What would be the correct way to test the Lightning to USB3 connector/ adapter for USB 3 speeds?
via an External SSD? + Using some benchmark App or just copy files? How?
via an External SSD? + Using some benchmark App or just copy files? How?
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iPad Pro What would be the correct way to test the Lightning to USB3 connector/ adapter for USB 3 speeds? via an External SSD?
- Thread starter crashnburn
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Sadly, I don't think a benchmark app exists to test external iPad storage.
In this case, your best bet is to copy some multi-GB files. Small files such as photos and music aren't particularly accurate gauges because of the overhead involved. And yes, you'd need to use external SSD rather than USB 3.0 flash drives (which can be iffy performance-wise).
Which one?
I was thinking the same.
Which Apps from iPad & iPhone can see & act on the SSD connected via this?
I'm awaiting a possible iPPro Gen 2 so can maybe do a dry run using my iPhone?
I use FileBrowser for Business for working with external storage. One reference point - Using the Files app on a 2018 12.9 Pro with USB-C, I copied 165 RAW images (1.9GB) to an exFAT USB-C SSD in 40 secs. As mentioned above, there are no benchmark apps in iOS for this - you'll have to do it manually.
Edit: I also have the 10.5 Pro, the Apple dongle, and a Samsung SSD - I'll do a quick test today.
Ran a test using the following –
10.5” iPad Pro, iPadOS 14.2
Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter
Samsung 500GB T5 SSD with USB3-USB-C cable
Power connected to Adapter
2 MP4 files, 9.87GB (4.38GB + 5.49GB)
Copying using Files copy and paste:
Copy from SSD to iPad Files local folder – 130 secs.
Copy from iPad Files local folder to SSD – 93 secs
Times captured by watching digital clock.
10.5” iPad Pro, iPadOS 14.2
Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter
Samsung 500GB T5 SSD with USB3-USB-C cable
Power connected to Adapter
2 MP4 files, 9.87GB (4.38GB + 5.49GB)
Copying using Files copy and paste:
Copy from SSD to iPad Files local folder – 130 secs.
Copy from iPad Files local folder to SSD – 93 secs
Times captured by watching digital clock.
How does that compare to the 2018 using the same drive and files?
Using the same exFAT SSD with USB-C direct connection to my 2018 12.9 Pro -
Copy from SSD to iPad Files local folder – 45 secs.
Copy from iPad Files local folder to SSD - 66 secs.
Interesting that the copy SSD took longer. Compared to my earlier test with 165 RAW images (1.9GB to SSD in 40 secs), this shows the file handling overhead with numerous smaller files.
Side note: Good news again that the Files app did not corrupt the large files on copying to an exFAT drive.
Which device? The iPad? There is only one 10.5 Pro , from 2017. Supposed to be USB3.
Since you mentioned 2 devices one with Year and other without, I asked.
I am/ was not aware of all the Pro & Non Pro models across the years. Hence, I asked. Now that makes it more clear.
Now we have a comparative of Light USB 3 (2017) vs Type C USB 3 (2018)
Another twist to this - it would be interesting for someone to do this test with an SSD formatted with APFS, not exFAT - I've seen reports that transfers are faster with the Mac format. I can't - I don't own any Mac devices.
See this regarding transfer speeds - it's interesting:
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Yes, you can transfer any file type. But: I haven't used Marvin so I downloaded it to test. I couldn't see any way of getting a file from the Files app into Marvin - it doesn't show up in any Locations nor is it an option when I select an epub I loaded off an SDD and try to share it with another app. I could get it into Marvin from Dropbox, iCloud, etc. but not directly from Files. So I copied it to iCloud Drive and then in Marvin I loaded it from iCloud; there was no direct path to Marvin within Files. Maybe someone familiar with Marvin can chime in on this.
For PDF files, PDF Expert is a great option.
Edit: I found that within Marvin I could open any location in Files so I could directly get the copy from a Files folder. Marvin sould not see/access the external storage so I did have to initially copy the epub from the storage into Files.
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Makes sense. I recall the 2018 iPad Pros having NVMe level write speeds while the Samsung T5 maxes out at around 500 MB/s write then you've also got the exFAT overhead. Certainly would be interesting to see if the Samsung T7 will be faster.
I just ran Jazz Disk Bench app on my 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 512GB (88% full) and got the following with TestSize(Seq): 1G and TestCount(Random): 16384.
I ran CrystalDiskMark on the T5 from my laptop -
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 435.059 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 255.001 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 149.140 MB/s [ 36411.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 74.653 MB/s [ 18225.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 93.441 MB/s [ 22812.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 48.547 MB/s [ 11852.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 13.327 MB/s [ 3253.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 19.985 MB/s [ 4879.2 IOPS]
Test : 1024 MiB [F: 0.0% (0.0/465.7 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
It's possible to add Marvin to the Share Sheet for EPUB in the Files app. Haven't tested if it also works for files on external storage but since it just copies files into Marvin, I'm guessing it should work.
I find it's a lot easier to use Dropbox with Marvin, though. The last time Marvin was updated was circa-iOS 10 so it simply doesn't have native support for features added in later iOS versions.
That would certainly explain why iPad to SSD writes were slower. I think the T5 1TB+ capacities are capable of 400+ MB/s.
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Samsung claims Transfer Speed of "Up to 540 MB/s", not differentiating by capacity -
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/portable/t5/
T7 is "Up to 1,050 MB/s".
That's marketing for you. They also didn't differentiate between read and write speeds.
I expect the T5 is SATA-based and T7 is NVMe-based so T7 is faster. Caveat, the T7 runs hotter.
SSDs run similar to RAID-0. Higher parallelism/adding more chips increases performances up to a point so 1TB can be faster than, say, 250-500GB on same controller.
These also have pseudo-SLC cache. You get top speed while you're writing to the cache even on smaller SSDs but once that cache fills up, performance can drop significantly.
The spec sheet for their internal SSDs are more transparent.
Exactly. Back when I was working (retired now) we always did our own tests and made sure to test as we planned to use. "Test like you fly, fly like you test".
All iPad Pros released have NVMe flash drive
but wouldn’t transfer/write speeds also depend on the capacity of the drive as well?. From what I remember back when the 7 came out it was revealed that the 128/256GB capacity ones had read/write transfer speeds better than the 32GB Capacity ones from what was reported
While Apple switched to NVMe with the A9, it doesn't mean performance across chipset generations are the same. Performance of their SSD controller has improved generation after generation.
That's pretty much how SSDs work. I've already mentioned this on my previous post.
Mind, sequential speeds aren't the be-all and end-all of performance. As far as I can tell, flash storage on iPads still aren't any faster at random 4K writes compared to 1st/2nd gen SSDs. Also, in the case of iPads, I don't know if 1TB is faster than 512GB as other bottlenecks come into play.