a boost of write speed? These are still quite expensive.

However, I find locally that I can get a Samsung 980 PRO 1TB which is on special at the moment. Even though it is a a PCIe4 device rather than a PCIe3 I wonder if that would make a significant difference in write speed.
 
dcmaccam said:
Looking for further info. So I gather from my reading that the 500GB I removed from my X5 was actually a Samsung 970 EVO (faster in X5 enclosure) with a Samsung 970 EVO PLUS (slower in X5 enclosure)

What I probably should have purchased was a Samsung 970 PRO which should have given me a boost of write speed? These are still quite expensive.

However, I find locally that I can get a Samsung 980 PRO 1TB which is on special at the moment. Even though it is a a PCIe4 device rather than a PCIe3 I wonder if that would make a significant difference in write speed.
Click to expand...
Hi, did you upgrade to a faster SSD with success?
 
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