Mac Mini M4 Pro SSD slowdown? The Shocking Truth!

[@MacSoundSolutions]

While I am no SSD expert , I did find things really vary and learned more aobut testing as you really need to fill up the SSD to run tests using FIO in HomeBrew which I did intall and got test results from but it's a bit above my head. Most youtubers use blackmagic speed test and that's it which really is not the proper way to test a SSD nor is my method I have shown here. But it gives you an idea. I tested my old 2T sata SSD via USB C and it got 450MBS and just stayed rock solid all the way through the transfer of 175 gigs. NVMes have alot of variables along with the enclosures. I just thought this was interesting to test out. I should have filled the drives to almost full capacity to work the drives and then ran tests which I was close to doing that with theI pretty much did with the Acasis. One thing I learned is the ZIKE with the Orico is not a good pairing with the M2 Macbook Air. when writing to the Zike it slowed to a crawl 150MBs very quickly but when I put the westen digital in the zike and tried it again it did the whole copy of 175 gigs in under two minutes, strange. Here are my M2 macbook air results MBA to ZIKE orico 9 minutes?? MBA to ZIKE with Wester Digital 1:21 ZIKE WD to MBA 1:17 MBA to ACASIS with western digital 1:40

[@TechNCrypto]

I left my Mac mini M4 running 4K video streaming to KZbin overnight. When I checked in the morning, my mini was extremely hot. In contrast, my Mac mini M1 was functioning normally with the same setup.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@TechNCrypto yes they can get hot specially, when the GPU is having to work a lot, you can install fan control software to ramp up the fan if necessary

[@dennismosercreativearts]

Again - thanks for continuing this testing. Looking forward to seeing your video on the "cons" of physically splitting off the /Home/User directory!

[@donhowell3372]

I like these videos .. just like paint drying. i see a new macmini on my desk one day soon and it'll be good to get some TB5 drives/hub .. thanks

[@greghudson9717]

Be very careful what Hub you choose. I had to send back a top brand 'powered' hub (100 watt) because it simply would not power a 4TB NVMe SSD in a OWC enclosure. The only way the OWC would work was when it was plugged in directly to one of the 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports. I tried several different hubs, they all failed the test.

[@Game__Boy]

I watched all the way through. I don't own a Mac Mini. Guess I just like hearing your voice.

[@dmug]

Should be getting my zike this week, wish it came for my previous video. I like these dives on the Mac mini

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@dmug the Zike is solid, what NVMe are you using?

[@JorgeDourado]

Great to see some test! It leaves the impression that the with two Zike you would have almost the same times and maybe in some scenarios even faster copying speeds, with large files. If we can leave a wish, would be great to see two Acasis with same SSD’s size/brand, copying between each other. Thanks, cheers!

[@markus8282]

Great video, just hard facts with convincing examples and valuable aditional infos!

[@racgordon]

@@markus8282 The biggest con is if you lose connectivity to the external drive. All personal settings many files etc not accessible. That said it is all common sense. Don’t do it on a laptop, Don’t do it on a Drive that you will move. Use a good quality cable and make the drive the first item on the bus. I am sure there are more and better suggestions

[@c.augustin]

The Zike it will be - no fan (my current enclosure has one, and that's not nice)! I found some downsides to using the Home folder on the external drive with the Mac Mini M4 base model (besides the fan in the enclosure), but a lack of speed it is not. I'll comment on your video about the downsides when it comes out, because you maybe already address them … ;-)

[@bobb.9917]

It’s about time you slowed down, Mr. Speed Demon! 😮

[@AladimBR]

Great topic, thanks for sharing. Even when throttling, the external drive was much faster (3-4x). So happy I went with the external drive solution following you guides after the Mac Mini M4 launch: faster and less expensive 😊 What app did you use for checking temperatures for internal and external drives? On a PC normally I use hwmonitor (free and excellent). I checked some options on the Mac but most were confusing and didn’t have temperature readings.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@AladimBR bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ I’m running the older version because initially I did not like the revamp, but I have to give it another shot because it does not show the temperatures of the CPU’s in the M4

[@ICXCTSARSLAVY]

Thank you for doing all this hard legwork for us out here! Very valuable info!

[@ronhazer4804]

Thanks for all the reviews and advice on SSD enclosures. I think the problem you’re encountering has more to do with the NVME SSD you’re using. I’m using a WD BLACK 2TB SN850X NVMe and have not had any issues with throttling. I’ve seen several other KZbin videos comparing different SSDs and demonstrating that the problem is with the SSD cashe on The NVME. Samsung SSDs seem to suffer the most from this.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@ronhazer4804 I’m using the sn850x, what Mac and what enclosure, the problem seems to be the Apple internal ssd not the enclosure or the NVMe. My MacBook Air with 1 terabyte internal tells another story altogether but still have a little more testing to do with it.

[@mannkeithc]

The slower ZikeDrive may be sustaining higher transfers speeds for longer into its SDD because with USB4 Vs USB5 you are getting slower pacing of packet traffic into the ZikeDrive's SSD cache and giving the cache more time to write its data to SSD's NAND chips before the cache eventually overflows, at which point transfers speeds will drop match the NAND chip write performance. It all comes down to queuing theory and how the various queues in the data transfer path perform relative to one another with regards the arrival rates of traffic at each queue, and the resulting depth of each queue, which will build if the arrival rate begins to exceed the queue departure rate.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@mannkeithc oddly the M2 MacBook Air acted very differently with the drives. ZIKE to MACBOOK AIR - 4:24 MACBOOK AIR TO ZIKE 30;00 and Acasis to Zike via MacBook Air also took 30:00 minutes

[@movdqa]

I want to upgrade my M1 Studio to an M4 Studio but I've been curious (also known as impatient) about the M4 Pro. I'll just wait for the Studio with better cooling. I may copy up to 40 GB at a time so I shouldn't see the throttling issues with really large copies.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

The M4 Max studio will be a beast.

[@flippertygippert]

Just got a mini and an external nvme. Would like to see the video about the downsides of the external user folder.

[@JeffreyCentex]

Wonder what happens if you were to test with the new “cards”

[@henryfield15]

Thank you

[@racgordon]

It would be interesting to know what sort of data was in each transfer. The controllers on SSDs (or any driver controller) has to decide where to put each file. Now any drive is made up of blocks of a particular size. For example if the drive has 8K blocks and you transfer a 48K file, the math is simple(ie controller processing load is lower.) The controller pushes that to 6 contiguous blocks. But if you are transferring a file or a folder of many files with many sizes what happens is that some files can be directed by the controller (usually on the SSD) with minimum overhead and dove have a greater overhead. The onboard cache on the SSD is partitioned some for buffering output from the controller (from faster cashe to slower flash) and some is there as processor cache to help the more complex processing of certain files). Now over last 10-15 years the processor technology has improved much faster than flash memory has got faster and more dense, and the algorithms use have also been greatly refined. So why does a Mac Mini slow down after about 100GB? There are obvious reasons, the MacMini uses a single module (compared to a Mac Studio), the size of the individual file/files, will have an effect on the write through speed of the cache, and of course fast cache is is always more expensive a cost/benefit issue comes into play with how much cache on each SSD module. Now back in the day just before the first rumors came out that apple was working on a laptop/desktop processor, Apple purchased a company who had patented a radically different to managing storage on SSDs. This was in the early days of SSDs when they used Sata interfaces. Not much was heard of what they did with this technology. But when the M1 came out a lot of controller logic was put on the chip. And the soldered SSD Flash was soldered to the motherboard with no separate controller. These widely touted drive modules (which I am sure will become branded at some point) do not appear to have separate SSD logic just flash chips as would appear on an M2 drive, and minimal control logic. Moreover you can only use these when you reload a complete fresh OS and part of the initial drive setup involves a check by the Mac that the Flash ,chips a pristine and have never been written to before. I think this points to the SSD controller is sitting on the M chip and possibly is using universal memory to extent its cache. It would be interesting to look at memory usage on write to the internal SSD. The real issue to consider is how often do you transfer 100GB + Fliles. (Not folders containing many files). Some high end Digital cameras will produce raw files of this size, similarly if you wish to transfer large RAW Video files from CF Express. So it depends on your case load. But pro tip, never pre buy technology that you will not really use until after 12-18 months, you will regret it. Buy what you will use in the next 12 months. One of the advantage of most apple hardware is how much of its residual value it holds!

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@racgordon all transfers were Final Cut pro library’s which contain 1080p mp4 clips and some .png and audio files that’s it and whatever meta data is in the library.

[@EBsDenStudio]

Thanks for taking the time to do all these testing... it's crazy how it varies with the different factors I've been wondering if it makes sense to change the NVMe (from WD Black SN770 to Orico O7000) in my Zike Drive as Users Home location, but with all the variability, I'm not sure anymore 😂BTW, what version of iStat Menus you're using? Thanks again👍🏻

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@EBsDenStudio it’s the older version 6. Something it does not show the M4 cpu temps, I did not like the revamp but have to give it a fair try again. I haven’t tried the WD in the Zike as it’s my main Thunderbolt 5 home account and working well but there seems to be not a huge diff between the two although I was testing my MacBook m2 air with both drives and the story is totally difference is nuts not sure what Apple is up to.

[@peteblazar5515]

I bet SLC cache are TLC cells used in pseudo-SLC mode (1bit/cell), maximal size pSLC-cache is 1/3 of free space, when cache is it full all data must be written in slow TLC mode (3bits/cell).

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@peteblazar5515 cache fills up then it switches to the TLC. older sata SSD just keeps a nice steady 450MBs all the way through no slow down albeit much slower in general but via long transfers not that much depending.

[@Mgetienne]

Try to use TG Pro and set this up to "auto max" 60 degrees let's show us the results. Bro thank you good vid!!;)

[@oterotube13]

Wondering how you formatted the externals drives. 😅

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@oterotube13 APFS

[@somebillstopayt-fitz9950]

Great Stuff

[@tbirdvet]

I also tested the Orico 07000 in a Trebleet TB5 enclosure and had the same issue. The write speeds were 1/2 of the speed when I tested a Samsung 990 pro NVME drive. No wonder the Orico is less expensive than some other drives. I also tested the Orico in a TB4 Acasis enclosure on a intel iMac with TB3 and also had 1/2 the speeds. Unacceptable.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@tbirdvet the M2 Mac book air did not like the Orico at all when writing to it, and the Orico is not compatible with the Acasis TB501. I had no major issues when I used them in two Zike drives in raid 0 with the Mini.

[@s96822]

wonder what the background processes were during the throttled and non throttled runs?

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@s96822 really didn’t have anything running in the background and I turned spotlight off on the external drives, but I did not turn it off on the internal and from what I understand spotlight only indexes after copying files.

[@genxtechguy]

I have the newest/upgraded Acasis TB501 Pro model(with an 8TB WDSN850X). I’m wondering if anyone has an issue with the drive staying warm even after the MacBook Pro is asleep. Yes, I have the setting activated to put drives to sleep when possible. Seems like the drive just doesn’t sleep.

[@WJHandyDad]

very interesting... would these external drives work at all with our 2009-2012 Mac Pro (albeit slower)?

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@WJHandyDad the Acasis needs Sequoia. The Zike would with a usb c pcie card, and Opencore and flashed Titan ridge but only up to 1500MBs

[@JamesBond-fo6ow]

You would need a PCIe card with USB C -- which might cost more than the MP is worth. Unless there is some dire reason to keep those MPs -- legacy software or hardware -- spend the $$ on a newer mac. Nicely specced 2020 27" imac is under $1000. with 128 GB of ram and a 1TB drive. Will run as far back as Catalina

[@WJHandyDad]

@@MacSoundSolutions thank you as always for responding

[@WJHandyDad]

@@JamesBond-fo6ow appreciate it... I'm a cheapskate and gonna run these old Mac Pros until I can't

[@JamesBond-fo6ow]

@ if they arent for "work" -- where time = money... sure? But if you have it in your head watching these videos you wish you had 3000 MB/s drives... bzzzt. Even a loaded 64/1B 2017 5K iMac might be around $600. It has Tbolt 3 = 2500 MB/s ports... I get it, Im a rush to upgrade person either, but I know when time = money and replaced my macs in my office when needed. For context. The first mac I bought brand new day it was announced was a Centris 610.

[@walterb.9290]

Non Apple-supplied drives will not have Trim support, unless you turn it on manually. This affects most external enclosures.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@walterb.9290 when you format in APFS trim is enabled. Both drives have it enabled by default once formatted

[@walterb.9290]

@@MacSoundSolutions It has nothing to do with the Formatting. The hardware of the enclosure has to support it. Easiest way to check if Trim works for that drive is to install SSDReporter. It will show if the drive is recognized as an external SSD. If it is, Trim will work. If it's not Trim will not work. And because it's a bigger drive, it will not give problems for a while. A 500 Gig drive will fail in about 5 years of use, so depending on how often data is written, and how full the drive is, it will have a shorter lifespan. I know, this won't be a problem for the bigger drives, but it's still noteworthy, something to keep in mind.😎

[@tomsun3159]

Would be interesting to see if a 1TB, 2TB, 4TB or even 8Tb version would show significant different behavior, my prediction as everything else but the NAND-Cips is on the system board, at the same amount of data it will significantly throttle, but depending on the number of NAND-Chips it will probably drop to a different level of speed, e.g. if 4 chips used instead of 2 Chips probably to nearly the double speed. What causes throttling besides filling up the cache wether its DDR-Cache, SLR-Cache or simulated SLR-Cache (what is not the same), but then there is also thermal throttling of the controller chip. The memory daughter boards are not special designed for Apple in terms of special capabilities. And I highly doubt that a Mac mini with Apples 2TB board would have a different result than a 3rd Party module, only if Apple has build in a method to detect and cripple down 3rd party devices by intention. What I expect latest for the M5 generation.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

seems that is it as in the slower speed doubles with higher capacity.

[@christianmaxpicellicorrea5298]

I have an Mac mini M4 Pro with 512GB and using ACASIS TB405 previous version (JHL7440 intel chipset), with 1 TB WD SN770X, I have very nice velocity, stable, 2700w/2800r, and i think that you can use TGPro to run fans speed RPM a little bit more, im not do this, but I will test. I think that ACASIS TB5 its not prepared for "full" functionally. I transfer Almost 400GB of data files, formatted in APFS, in aprox 7 min.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@christianmaxpicellicorrea5298 thing is going from Acasis to Zike and Zike to Acasis the speeds are very fast. The issue is mainly writing to and from the mini internal SSD but the slowest is writing to the mini as I say in the video the cache fills up and this is consistent. But yeah thunderbolt 5 is new and still has some kinks. But doing the same test with my 1 terabyte MacBook Air, the Zike usb 4 dropped quickly and drastically when writing from the MBA to the Zike which was surprising down to 150MBs and writing to the MBA from the Zike stayed stable at 1.5 gigs so that was really odd. Have to play with the MBA some more temps def play into it there are a lot of variables.

[@cappy2112]

Did you PRECONDITION the ssd before doing these tests? This is a must when doing all ssd performance tests in order to achieve the steady state performance

[@MacSoundSolutions]

installed Homebrew and FIO Run status group 0 (all jobs): WRITE: bw=3257MiB/s (3415MB/s), 3257MiB/s-3257MiB/s (3415MB/s-3415MB/s), io=10.0GiB (10.7GB), run=3144-3144msec test: (g=0): rw=write, bs=(R) 1024KiB-1024KiB, (W) 1024KiB-1024KiB, (T) 1024KiB-1024KiB, ioengine=psync, iodepth=32 fio-3.38 Starting 1 process note: both iodepth >= 1 and synchronous I/O engine are selected, queue depth will be capped at 1 Jobs: 1 (f=1): [W(1)][-.-%][w=3586MiB/s][w=3586 IOPS][eta 00m:00s] test: (groupid=0, jobs=1): err= 0: pid=2567: Sat Feb 1 13:52:43 2025 write: IOPS=3624, BW=3625MiB/s (3801MB/s)(10.0GiB/2825msec); 0 zone resets clat (usec): min=133, max=8223, avg=259.21, stdev=387.26 lat (usec): min=144, max=8239, avg=275.75, stdev=387.25 clat percentiles (usec): | 1.00th=[ 172], 5.00th=[ 176], 10.00th=[ 182], 20.00th=[ 198], | 30.00th=[ 210], 40.00th=[ 221], 50.00th=[ 235], 60.00th=[ 243], | 70.00th=[ 249], 80.00th=[ 260], 90.00th=[ 277], 95.00th=[ 293], | 99.00th=[ 553], 99.50th=[ 635], 99.90th=[ 7242], 99.95th=[ 7308], | 99.99th=[ 7767] bw ( MiB/s): min= 3132, max= 4346, per=100.00%, avg=3678.42, stdev=520.84, samples=5 iops : min= 3132, max= 4346, avg=3677.80, stdev=520.78, samples=5 lat (usec) : 250=70.09%, 500=28.24%, 750=1.23%, 1000=0.01% lat (msec) : 4=0.07%, 10=0.36% cpu : usr=6.09%, sys=6.73%, ctx=10241, majf=0, minf=7 IO depths : 1=100.0%, 2=0.0%, 4=0.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >=64=0.0% submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0% complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0% issued rwts: total=0,10240,0,0 short=0,0,0,0 dropped=0,0,0,0 latency : target=0, window=0, percentile=100.00%, depth=32 Run status group 0 (all jobs): WRITE: bw=3625MiB/s (3801MB/s), 3625MiB/s-3625MiB/s (3801MB/s-3801MB/s), io=10.0GiB (10.7GB), run=2825-2825msec lancemini@Lance-Mini ~ % sudo fio --name=test --filename="/Volumes/Acasis space T52T/testfile" --rw=write --bs=1M --size=10G --numjobs=1 --iodepth=32 --direct=1 test: (g=0): rw=write, bs=(R) 1024KiB-1024KiB, (W) 1024KiB-1024KiB, (T) 1024KiB-1024KiB, ioengine=psync, iodepth=32 fio-3.38 Starting 1 process note: both iodepth >= 1 and synchronous I/O engine are selected, queue depth will be capped at 1 Jobs: 1 (f=1): [W(1)][-.-%][w=3776MiB/s][w=3776 IOPS][eta 00m:00s] test: (groupid=0, jobs=1): err= 0: pid=2575: Sat Feb 1 13:53:21 2025 write: IOPS=3733, BW=3733MiB/s (3914MB/s)(10.0GiB/2743msec); 0 zone resets clat (usec): min=166, max=8241, avg=251.12, stdev=325.88 lat (usec): min=180, max=8256, avg=267.73, stdev=325.92 clat percentiles (usec): | 1.00th=[ 172], 5.00th=[ 178], 10.00th=[ 182], 20.00th=[ 198], | 30.00th=[ 210], 40.00th=[ 219], 50.00th=[ 233], 60.00th=[ 243], | 70.00th=[ 251], 80.00th=[ 258], 90.00th=[ 273], 95.00th=[ 289], | 99.00th=[ 519], 99.50th=[ 586], 99.90th=[ 5538], 99.95th=[ 7504], | 99.99th=[ 8094] bw ( MiB/s): min= 3310, max= 4400, per=100.00%, avg=3775.13, stdev=433.55, samples=5 iops : min= 3310, max= 4400, avg=3774.60, stdev=433.78, samples=5 lat (usec) : 250=69.90%, 500=28.97%, 750=0.72% lat (msec) : 2=0.03%, 4=0.08%, 10=0.29% cpu : usr=6.31%, sys=7.22%, ctx=10240, majf=0, minf=8 IO depths : 1=100.0%, 2=0.0%, 4=0.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, >=64=0.0% submit : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0% complete : 0=0.0%, 4=100.0%, 8=0.0%, 16=0.0%, 32=0.0%, 64=0.0%, >=64=0.0% issued rwts: total=0,10240,0,0 short=0,0,0,0 dropped=0,0,0,0 latency : target=0, window=0, percentile=100.00%, depth=32 Run status group 0 (all jobs): WRITE: bw=3733MiB/s (3914MB/s), 3733MiB/s-3733MiB/s (3914MB/s-3914MB/s), io=10.0GiB (10.7GB), run=2743-2743msec lancemini@Lance-Mini ~ %

[@VAFlash]

The links to the enclosures don't work by the way..

[@MacSoundSolutions]

if you copy paste in your browser it works not sure why it is not forwarding properly go.sjv.io/9LeBxQ

[@MacSoundSolutions]

click on this and it works thanks for the heads up.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

fixed not weird not sure as it was the same. go.sjv.io/9LeBxQ

[@LetWatersSing]

Yes, seriously the 256GB internal SSD is very poor to today's standards, I think it's the BIG bottleneck to the whole system to keep it's performance down making the consumer pay for the 512/ 1TB internal SSD which is much faster... The more I think about it the more I will wait for the M4 Mac Studio, maybe even the Ultra, depending on how that works out...

[@johnnydswing]

Exactly what I’m doing after the Mac four Studio comes out I will decide what I’m gonna do.

[@mauriceschoenen]

The 256 GB has almost the same speed as the 512 GB with two NAND modules.

[@rohithmekala2608]

Thats why its better to use a very fast 1TB or more external SSD as your start up disk

[@brandonhowlett7781]

I think you are maxing out ram. If you are having to use the page file, you will be running at a much slower speed.

[@gaiustacitus4242]

For a test to be meaningful it must be repeated many times, the 5% of highs and lows thrown out, and the 90% of times in the middle averaged.

[@francescodamico1123]

Hey Lance, This is probably the wrong video to ask you this, but it's your latest, So... Anyway, a month ago, I did the whole home User to the external drive thing on my Mini4 as to your videos. Everything was working great! Then the other day I updated to OS 15.3 (the newest version) and it seems to have done a kind of factory reset. I tried to do a time machine reboot and it only sort of worked. My user path remained connected to the external user, but even though all my apps are there, I had to re-log into everything as if I just bought them. Also all my safari bookmarks are gone. I'm totally confused. I'm wondering if you or anyone else has experienced this with the latest OS update? Do you have any suggestions? Thanks again!

[@oldmanvn]

What are the fiile format of your external drives?

[@MacSoundSolutions]

APFS

[@WilliamAshleyOnline]

Yeah my guess is that the cooling solution in the mac mini is a little tighter probably not an effective cooling solution since the ssd is sharing cooling with the mac mini cpu/which is also running ram and gpu tasks etc.. so its a lot more stuff producing heat which is probably why the thermal solution isn't as effective.. it probably my guess is because the ssd is probably on the bottom of the system rather than the top and spaced away from cpu and ram, just a guess. A stand alone external enclosure has dedicated cooling and is usually a surrounded heat sink so it makes sense the thermal solution there will be more effective since the mac mini is probably sealed and gas vapor exchange perhaps its fairly static The life of these systems is probably designed to be less than the ssd read write lifespan, so while the heat probably will degrade performance over time, apple has a history of wanting its endusers to upgrade to newer products 3 or so years later.

[@cyborgmetropolis7652]

How many Mac Minis does it take to run the largest DeepSeek LLM?

[@drdouglasritchie]

All in all do you recommend the Zike or Acasis? I have one ea and want to replace an Orico that I have.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@drdouglasritchie depends on the computer, both have worked well for my external user account drive. Speed wise they are not that different. Acasis will be releasing a new Thunderbolt 5 / pcie 5.0 enclosure soon that will be the fastest yet.

[@artysanmobile]

Drive manus are cagey about their cache/non-cache copy speeds. I have an old 480GB SSD which is single bit protocol, essentially all cache. It’s speed is not too amazing but it does not change, which is nice to see.

[@Nico-ef5fe]

What do you recommend people do with macbook airs? similar kinda thing, with a usb3 version external? i have a teamgroup nvme and a usb external i was debating moving home folder of one of my users so i can save teh 256gb ssd love my mac mini m4 and i run an external on that pc. a maiwo external 40gbps one

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@Nico-ef5fe I have a MacBook Air M2 and I connected my Mac Mini Zike Drive user account drive to the MBA no problem. Although I have found the MacBook Air is a little weird with writing to the Zike Drive with Orico NVMe got really slow right speeds when doing a fairly large transfer to it so you wanna find an NVMe that works well with the MacBook Air for reading and writing before committing to it for your external home folder. The Acasis enclosure with Western digital seem to perform much better as far as a large transfer off the MacBook Air to the drive but I have to play around with it a bit more

[@Nico-ef5fe]

@@MacSoundSolutions Thats amazing. Do you have an older video on how you have your M2 air setup? Would love to see that, or if there is no video maybe you could make one?. I know wealth simple had a promo where a ton of m2air hit the market. i got myself a m2 air for 850$cad (16gb / 256gb ssd), And i have the teamgroup nvme inside an enclosure (maiwo 40gbps). and i have my mac mini m4 setup with the home folder moved. so thats why i thought about the external idea I know the maiwo runs faster than the internal storage of my m2air.

[@JudgeFredd]

Very very interesting results !

[@artysanmobile]

Copies of this nature are daily occurrences. HD video editors use RAID-format disk arrays for all their access. My audio session files have routinely been 200GB to 400GB for long live tracking of 140 track sessions. This is routine in episodic music performance show records. I just plan coffee or meal breaks when I need to duplicate. The program I use, Pro Tools, is the real bottle neck so large copies are done in the Finder.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

Yea I also use pro tools and was always using my MacBook Pro 2012 for tracking with a HD native rig 48 inputs while also recording a live stream at 1080p with my trusty MacBook Pro had two internal SSD‘s and I did all the recording on the second SSD the fact that could even handle it was pretty amazing. Never let me down quad core. i7 and I’d be using all the ports for the video switcher and ProTools, so I always had to copy the data off at the end of the night to give to the artists and those damn USB three ports with sometimes drop down to USB two speeds I found I had to reboot run the speed test to make sure the drive was reading and writing at the correct speed and then transfer the data off, but sometimes it was painfully slow at 1am and usually 100 gigs or so.

[@artysanmobile]

@ Yes, those copies were inevitably STARTED about midnight or later. For a while, I had a big ass UPS on my Pro Tools rack that could power my computer and drives for a very long time. I recall being so impatient I would Save Copy As…, strike everything else and leave my Pro Tools connected to power with not a worry in the world. It might be power next to the men’s room in the backstage hallway. I’d come back with the truck dark, cases lined up, and one of them churning away, LEDs blinking.

[@mikepxg6406]

Interesting Test. Thank you...But you are going to wear out your drives with these tests. In the real world they are all fast so no need to stress over it.

[@Csnumber1]

What this test really confirms is that in real world application, no one would be transferring 175, much less 400g to your internal SSD. I mean really, what for?? If you have those sizes to transfer, which would be VIDEO, no doubt, but default, you would download to a an external SSD as I do. My internal SSD is ONLY used for Program Applications, and it works seamlessly with my Docked Dual SSDs as a Video Editor. Apple SSD drives are optimized for the Apple OS, thats why they cost more…they aren’t standard Drives and it perplexes me that people who “test” these machines say things like “Apple Tax”…its not. You cant access Apple AI using an off brand SSD, and I don’t recommend using an external for a Boot drive for an Apple Silicon machine.

[@rapid13]

This. Love my M4 Mini.

[@TyParmenter]

I’m not sure that’s true, that Apple SSD’s are special in any way. Jeff Geerling has a video where he replaced his internal ssd with an after market upgrade. The Apple ssd just had the NAND chips on them and no controller. He was able to upgrade to 2TB for around $260, and everything was running smoothly. Maybe worth a watch if anyone’s curious.

[@rapid13]

@ I’ve seen that and I don’t believe he tested Apple AI.

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@Csnumber1 Sure lots of folks don’t transfer a lot of data but, I transfer that much data all the time, off and on the internal drive. As an audio engineer who does backups of my stuff at the end of shows to and from the internal hard drive depending while capturing live stream video / multitracking at 96k 32 bit. I also do screen captures with QuickTime a ton which get recorded internally then need to be copied off. Apple AI runs off the internal system only, not news to me, I have a video on it. Apples ssd are stock NAND chips only their controller is proprietary, as I’m sure you have seen folks upgrading the base model minis with internal ssd upgrades from china. The old Mac Pro does not throttle down like the mini does just some facts to each their own with workflow.

[@jansix4287]

@@MacSoundSolutions The old Mac Pro had how many SSD chips in it and how big of a cache? We’re talking about the entry level cheapest Mac in the lineup. Let it throttle after lots of Gigabytes written to the internal SSD. Not long ago we had a SATA2 limit of theoretical 300 MB/s.

[@HannibalLecter68]

Hmmm, interesting results. MM 4 with 16/512 would be to small for me. 512 already filled up to 60-70%. Hence 1TB would be the option ... BUT: That's 1150€ and still not the SSD size I like to have.... No, no, Apple super tax for furthermore plus, quite soon, Trump-tax on top. I'm out...

[@logiclust]

science

[@gianlucab2261]

New SSD are faster than used SSD. Comparison with internal NANDs was flawed from the very beginning ;-)

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@gianlucab2261 they are all new

[@vladislavtolmachev2767]

Lance, what utility you use for a speed test? Thank you

[@MacSoundSolutions]

@@vladislavtolmachev2767 iStat menus, they updated it though and I don’t like the new version so I’m using the older version. I have to install the new version and play with it so more but you can also use apples activity monitor app in the utility’s folder to see read write speeds

[@georgiafatboymowingandtrac7293]

I have the Acasis 40Gbps ad the Orico 2TB NVME. I have no issues with Read and Write speeds. But I am not transferring 175 GB either. M4 Mac Mini base model. Great video thanks!

[@vladislavtolmachev2767]

Thank you. ​@@MacSoundSolutions

[@christianmaxpicellicorrea5298]

@@georgiafatboymowingandtrac7293 its better than TB5, believe me...I have one too. I do transfer 400gb in 7 min.

[@trickiejohn]

This was enlightening, thanks. I only have the Mini but 512 of ram , 256 storage. On my radar is the 1 or 2tb diy storage option. It would be nice to see the differences between that, the basic and. The pro. Keep up the good work 👍