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Mac Mini M1 - SLOW EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE SPEED

What a bummer, because I love the Mini M1.


I bought USB3 SSD bays for the Mini.

I get around 35 to 40 MBits/s in read/write on Samsung EVO850s which should go up to 3GB/s with USB3.


I bought expensive shielded USB cables to no avail at all.

Later I thought the specs of the SSD BAY must be wrong and I used direct SATA USB three cables.

You guess it, there is no change at all.


I reformatted both disks to APFS.

NO CHANGE- still super slow speed.


IMO it makes no sense to limit the USB port speed?

Why should Apple do this?

The whole USB3 thing would not make any sense?


IMO propper running USB ports is a fairly low standard, which always worked on my new macs since 1996.


Any hint is welcome to make the external SSDs run much faster.


MAC MINI M1 2020

Macmini9,1

RAM: 16 GB

OSX: Big Sur 11.6.1





Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Dec 17, 2021 5:11 PM

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Posted on Dec 18, 2021 3:54 AM

well 35 to 40 MBits/s is pretty much the sustainable transfer rate one can expect from usb-2

if it was me then I would test it with another computer to verify if the device was running in usb2 mode

and or if your mac was causing it to run in usb2 mode

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8 replies

Dec 20, 2021 2:58 AM in response to Rudegar

Just for information with the right tools the USB A ports go up to 330 MB/s.

I assume this is due to the age of the SSDs they should go up to ø 500 MB/s but in audio, there can be a lot of writes and reading.


I ordered an USB C Cable and will check if this changes anything in speed.

It makes sense to upgrade at least to the new Samsungs T7 which go up to ø 1200 MB/s and using a T bolt enclousure.


Guys have a nice chistmas and a happy new year.

Thanks again.

Dec 20, 2021 4:53 AM in response to logicpro7composer

logicpro7composer wrote:
......
It makes sense to upgrade at least to the new Samsungs T7 which go up to ø 1200 MB/s and using a T bolt enclousure.
....

The T7 is a completely integrated USB device and cannot be put into a TB enclosure, if I understand what you said correctly.


Now if you were talking about a T7 or a TB enclosure then that is different.


As far as the T7 and M1 Macs, you will disappointingly only get the data speeds of a 5Gb/sec connection instead of the 10 Gb/sec speeds that Samsung claims. There is an issue with Apple's implementation of the USB-C ports and Samsungs implementation that limits the transfer speeds.


As far a using a Thunderbolt3 enclosure with an NVMe SSD, with the right combo of card and enclosure you can achieve real read/write speeds in the neighbor hood of 1200 MB/s to 2400 MB/s. The reason I say right combo, despite all manufacturer claims, some cards can perform well in a given enclosure while others won't and the combo may work well on Macs and not PCs and visa-versa.

Mac Mini M1 - SLOW EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE SPEED

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