Sandisk Extreme vs NVME+Enclosure?

[GooseInTheCaboose]

Which type of external storage gives you the best performance with a Mac Studio? At this point, under any circumstances, will anyone ever be able to detect a difference between a Sandisk Extreme and NVMe SSD in an enclosure? Is NVMe worth the effort? If so which NVMe/enclosure do you recommend for use with a Mac Studio?

Will you lose a lot of performance choosing either of these options compared to Apple’s expensive internal storage?

 

[ColdCase]

Thunderbolt 4 & NVMe M.2 External Storage: Read/Write Speeds?

I plan to supplement Mac Studio/M1 Max storage by connecting one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports to an enclosure containing two 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSDs in RAID 0. The enclosure is an Asus XG Station Pro. This enclosure has an excellent fan and ventilation. I currently use it to run an AMD RX...

forums.macrumors.com

Big difference between NVMe and SSD over TB especially if you RAID them. I've tried both, not RAIDed, and NVMe is snappy. Hard to tell the difference between the NVMe and internal in my Video and Photo work flow. Where a Sandisk extreme is relatively sluggish.

 

[Shazaam!]

M1 Boot Time Comparison

Apple Internal SSD – 15 seconds (SSD read/write about 7 GB/s)
Samsung 980 + ORICO case – 20 seconds (read/write about 2.8 GB/s)
Samsung X5 – 20 seconds (read/write about 2 GB/s)
Samsung 980 + Sabrent case – 18 seconds (read/write 1.5 GB/s)
Crucial SATA/USB – 38 seconds (read/write 300-400 MB/s)
Toshiba HDD – 100 seconds (read/write 70-150 MB/s).

 

[maclogon789]

M1 Boot Time Comparison

Apple Internal SSD – 15 seconds (SSD read/write about 7 GB/s)
Samsung 980 + ORICO case – 20 seconds (read/write about 2.8 GB/s)
Samsung X5 – 20 seconds (read/write about 2 GB/s)
Samsung 980 + Sabrent case – 18 seconds (read/write 1.5 GB/s)
Crucial SATA/USB – 38 seconds (read/write 300-400 MB/s)
Toshiba HDD – 100 seconds (read/write 70-150 MB/s).

For anyone who wants to read more about this, here is an article (possibly the source, as the drives and times are the same, but I don't want to assume):

Does a faster external SSD help M1 Macs boot faster?

With the right enclosure, a Samsung 980 PRO NVMe SSD delivers transfer speeds of around 2.8 GB/s. Does that make booting from it any faster, compared with an SSD at half the speed?

eclecticlight.co

 

[Velin]

Is NVMe worth the effort?

Short answer is yes. Setup is easy, just open the enclosure, and either screw down or twist the end screw in place after you slot in the drive. Basically done, just format it. Performance is fantastic, and you get a huge selection of fast SSDs at low prices. And you can always keep the enclosure, but upgrade the SSD. Once you go external NVME, you won't go back to the ready-mades unless you need a tough, rugged, portable SSD solution designed for abuse. So that's the only caveat; I wouldn't trek around the globe with an NVME enclosure.

Which one enclosure/SSD combo? There are tons of reviews that are constantly updated, so you'll have no problem seeing ranked lists concerning which metric is important to you, e.g. price-per-gigabyte, price-to-performance, reliability ratings, etc. Probably the fourth-most reviewed component after CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

 

[ultratiem]

Will you lose a lot of performance choosing either of these options compared to Apple’s expensive internal storage?

yeah. But you save lots of money too: https://eclecticlight.co/2022/11/23/which-external-disk/