I ordered a Mac Studio & plan to move my Lightroom photos to an external drive. My plan is to purchase an OWC Express 1M2 enclosure & install a 4Tb NVMe M.2 drive. Since the OWC enclosure has a rated speed of 3,151 Mb/s, I need an external drive with a comparable speed (without a faster speed that cannot be utilized). Brands like OWC, Samsung & Crucial come to mind. I would appreciate your recommendations on a high-quality drive that meets the above criteria. Thank you so much for any help.
Recommendations on NVMe M.2 External Drive
- Thread starter kitjv
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I did a great deal of research before making the decision you are about to. A great deal, and I have purchased a whole lot of goods from macsales.com (aka OWC), but in the end I concluded that, after watching what I could find on YouTube, the best way to go is with the ACASIS 40Gbps M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure that I purchased from Amazon,
on the right, about a year and a half ago. They have since come out with a smaller profile (left) which runs even faster and cooler. And cheaper. Just to show you how much I trust the brand, I also purchased their newest one, with built-in cooling fan, but after trying it, it did not run any cooler than the above, and puts out an audible hum. I set it aside to give away in future.
I purchased both the 4 TB Western Digital SN850X and the 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro that I returned and replaced with an identical Western Digital SN850X. I initially placed them directly on top of the Studio, which worked perfectly as a heatsink, but later tried silicone feet on them, and there was no appreciable temperature differences.
Now don’t expect to get performances anywhere near the Studio’s internal SSD. Apple uses dual chips to effectively run them in Raid 0. But I’m perfectly happy with them.
Reads average about 50% compared to the Apple internal, writes about 35%. Believe me, they don’t feel slow. I watched virtually all of the YT videos, including OWC, and none compared with the Acasis I settled with. I will be keeping them when I upgrade my Studio Pro to the next generation M4. Happy hunting!
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You’re welcome. You can also take solace in the fact that temperature is what concerns me foremost. In the years I had been using these SSDs, and my system pretty much running 24/7, they have never recorded anything even close to being concerned about. I use DriveDx to closely monitor all my drives, SSDs and HDs. The WDs report a lifetime average temperature range of 32.0°C/47.0°C (min/max), while Western Digital specified range is 5.0°C/94.0°C and recommended range is 5.0°C/94.0°C. (I have no plans to move to Antarctica.)
I don’t usually pay for utility software but in this case, knowing how important it is, I did pay for DriveDx. Disk Utility will never have this much detailed information on any drive, HD or SSD.
Well, Tony, taking your recommendation I purchased the ACASIS. enclosure. Having had no problems with Crucial memroy over the years, I opted for one of their NVMe M.2 drives. Now it's just a matter of waiting for all of the new computer hardware to come in & getting everything set up. Thank you again.
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Nice. This YT video shows the process of putting the thing together, and this fellow also opted for the Crucial drive.
I tried both the Crucial and the Samsung 990 Pro SSDs but I ended up getting the Western Digitals because of the slight speed advantage. You should be good with either.