Which 2 Bay Thunderbolt NVMe External Enclosure for Apple Studio Ultra?

[Chevron]

So after some deliberation, I am planning on a 2 Bay Thunderbolt NVMe External Enclosure with one 2 TB NVMe drive for Time Machine BackUp of internal Ultra Studio drive, and one 1 TB NVMe drive for sample and VI library storage.

It has to have 4 lanes, 2 lanes per disk and be able to get around JBOD 1500 MB/s read speed and as close to that for write.

The Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 Dual NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure seems to hit all those targets

Thunderbolt 3 To Dual NVMe M.2 SSD Tool-Free Enclosure

FALSE

www.sabrent.com

 

[Amsterdamned]

That’s actually a pretty cool idea. Portability would be a bonus though. I have a 4TB seagate usb drive that contains 2 x 2.5” spinners and it’s bus powered so I’m surprised this isn’t.

 

[Chevron]

That’s actually a pretty cool idea. Portability would be a bonus though. I have a 4TB seagate usb drive that contains 2 x 2.5” spinners and it’s bus powered so I’m surprised this isn’t.

For me I am not too bothered by portability, more that both drives in the enclosure can b mixed size and get some fast speed, in the region of 1500 MB/s

 

[Ifti]

Sabrent actually have two solutions:

I would go for the TB3 solution for your needs, unless you find you ever need to clone drives?...
Tested as a RAID'ed solution here too.....

 

[Chevron]

Sabrent actually have two solutions:

I would go for the TB3 solution for your needs, unless you find you ever need to clone drives?...
Tested as a RAID'ed solution here too.....

Awesome thanks, do you know if this Sabrent dual device is a 4 lane unit?

Will I get 1500 MB/s from it for both drives if I have 1 TB and 2 TB drives?

 

[lcubed]

i would guess one lane per device unless you turn it into a RAID
that’s just a guess judging by the performance of the thunder bay mini 4 when used in JBOD mode vs RAID

 

[Ifti]

Awesome thanks, do you know if this Sabrent dual device is a 4 lane unit?

Will I get 1500 MB/s from it for both drives if I have 1 TB and 2 TB drives?

When I tested the single drive speed I'm sure I had both SSDs physically installed in the enclosure, and I got the same speed from both individual drives.
I then set up the RAID array and performance hits pretty much the upper limits of what you'd get with a TB3 connection....

It's a great unit, I just didn't like the separate power supply. Would have been perfect if it was all powered via the TB3 connection directly!

 

[Chevron]

When I tested the single drive speed I'm sure I had both SSDs physically installed in the enclosure, and I got the same speed from both individual drives.
I then set up the RAID array and performance hits pretty much the upper limits of what you'd get with a TB3 connection....

It's a great unit, I just didn't like the separate power supply. Would have been perfect if it was all powered via the TB3 connection directly!

Thanks again, that is looking like the unit I may get.

 

[Tanmay]

Will I get 1500 MB/s from it for both drives if I have 1 TB and 2 TB drives?

TB3/4 spec has a maximum data rata of ~2500MB/s. Rest is reserved for video, error recovery and overhead.

The controller inside the dual NVMe version allows for about 1500MB/s from a single drive. So that's the max you can get for transfer to a single drive.

If you transfer to both drives at same time, the controller will likely divide the available 2500MB/s and leave you with ~1250MB/s for each simultaneous transfer. I'm not sure about this though and it's worth a test once you get the device.

To fully saturate the 2500MB/s link, you'll have to do RAID0 but since you're using mis-matched capacity drives that's not an option.

 

[Chevron]

TB3/4 spec has a maximum data rata of ~2500MB/s. Rest is reserved for video, error recovery and overhead.

The controller inside the dual NVMe version allows for about 1500MB/s from a single drive. So that's the max you can get for transfer to a single drive.

If you transfer to both drives at same time, the controller will likely divide the available 2500MB/s and leave you with ~1250MB/s for each simultaneous transfer. I'm not sure about this though and it's worth a test once you get the device.

To fully saturate the 2500MB/s link, you'll have to do RAID0 but since you're using mis-matched capacity drives that's not an option.

I would only use it JBOD style. What are the expected speeds in that config?