Does it make sense to buy a fast NVME and put it in an external enclosure?
Posted by mfaine@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 28 comments
I was thinking of putting a Sabrent Rocket 5 in an enclosure like the Satechi USB4 NVMe SSD Pro Enclosure but would it ever max out the speed over even a Thunderbolt connection? I know the NVME is advertised at 14GB/s and the enclosure can do 40GB/s with Thunderbolt but are those speeds realistic considering the bottleneck of the PCIe interface of the motherboard. I mean maybe you could get higher speeds if you installed it to the motherboard but externally you'd be capped by the PCIe bandwidth?
makoblade@reddit
If you have the slot on your mobo, there's no reason not to use it.
There's nothing wrong with an nvme in an enclosure either, but what are you trying to do with it? With the mention of USB4 should I assume you want this as a sort of internal replacement?
mfaine@reddit (OP)
External storage for work and personal files. My work pc disk is small and I can't modify it. I need a place to put VMs but most external drives are too slow for that.
I also use it for one of my backups, it's the 2nd media type of 321
makoblade@reddit
That's reasonable, and in your described scenario it's totally valid. Not sure I'd go out of my way for an NVME in a USB4 enclosure for it, but using a removable SSD makes sense plenty of times.
rfc21192324@reddit
When using a drive via enclosure, speed is not the primary objective. The point is portability.
That said, these USB connections are not meant to be used for long running critical workloads. They’re prone to disconnecting or going into sleep mode at an unfortunate moment, causing potential data loss.
I have been using the Sabrent USB NVME enclosure. It just refuses to work with some drives outright. With some others - works at the max speed fully saturating the USB channel. It is a hit and miss.
aminy23@reddit
Generally with USB, my rule of thumb is divide by 10 to get close to the real speed:
* USB 3.AbsoluteNonsense:
* Gen 1 - 5 Gigabits = Around 500 megabytes per second * Gen 2 - 10 Gigabits = Around 1 gigabytes per second * Gen 2x2 - 20 Gigabits = Around 2 gigabytes per second * Thunderbolt 3-4 - 40 Gigabits = Around 4 gigabytes per second
In reality it's officially 8 bits is a byte, but these are theoretical maximum speeds which are never achieved hence my rule of divide by 10.
In fact Thunderbolt really just funnels DisplayPort and PCIe Gen 3 X4 over USB-C. PCIe Gen 3 X4 typically results in a max speed of around 3.75 per second for an SSD, so even below 4.
If we look at the fastest SSDs, only a couple Crucial models can sustain speed over 2 gigabytes per second for things like basic file transfers: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/HbGLNqZcG9QVEjQ7fPE4F3-1200-80.png.webp
Achieving these high speeds with NVMe SSDs requires running multiple tasks in parallel, making it all the more pointless for an external drives.
_Spastic_@reddit
"absolute nonsense" lmao. Definitely! The renaming of USB 3.xx is insane and while I understand why they did it, it only helped manufacturing, it is a hindrance to consumers.
Sabrent_America@reddit
It makes it a pain for product manufacturers like us. We do carefully try to list the specific generation and speed of USB for all our products in the last few years. So, we'll say 10Gbps and USB 3.2 Gen 2x1. This can make manuals and packaging very cumbersome to read for users.
_Spastic_@reddit
I can't disclose my company or their products from my personal account but I absolutely get ya.
We have customers who use your products and I appreciate when there's good documentation. Thanks for your work.
Sabrent_America@reddit
Absolutely. We welcome any feedback on documentation but there are limitations/guidelines we have to follow which sometimes means less is more. It's a careful balance between putting something 'in English' while still covering the technical bases for enthusiasts, and USB terminology makes that very challenging.
It also means we have to test products locally to make sure the reported speeds are attainable on such and such hardware, which introduces caveats/notes into the literature that we want in there but not taking up multiple pages.
aminy23@reddit
The XX is complete nonsense, the Gen 1, Gen 2, and Gen 2x2 is the actual thing:
* 3.0 = 3.1 Gen 1 = 3.2 Gen 1 * 3.1 Gen 2 = 3.2 Gen 2
3.1 is renamed 3.0, 3.2 is renamed 3.1 - it's not even changed at a technical level.
It's almost as bad as AMD's CPU naming: * Ryzen 1000: * Zen 1 if the model number no une uses ends in AE * Zen 1+ if the model number ends in AF, however it does not have Windows 11 support like other Zen 1+ CPUs * Ryzen 2000: * Zen 1 if it ends in a G with no Windows 11 support * Zen 1+ otherwise * Ryzen 3000: * Zen 1+ if it ends in a G * Zen 2 otherwise * Ryzen 4000: * Zen 2 * Ryzen 5000 * Zen 2 if it's a mobile chip and the number after the 5 is even, Zen 3 otherwise * No PCIe 4 and reduced cache if it ends in a G, or is the 5500 or 5700 * Ryzen 6000: * Zen 3 * Ryzen 7000: * Zen 4 if it's a dekstop CPU * If it's a mobile CPU it can now be Zen 2, 3, or 4; the second number after the 7 determines the zeneration, for example a 7520U is Zen 2. * Ryzen 8000: * Zen 4 and 4C but often without X16 support and lacking PCIe 5 * Ryzen 9000: * Zen 5 * Ryzen AI Max Plus Pro CPU: * I give up
jfriend00@reddit
For USB 3.x, just pay attention to whether it's 5Gbps, 10Gbps or 20Gbps. Fortunately, many motherboard manufacturers (in modern motherboards) are actively labelling the speed on the port connector now. That solve the confusion entirely. For pre-builts, yeah it's still confusing unless the marketing is talking about speeds instead of version numbers.
aminy23@reddit
That mostly works, but many devices don't like listing it.
X2 mode is exclusive to USB-C since it's uses both sides of the reversible connector simultaneously which doubles the speed.
Technically Gen 1X2 and Gen 2 can each be 10 gigabits, but not intercompatible at more than 1/2 that.
lichtspieler@reddit
To make things worse, not all mainboard actually have the 100% bandwith for specs like USB 3.2 Gen 2. With some boards thats on a few USB ports just 500 / 750 MB/s but not even close to 9xx MB/s.
The results from odd bifurcation or simply bad designs if you utilize multiple I/O at once.
I wish the popular mainboard reviews would actually - review the boards - to validate implemented features, instead of talking half a hour about paint jobs and RGB.
mfaine@reddit (OP)
Lol yes I got a kick out of that too.
bosongas@reddit
Avoid at all cost. I use an ext 1tb SSD as an emergency solution. It very impractical to have it hanging at the Side of my Laptop, it also uses one of the USB Ports. Windows ist also Semi-Happy with removing it. No.
mfaine@reddit (OP)
I hate how windows will never give your disk back when you try to eject. This doesn't happen in Linux. I have to just pull the plug every time on windows though.
VoidNinja62@reddit
I use USB 3.X external drives and they typically get around 800MB/s real world.
If you use like thunderbolt and a fancy cable and all this stuff I think 1000MB/s is pushing it.
The thing is that random read speeds are still very good depending on the performance of the SSD. I think a Sabrent is overkill for an external SSD.
Honestly getting a real external drive just rated around 800-1050MB/s is more realistic for USB 3.X speeds.
I've always had a hard time really utilizing anything higher than USB 3.0 with any reliability. I'm not sure if USB 3.2 requires special higher quality cables or whats going on.
Like your typical USB 800-1050MB/s is the mainstream for a reason. Don't get me wrong I love my USB external drives and they're great for gaming you just aren't getting Sabrent Rocket speeds out of them.
mfaine@reddit (OP)
I've also had trouble getting reliable high speed transfers with 3.2. I've always thought I was doing something wrong or perhaps it's just marketing and to achieve what they advertise is not possible in the real world. They make it nearly impossible to know there are so many asterisks and caveats a even a lawyer might consider it a shameful. It's like they don't actually want us to know what performance can really be expected. There should be a law requiring independent testing and an easy to verify real world transfer speed for read and writes clearly printed on the marketing information and packaging.
I don't think in all my years of buying storage has any of it ever met the marketing claims in my actual usage. Some of that could be my fault for not using the proper cable or whatever but not all of it.
I'm trying to find the sweet spot between performances and price or in other words I'm trying to get what I paid for.
netsx@reddit
To reach 14 GB/s you'd need to be connected directly to PCIe (or via passive adaptercard). Not only that, but it has to be a x4 PCIe 5.0 port, or x8 PCIe 4.0 port to be able to reach that speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express
mfaine@reddit (OP)
Yes that's what I thought. So it seems like buying a fast nvme for external use is never going to be worth it. You'll never get close to the advertised speeds.
Sabrent_America@reddit
The fastest enclosure that we have coming out right now is Thunderbolt 5 which can use four PCIe 4.0 lanes for up to 64Gbps of throughput which, in the real world, is in the 6+ GB/s range. While this is significantly slower than the maximum speed of the Rocket 5, it's plenty for the sustained write speed of the drive. If you check the Tom's Hardware review, you'll see it's the fastest drive for sustained writes as we optimized it for that. This amounts to about 4.45 GB/s. So, for large transfers you would not technically be bottlenecked.
importflip@reddit
The only time I've ever used a NVME enclosure was to clone the old drive to the new one before replacing it in the motherboard.
fumandrewfoo@reddit
No. Upgrade your pc drive with the fast one and put your old one in an enclosure.
Hatta00@reddit
Yes for sure. Way better than any USB drive you can get.
Gigumfats@reddit
What do you mean? You'd be limited by the USB interface. You aren't using the PCIe interface if you connect externally via USB...
HankHippoppopalous@reddit
I mean, the dollar cost average usually makes sense to me. The difference on the enclosure costs are only a few bucks usually?
winterkoalefant@reddit
It does not make sense. Thunderbolt is 40 Gb/s, not GB/s. You would be severely limited by Thunderbolt.
Xcissors280@reddit
I think your going to end up with a gigabits vs gigabytes issue in addition to thunderbolt reserving a lot of its bandwidth for displayport