Help Me Decide What to Buy as a Hard Drive Solution. Either M.2 or SSD as a External Drive

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  [Deactivated] on 11/02/2020 - 02:51

  +1

  First up your enclosure and drive you've selected will not work together.
  Your enclosure is NVME (which is faster than SATA).
  Your drive is SATA (which is the same as the non- M.2 drives and no faster.

  NVME drives are generally upwards of 2000mb/s and SATA drives are ~500mb/s. Gen 2 USB-C is fine for a SATA drives though there is some overhead with USB vs internally.
  USB-C Gen 2 is ok for NVME drives (there's some bottlenecking though), but for the best performance you want Thunderbolt 3, though this comes with reduced compatibility.

  It depends a lot on how much you want to store, generally any SSD I would imagine would be enough since you'd be mostly reading I'd imagine and even a basic SATA SSD should read at 300-400mb/s even in a USB gen 2 enclosure.

  If you're definitely going to be using it externally only things like the Samsung T5 are a lot more compact than most drive + enclosure setups and comparable in price on a sale. You can get the X5 if you want the most speed but it comes at a large cost and is overkill for most people.

  Basically if you want 2000mb/s then get an NVME M.2 SSD and NVME enclosure with thunderbolt. (Samsung X5 is the equivalent prebuilt)
  If you want ~1000mb/s then get an NVME M.2 SSD and NVME enclosure with USB-C gen 2.
  If you want ~500mb/s then get an SATA SSD (either M.2 or SATA interface) and a matching SATA enclosure (not the NVME one you linked). (Samsung T2 is the equivalent prebuilt)

  • 

    brendongl on 11/02/2020 - 03:19

    Thanks so much you have given me much to think about.

    At the beginning, i liked the idea of getting a separate drive/enclosure in case i wanted to plug it in my PC later. But you helped me realize getting a proper prebuilt one might be better in the long run since it's for my DJ music.

    Im eyeing the Sandisk Extreme SSD now. Either than or the T5. The rugged approach and water-resistant features are definitely a plus!

    • 

      apsilon on 11/02/2020 - 06:11

      If you want something portable, rugged, waterproof, crush resistant and fast you could also consider the Lacie Rugged SSD and Rugged SSD Pro. Make sure you're sitting down when you look at the price of the Pro. They're expensive but if you need to take data with you and there's a good chance it'll take a few knocks but has to perform when you need it then you have to consider what your time and data is worth.

      EDIT: remember if you're earning income from it you should be able to claim in some way against tax. Your account can best guide you.

      • 

        Caped Baldy on 11/02/2020 - 08:54

        I found the Lacie product range really confusing. Couldn't tell the difference with most models - connections and if it's hdd/ssd. So care should be taken.

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        brendongl on 11/02/2020 - 18:36

        The hard drive I dropped was a rugged 1tb LaCie HDD. I dropped it like…..maybe 30 cm (while it was plugged in and copying data tho).

        It was fine, but now I notice that if I try to access older files, it fails and slows down to like 500kb per second or freezes my machine.

        I did look at the LaCie rugged range, its price tag is pretty high. The Sandisk rugged extreme seems just as good for less of a premium price.

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  pjetson on 11/02/2020 - 08:51

  I dropped it slightly

  How do you drop something "slightly"? :-)

  Anyway, it's not really the drop that kills the drive, it's the sudden stop at the end of the fall. What did you drop it on?

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    brendongl on 11/02/2020 - 18:39

    It's a lacie rugged hdd. I dropped it on the floor, while it was in use, maybe a 30cm drop. It survived, well atleast i thought. And now only realising its faulty because when i access older files it slows down to a crawl and crashes my DJ software.

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  kaleidoscope on 11/02/2020 - 12:04

  +1

  Is usb3.0 gen 1 going to achieve the same speeds with any SSD vs. any m.2 SSD?

  Usb 3.0 = USB 3.1 gen 1 = 5Gbps, USB 3.1 gen 2 = 10Gbps
  What determines is the hdd interface, Sata or nvme ( sata max out prior to 10Gbps, nvme can go beyond)

  What hardware would i need to not bottleneck my m.2 ssd in an enclosure (thunderbolt?, usb C gen 2?, its all abit confusing)

  short answer : thunderbolt (comes at premium price), or consider usb-c

  For longevity, is SSD better, or M.2 SSD?

  ssd and m2 are totally different concepts. M2 is an interface standard and ssd is a storage media type. But I do understand what you are asking. What it really comes to is, if you prefer tiny drive goes with m2 ssd, if you prefer normal sized portable drive, go with 2.5" ssd… Both have have similar lifetime, so either would do.

  ---

  Read below if you need more info.

  I went down the same rabbit hole very recently and would share my experience and advice.

  The speed limitations are determined by 3 factors.
  1. the type of hard drive you use (there are various ssd types, take a look at western digital green / blue / black) and some other manufacturers varients
  2. the type of interface (m2 sata, m2 nvme, sata 3, etc) m2 nvme is the latest and greatest and would cost you alot, m2 sata max out at 6Gb/s due to limitations by sata interface. So if you really want to push the limits to 10Gb/s or even more, you should consider nvme.
  3. Type of external interface (usb-c , usb 3.1 gen2, thunderbolt, usb3.0 etc). Usb-c or usb 3.1 gen 2 would give you max upto 10gb/s rates and thunderbolt even further but comes at a premium costs.

  I personally went with a m2 nvme enclosure by orico which comes with both usb-c to usb-c and usb-c to usb-a cable and for hard drive i. went with wd blue 256gb drive. It far exceeds my expectations for the application i’m using it for. nvme drive when directly attached to my mac gives around 800-900MB/s (6-7Gbps) and for a blue drive its really good.

  I also have a standard 2.5” ssd drive from orico with wd green drive that I use sparingly for older operating systems and they too work quite well without an issue.
  Like I said before explore the different hard drive varients from manufactorers and see what would fit ur budget.

  • 

    brendongl on 11/02/2020 - 18:39

    That is very informative! Thank you for taking the time to explain that to me. Yes, it always seems to confusing trying to keep up with all the new tech specs.
    Since I don't have any thunderbolt ports on any of my devices yet, and only plan to use this for music primarily I think it doesn't make sense to spend money on m2 nvme. 10gb/s is not useful at all unless making a clone of my drive.