Quote:
Originally Posted by OtinG
Thanks for the report! Those are very good speeds. The 2020 M1 MacBook Air has a Thunderbolt 3 (USB 4) port capable of up to 5000MB/s. The 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 has a USB 3.1 gen 2 port capable of 1250 MB/s. Both are impressive speeds.
The WRITE speeds with your 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 are twice as fast as those with my MacBook Pro and the SanDisk 250GB SSD, although the READ speeds are much slower. I got 428 MB/s READ and and 89 MB/s WRITE, but the same SSD on my iPad Air 2020 only had 112 MB/s READ and 17 MB/s WRITE so it got left in the dust on that test. But like you said, the larger capacity the SSD or flash drive, the higher the "up to" speeds claimed by the manufacturers. I assume that up to a certain point, the faster the USB port on a Mac or iPad will result in faster READ/WRITE speeds from the connected storage device as well. A faster port probably won't help much or any with an older USB 2 device, but hopefully it would help a bit with USB 3 drives.
I'm very impressed with your Crucial MX500 2TB. It obtains 3.5x faster WRITE speeds on your M1 Mac Air than my SanDisk 256GB SSD does on my MacBook Pro. At 89 MB/s, the SanDisk SSD is really a bit too slow for me to process Lightroom files directly off of it. I can do it, but it noticeably slows down the processing and gets rather laggy at times. But with 300 MB/s WRITE speeds I doubt it would be as noticeable, if at all. Unfortunately, the iPad Air 2020 with Lightroom app won't allow processing of externally stored files. The app or the iPad prevents this, either way it means I have to first move the files to the iPad then process them thereon before returning them to the external storage drive. But that Crucial MX500 2TB on my older MacBook Pro would likely allow me to process Lightroom files directly from it, and that in itself would save me a lot of time. Just copying 30 GB of RAW files to and from my SanDisk SSD takes several minutes.
|
Keep in mind I had the Crucial formatted as APFS.
Chances are your SanDisk SSD may be capable of better write speeds on both Mac and iPad. The question is are you willing to reformat it to APFS?
Mind, the larger the capacity of the SSD or flash drive, the higher the chances of those actually meeting the manufacturer's "up-to" speed since these basically function like internal RAID-0. Unless, of course, the manufacturer is simply quoting theoretical bus speeds. There's always some real-world losses so you never really get that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OtinG
Is this the SSD you have?
And is this or this the kind of SATA to USB adapter you used?
And lastly, which format would you use, APFS?
I would like to get something like that for my MacBook Pro 2014 because it has only a 250GB internal SSD. I don’t want to mess with having that replaced with a larger one. I'm of the thought that if it works don't mess with it! But I would like an external SSD fast enough to process Lightroom galleries and video directly from it. I'm currently using the SanDisk mentioned in earlier posts, but it is only 250GB and too slow. I don't care about portability as this drive would remain with my MacBook Pro all the time. The portable SSD drives at 2TB cost considerably more than the ones like you have.
Basically, I want to extend out the usefulness of my old MacBook Pro for a couple more years or so. Plus you can never have too many backup drives. |
The BX500 is a cheaper version that doesn't have DRAM, I believe. You'll have to check out the reviews for that one to see how performance compares. I seem to recall thinking that price was too close to SSDs with DRAM to make it worth the performance inconsistencies.
The MX500 is the drive I tested ($210 right now but got it for $185 on sale during World Backup Day or something):
2TB:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B078C515QL/
I believe the WD Blue 3D is pretty much the same drive but goes on sale more often and is slightly cheaper at the moment.
2TB:
https://smile.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-2...dp/B073SBRHH6/
This is the adapter I used:
https://smile.amazon.com/Rosewill-Ad...dp/B06WVDK9QD/
You might also want to consider the Samsung T5 (SATA-based) so you won't need to buy a separate USB3/C-SATA adapter.
1TB:
https://smile.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-...dp/B073H552FJ/
2TB:
https://smile.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-...dp/B073H4GPLQ/
The Samsung T7 (PCIe-based) is pricier per GB but offers faster performance:
1TB:
https://smile.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Por...dp/B0874YJP92/
Errata: It's the SanDisk Ultra and WD Blue 3D that are similar. MX500 uses different controller and NAND, I believe. Mind, performance is pretty similar on all the high-end 3D TLC SATA SSDs (Samsung 860 EVO, Crucial MX500, WD Blue 3D) anyway so I usually just grab whichever one's on sale.