Will we be getting External Solid State Drives?

Gilbert89 · 26 Aug 2011 at 12:25

As a Apple Mac user, without paying the hefty price Apple charge for upgrading to an SSD and trying to avoid playing with it myself, Will we be expecting External SSD drives?

rpstewart · 26 Aug 2011 at 13:10

There's nothing stopping you putting an SSD in an external caddy if you can find one that will take a 12mm thick drive.

Whether that's a good idea or not is debatable - eSATA is still generally limited to SATAII and USB3 is relatively rare although becoming more widespread.

Judgeneo · 26 Aug 2011 at 13:14

They already exist, but are rare.

I saw one a while back that required 2 USB3 ports or something daft

Sunbed · 26 Aug 2011 at 15:30

What is the max transfer rate of USB 3?

suitheist · 27 Aug 2011 at 23:25

Not entirely sure, I think it's sort of 2/3 of sata 3.

Maybe when thunderbolt comes out, it's supposed to be a sort of external extension of pci express. It's rated way above sata 3.

Surveyor · 27 Aug 2011 at 23:57

Sundance said:
What is the max transfer rate of USB 3?

USB 3.0 has transmission speeds of up to 5 Gb/s.

SATA 3 is up to 6Gb/s.

SATA 2 is up to 3Gb/s.

In reality the maximum speeds will be less than these.

panyan · 28 Aug 2011 at 11:35

would the ssd still use TRIM if it was external?

DragonQ · 28 Aug 2011 at 12:24

eSATA should work with TRIM. I doubt USB would.