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Hi all,

Geting a new Mac Mini, and I'm going to pull out the SSD that is the boot drive on my old Mac Pro, and make it into an external "project drive". It's a Samsung 840 EVO. My question is, if I use an enclosure with a USB 3.1 Gen 1, or USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface will it matter, or will the speed of the SSD (SATAIII) drive be the bottleneck?

Thanks.

I think so. The drive can’t go any faster than it can go. I’m pretty sure if there’s a slow drive on the bus, everything else on the bus will be slower. Just like mass transit systems. Lol

I guess a better, and more succinct question is, can my Samsung 840 EVO SSD utilize an USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure?

I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be fine. Does the mfg site have any clues?

I'm using a Mini with a somewhat newer Samsung SSD but on a USB3.1-2 connection. In your case, unless by some coincidence, the SSD and the connection speeds match, one will throttle the other, but it will still be plenty fast enough for a project drive. Worst case, you can do heavy duty tracking to the startup drive in the Mini and then consolidate projects to the project drive.

Over the past 6 months, I've opted to keep using my older stuff with the new Mini until it comes to its normal end of life, and then get newer things, and this has worked out fine so far.

The SATA III SSD is the bottleneck. USB 3, 3.1, TB doesn’t matter. I have all 3 enclosures and decided to do a file transfer test. No difference. A 50GB file takes about 3 minutes. (USB 2 — over 4 minutes)

I have a TB 2 dock with two drives through the Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter. The only advantage that Thunderbolt gives is that you can enable TRIM. Not a big issue if you’re using it mainly for read only — normal Garbage Collection is fine. TRIM is not supported over USB on a Mac.

Your active project should be on your internal drive for best results. If you plan to use an external for all your projects including the active ones, budget for a Samsung X5. It’s nearly as fast as the internal SSD and supports TRIM by running the Terminal command. An X5 can only be used on 2017 and later Macs that have Thunderbolt 3. The TB2–TB3 adapter cannot pass the bus power required by the X5.

If you need to make room on the internal, one way is to move iTunes to your 840. In Mojave, This can be done seamlessly without using symbolic links or aliases. Apple has a support doc on this. My iTunes library is over 300GB so this is a nice feature.

I finally discovered the importance of TRIM. I was setting up my iMac Pro and moving Komplete to one of my external SSDs. This meant downloading and having the control center installing onto the external after I set the paths etc. Although the files download, expand, install and are gone from the boot drive, they aren’t really gone yet. TRIM and Garbage Collection use down time to purge the cells and prepare them to accept new data. With over 600GB of data, I actually got a disk full error though the directory showed I had plenty of room. I stopped, waited overnight and began again in the morning.

TRIM is automatically enabled on the boot drive. To enable it on external SSDs over Thunderbolt, run sudo trimforce enable in Terminal. Interestingly, if one boots from a Samsung X5, it’s enabled by default.

Yeah regardless of SSD or not, the SATA interface has a limit and thats all its going to get.. Its still plenty fast enough though. The only way you would get full USB 3.1 speeds out of it would be by using an NvMe drive directly on a PCI-e card.

I finally got a USB 3.1 card earlier this year and after all these years hooked up my USB3 WD MyBook drive thats my Time Machine backup.. That thing flies now compared to what it used to do, and its a Gen 1 connection. When I had to do a full backup of the system (good old Time Machine issues filling up the drive), it was pretty much start it, come back the next day, and all 4TB would be done. Now it can start it, go to work and its finished by my lunch break heh.

I do TM over Gig Ethernet or 802.11ac wireless only. No sleep or data interruptions ever.

mikehalloran wrote:I do TM over Gig Ethernet or 802.11ac wireless only. No sleep or data interruptions ever.

Not a single interruption here, other than Time Machines own issues whether that drive was connected over the built in system USB or the new card. The last time this Mac probably 'slept' was when it was tested for it at the factory heh.

As Martha Graham used to say, you’ll have plenty of time to rest when you’re dead. My drives and system never sleep. I do shut off my monitors, especially the 30” Cinema, when I’m away for more than 10 min or so.

Interestingly, if I start up a spinner after the Track 16 is on I will lose connectivity to the T16 and have to restart it. I attribute that to the TB to FW converters, but I digress.

Thanks for all the help!

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:As Martha Graham used to say, you’ll have plenty of time to rest when you’re dead. My drives and system never sleep. I do shut off my monitors, especially the 30” Cinema, when I’m away for more than 10 min or so.

Interestingly, if I start up a spinner after the Track 16 is on I will lose connectivity to the T16 and have to restart it. I attribute that to the TB to FW converters, but I digress.

Does the Cinema put itself to sleep or turn off after any inactivity?? I use a 32" Samsung LCD here and it does its own power down thing after it gets no signal for a bit (I think its 10 minutes). My Mac is set so the screensaver come on after 10 minutes (which also locks the screen), and it puts the display to sleep after 20 (I might have taken a smoke break or something and will be back). Once the video card shuts off, the TV senses the input going down and shuts itself off automatically after that.

The Cinema does sleep when I turn off the machine, but if I leave the Mac on and take a break, I shut the display off manually. It gets hot!

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:The Cinema does sleep when I turn off the machine, but if I leave the Mac on and take a break, I shut the display off manually. It gets hot!

Ahh dang yeah Id turn it off myself too haha.. Yeah my TV actually powers itself off about 10 minutes after it goes into its 'No signal detected' thing so Ive never had to worry about it hehe. Ill forget about it all the time and leave for like 20-30 minutes and come back and go 'Why the hell is my mouse not waking this up??' oooops gone a bit too long..

Not a single interruption here, other than Time Machines own issues whether that drive was connected over the built in system USB or the new card

Yea.. That can't happen when connected via wireless or ethernet. This is the same as Apple Time Capsules. The USB port can be used for external peripheral devices to be shared over the network, such as external hard drives or printers but it cannot be used for connection to the Mac.