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User profile for user: gconley
gconley Author
User level: Level 1
12 points

Best External HD to match with Air?

Hi guys, I am going to be going from a late 2013 iMac to the MacBook Air once the M4 chip comes out. My question is what external would match up well with being as fast an efficient as the drive on the Air? I did a disk speed test a few days ago on my iMac and i had 220MB/s Write speeds and 529.8 MB/s Read speed. I tested the external im using with it and that was 57MB/s Write and Read was 81.5MB/s


I don't want to cheap out on an external that is much slower than how the drive on the air is running, that would be silly to me. Im just not sure what speeds or jargon to look for when shopping for an external. Not even sure what speeds the drives are running on the M3 airs.


Thanks guys

iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 15, 2024 6:08 AM

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User profile for user: neuroanatomist
neuroanatomist
User level: Level 9
50,221 points

Posted on Nov 15, 2024 6:41 AM

Nothing will ‘keep up’ with the internal SSD, because that is literally integrated into the logic board. The fastest current SSDs use Thunderbolt 5, but it’s not known if the M4 Air will even have TB5 (given that the base M4 Pro has only TB4, I suspect the Air will also have TB4).


TB4 can reach 40 Gbps = 5000 MB/s. The T7 drives are a respectable 1050 MB/s. Unless you’re constantly copying very large files back and forth, that speed is fine.


As an example, Time Machine backups to a 5 TB HDD used to take between 20-40 minutes for a week’s worth of changes. On the same Mac, the T7 SSD takes 3-5 min.


If you really want the fastest, look for an nvme enclosure and install the SSD in it yourself. That will get you to ~2600 MB/s. An off the shelf Samsung T9 gets you to 2000 MB/s.


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User profile for user: neuroanatomist
neuroanatomist
User level: Level 9
50,221 points

Nov 15, 2024 6:41 AM in response to gconley

Nothing will ‘keep up’ with the internal SSD, because that is literally integrated into the logic board. The fastest current SSDs use Thunderbolt 5, but it’s not known if the M4 Air will even have TB5 (given that the base M4 Pro has only TB4, I suspect the Air will also have TB4).


TB4 can reach 40 Gbps = 5000 MB/s. The T7 drives are a respectable 1050 MB/s. Unless you’re constantly copying very large files back and forth, that speed is fine.


As an example, Time Machine backups to a 5 TB HDD used to take between 20-40 minutes for a week’s worth of changes. On the same Mac, the T7 SSD takes 3-5 min.


If you really want the fastest, look for an nvme enclosure and install the SSD in it yourself. That will get you to ~2600 MB/s. An off the shelf Samsung T9 gets you to 2000 MB/s.


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Best External HD to match with Air?

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