External SSD for Mac Studio

Cromulent · 26 Oct 2023 at 19:02

I have a couple of rather poor USB external drives. One does 750 write and 550 read and the other one is below 400 for both read and write. I'm looking for a 2TB external drive that is faster than both of those. My budget is around £200 but I am flexible as I need the faster storage. It'll get plugged into a Mac Studio Thunderbolt 4 port.

Feek · 26 Oct 2023 at 19:16

Samsung 990 Pro and an Acacis 40Gbps enclosure. It's a good question, I asked similar here.

Mine is out of sight and it got a bit warm so I heatsinked it. Have a shufti here.

There are often special prices on the nvme, I paid around £130 for mine and another £120 or so on the enclosure which is a little above your budget in total but it's well worth it. You have to have a 40Gbps enclosure or you're never going to get above 950 Mbps transfer rate.

Cromulent · 26 Oct 2023 at 19:28

Ah, awesome! Thank you. I'll explore that a bit more.

Cromulent · 26 Oct 2023 at 19:47

Hmm. The standard 990 Pro is £145 and the heatsink version is £192. I'm thinking it isn't worth the extra as it'll be running outside the case or am I wrong?

Feek · 26 Oct 2023 at 20:27

The heatsink version won’t fit in the enclosure

Cromulent · 26 Oct 2023 at 20:46

Feek said:
The heatsink version won’t fit in the enclosure

I see. Thank you.

HACO · 27 Oct 2023 at 07:33

Cromulent said:
Hmm. The standard 990 Pro is £145 and the heatsink version is £192. I'm thinking it isn't worth the extra as it'll be running outside the case or am I wrong?

The headsink options are never worth it even if using inside the case. You can get a better heatsink yourself for <£10, but they're not really needed anyway for typical home usage.

Cromulent · 27 Oct 2023 at 16:49

HACO said:
The headsink options are never worth it even if using inside the case. You can get a better heatsink yourself for <£10, but they're not really needed anyway for typical home usage.

Thank you for the clarification.

hartgeh3 · 27 Oct 2023 at 19:06

I have similar to Feek, 2 x 40gbps enclosures with 4TB drives. Backup that backup lol
I had a bunch of external enclosures (10, 20 and 40gbps) with NVMEs, 40 is the best one for speed. Mine run off TB Mac Mini M1. I have got a new Indeme 40gbps NVME enclosure and a used WD SN550 2TB i'll be sticking in the members market in abit if you're interested but there are plenty of cheap 2TB drives now. The enclosures range from £80-140+