M2 Mac mini Pro receiving incorrect "Disk not ejected properly"

[Zephar77]

Receive, after coming out of sleep and occasionally from screen saver, on a new M2 Mac mini Pro Ventura 13.2.1 on thunderbolt 4 port connected to various 1 TB and 2 TB SanDisk SSD's, after after tapping the spacebar, in sleep mode, consistently get incorrect notice "Disk not ejected properly", but the disc has not been disconnected and is securely connected by the USB-C 6 inch connection cables that come with these external SSD's. Concerned this might be a hardware problem, as it only occurs on the fourth thunderbolt 4 USB-C connection closest to the HDMI connector. I'm hoping this is some software problem, but this has occurred since I've had the unit; however, I have not concerned myself with it because they are used with carbon Copy Cloner and immediately disconnected after completion of task. Recently, I have left them connected and after switching three of these external SSD's always get this notice coming out of sleep and occasionally from screensaver.
Has anyone else experience this issue?
Currently talking with Apple Supervisor and we are both perplexed by this and unable to recapitulate the issue while screen sharing. It seems the computer needs to go through what the settings are in lock screen – screensaver 20 minutes, display sleep three hours. We tried changing this to screen saver one minute and display sleep two minutes; but, this did not produce the notice. It seems the computer itself must go to sleep, but selecting sleep from the Apple menu does not yield the notice. Something else is going on. Have erased one of the drives, one 2 TB SanDisk SSD with speed of 1050 Mb per second.
There is a LaCie spinning 4 TB connected to the second thunderbolt 4 port, and the Apple display on the first thunderbolt port, and have never received such notice. Only the fourth thunderbolt port produces this notice, which is now becoming of concern.
Anyone else having this issue or some helpful advice would be appreciated.
Best,
Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Receive, after coming out of sleep and occasionally from screen saver, on a new M2 Mac mini Pro Ventura 13.2.1 on thunderbolt 4 port connected to various 1 TB and 2 TB SanDisk SSD's, after after tapping the spacebar, in sleep mode, consistently get incorrect notice "Disk not ejected properly", but the disc has not been disconnected and is securely connected by the USB-C 6 inch connection cables that come with these external SSD's. Concerned this might be a hardware problem, as it only occurs on the fourth thunderbolt 4 USB-C connection closest to the HDMI connector. I'm hoping this is some software problem, but this has occurred since I've had the unit; however, I have not concerned myself with it because they are used with carbon Copy Cloner and immediately disconnected after completion of task. Recently, I have left them connected and after switching three of these external SSD's always get this notice coming out of sleep and occasionally from screensaver.
Has anyone else experience this issue?
Currently talking with Apple Supervisor and we are both perplexed by this and unable to recapitulate the issue while screen sharing. It seems the computer needs to go through what the settings are in lock screen – screensaver 20 minutes, display sleep three hours. We tried changing this to screen saver one minute and display sleep two minutes; but, this did not produce the notice. It seems the computer itself must go to sleep, but selecting sleep from the Apple menu does not yield the notice. Something else is going on. Have erased one of the drives, one 2 TB SanDisk SSD with speed of 1050 Mb per second.
There is a LaCie spinning 4 TB connected to the second thunderbolt 4 port, and the Apple display on the first thunderbolt port, and have never received such notice. Only the fourth thunderbolt port produces this notice, which is now becoming of concern.
Anyone else having this issue or some helpful advice would be appreciated.
Best,
Seth

Those are NOT incorrect error messages. They indicate a momentary loss of connection between the Mac and the drive. You may have narrowed it down to that one port, so you may want to experiment using a different cable, unless the cable is hard-connected to the SanDisk drive. I have two 4-port Thunderbolt 3 enclosures that comprise at least 20 APFS volumes over the eight drives, so it does get complicated.

It used to happen a lot with a TB enclosure that I tried and ended up replacing it with a better one. I hardly get any of those disconnect errors now, and if they happen, I do go through great lengths to find out the cause. Lately, most of those errors are mitigated by reformatting the suspect drive and restoring from backup. A Caldigit Thunderbolt 4 hub seems to help a lot and it freed up some of the Thunderbolt ports in the Studio. And I even bought those Apple-branded (and very expensive) Thunderbolt 4 cables.

The main thing is that I never brush off those errors.

 

[Zephar77]

Those are NOT incorrect error messages. They indicate a momentary loss of connection between the Mac and the drive. You may have narrowed it down to that one port, so you may want to experiment using a different cable, unless the cable is hard-connected to the SanDisk drive. I have two 4-port Thunderbolt 3 enclosures that comprise at least 20 APFS volumes over the eight drives, so it does get complicated.

It used to happen a lot with a TB enclosure that I tried and ended up replacing it with a better one. I hardly get any of those disconnect errors now, and if they happen, I do go through great lengths to find out the cause. Lately, most of those errors are mitigated by reformatting the suspect drive and restoring from backup. A Caldigit Thunderbolt 4 hub seems to help a lot and it freed up some of the Thunderbolt ports in the Studio. And I even bought those Apple-branded (and very expensive) Thunderbolt 4 cables.

The main thing is that I never brush off those errors.

Thank you for the reply and response and your experience with this issue.
And you are correct, I did reformat two of the drives and the errors stopped, for a while.
However, they returned after a few days.
It's those SanDisk SSD's with the triangular hole on one end and they come with a short 6 inch USB-C cable. The USB – E connections on each end make a solid clicking sound when fully seated into the Mac mini pro. My 2014 iMac thunderbolt two connection will disengage if I move the monitor, the iMac tilt in anyway. It just sits in there without sheeting



I have marked the cables and have narrowed it down to either the port number four or the cable being the problem; but, your experience with reformatting the drive is partially ask consistent with my experience, but did not illuminate entirely. Also, I noticed the notices disappeared after running disk utility first aid. No errors were found, but did mention something about how the disk was formatted and gave a version number of some type. Initially formatted when it was Ventura 13.2. It is now 13.2.1 and wonder if this issue might've been addressed partially with that small update. I did not see anything concerning this.
The SanDisk SSDs are those small rectangular units with the triangular hole on one end. They come with a rather short 6 inch USB-C cable and one adapter for USB-C to USB, so able to use with my 2014 and 2011 iMacs.
If you have any further ideas, please let me know. I will also post any updates to any successes I might have.
The Apple Supervisor is calling me again tomorrow morning as she called this morning with a number of ideas that he and others he works with came up with. One was to turn off putting the hard drives to sleep when possible. Since they are SSDs, there's no need to put them to sleep, yes? I do have a spinning 4 TB receive for Time Machine, but no problems with that drive nor the Apple display connected on the first port. So the problem is either port #4, next to the HDMI connection, one of the short USB-Ç cables, or the drive itself. I just purchased the 2 TB SanDisk last week and have until the March 11 to return or replace, which I think I'm going to do, if the issue keeps recurring after changing the cables and reformatting once more. Best, Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

I’m familiar with those SanDisk drives. And they are slow as well, compared to the ones that you can assemble yourself. I hate to say it but SanDisk was one of my top clients, designing much of their promotional material. If you can return the SanDisk drives, there are so many build-it-yourself options available, which will run circles around the SanDisk, or even the Samsung T7. There’s a plethora of information on this on YouTube. Sometimes I feel it’s too much information.

You can do yourself a favor with a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub. It will expand one of your built-in Thunderbolt 4 ports into three, and add four more USB-A ports.

When you reformat the SanDisk drives, make sure to select basic APFS (not case-sensitive, not encrypted). If you will be using them for Time Machine, you can always enable encryption when setting them up as TM drives.

 

[Zephar77]

I’m familiar with those SanDisk drives. And they are slow as well, compared to the ones that you can assemble yourself. I hate to say it but SanDisk was one of my top clients, designing much of their promotional material. If you can return the SanDisk drives, there are so many build-it-yourself options available, which will run circles around the SanDisk, or even the Samsung T7. There’s a plethora of information on this on YouTube. Sometimes I feel it’s too much information.

You can do yourself a favor with a CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 Element Hub. It will expand one of your built-in Thunderbolt 4 ports into three, and add four more USB-A ports.

When you reformat the SanDisk drives, make sure to select basic APFS (not case-sensitive, not encrypted). If you will be using them for Time Machine, you can always enable encryption when setting them up as TM drives.

Tony, thanks so much for the assistance. I think I finally got rid of the notices by doing a disk first aid on every single heading under view all: and disk utility got warnings on the data heading and now the notices have disappeared. I thought it was a cable, then I thought it was the 2 TB SanDisk. I reformatted all that drive and the notices only disappeared for a day or so. They returned. I can return SanDisk 2TB to Best Buy until March 11, so I am very much interested in your recommendation for a faster SSD. I looked at a CalDigit 2 TB, but seems to be of similar speeds video I watched and even slow down a bit when it got hot, so I'm wondering which SSDs you are referring to? I did order some of their USB-C/thunderbolt 4 cables, short ones. Also put that hub you were talking about in my cart. I had purchased a OWC T4 hub, but was not much impressed with it and returned it. I have the M2 Mac mini Pro with the 1 TB internal SSD, after finding out that's when you get the four NAND chips. $500 less than the studio! Ah well, but it does run very cool compared to my 2014 iMac with one fan, and even cooler with my 2011 iMac with three fans. I had to replace the optical bay fan, but at least that year you could take the screen off with suction cups , but the display panel flat cable fractured so I thought it was a dead machine. I was surprised to find you can get parts easily and cheaply and replaced it for about nine dollars. So I can still have fun with my 2011 iMac with two 128 SSD's I put in the Optical Bay . The special cord you had to get to connect to the motherboard was a bit fun to find and connect, but got the 6 GB/s connection, while the other connected to the optical bay plug reduced to 3 GB/s, but I can't tell the difference in boot start up speedsterbetween the two when booting from either. Best, Seth's

 

[TonyAguila]

Tony, thanks so much for the assistance. I think I finally got rid of the notices by doing a disk first aid on every single heading under view all: and disk utility got warnings on the data heading and now the notices have disappeared. I thought it was a cable, then I thought it was the 2 TB SanDisk. I reformatted all that drive and the notices only disappeared for a day or so. They returned. I can return SanDisk 2TB to Best Buy until March 11, so I am very much interested in your recommendation for a faster SSD. I looked at a CalDigit 2 TB, but seems to be of similar speeds video I watched and even slow down a bit when it got hot, so I'm wondering which SSDs you are referring to? I did order some of their USB-C/thunderbolt 4 cables, short ones. Also put that hub you were talking about in my cart. I had purchased a OWC T4 hub, but was not much impressed with it and returned it. I have the M2 Mac mini Pro with the 1 TB internal SSD, after finding out that's when you get the four NAND chips. $500 less than the studio! Ah well, but it does run very cool compared to my 2014 iMac with one fan, and even cooler with my 2011 iMac with three fans. I had to replace the optical bay fan, but at least that year you could take the screen off with suction cups , but the display panel flat cable fractured so I thought it was a dead machine. I was surprised to find you can get parts easily and cheaply and replaced it for about nine dollars. So I can still have fun with my 2011 iMac with two 128 SSD's I put in the Optical Bay . The special cord you had to get to connect to the motherboard was a bit fun to find and connect, but got the 6 GB/s connection, while the other connected to the optical bay plug reduced to 3 GB/s, but I can't tell the difference in boot start up speedsterbetween the two when booting from either. Best, Seth's

For the most important matter first… It’s good to know that you have a 4 terabyte hard drive for Time Machine. If you do not have a secondary backup scheme, I recommend going with two Time Machine drives. I keep two 8-TB hard drives for Time Machine and still maintain Carbon Copy Clones of vital information as well as large archives that I choose not to include with Time Machine.

I mentioned the CalDigit Thunderbolt hub because it will give you three additional TB ports in exchange for the one in the Mac that it connects to, with four more USB-A ports.

Definitely return the SanDisk SSD. Before you do, can you run a Blackmagic speed test to see how it performs? I’m sure it will be nowhere near ~6000 megs/second speeds of the internal SSD. No external I know of, even Raid 0, can achieve that. But with a good external NVMe SSD you can achieve around 4000—if configured right.

I do have two 4-bay Thunderbolt 3 enclosures with four SSDs and four 8-TB hard drives. They are horribly slow but good enough for backup and clones that run in background. My plan for a fast external SSD, since the 2-TB internal is starting to go over 50% full, is to add a 2-TB external NVMe drive. I’m finding out that there is no assembled external, like your SanDisk, or even the Samsung T7, can achieve decent speeds. I’m talking approximately 4000 megabytes per second.

At present, the only solution is to assemble your own: an NVMe drive coupled with an external enclosure. The fastest combinations keep changing, so unless you are ready to buy, it’s best to just watch and wait. The speed champ at the moment is the Samsung 990 Pro, at around $250. It just came out so I’m waiting for prices to come down. #2, a decent alternative, is the Samsung 980 Pro at around $170. Both are two terabytes. Depending on your needs, the single-terabytes are much less.

The best enclosures, right now, are the Acasis units, but it’s best to keep your eyes open for contenders like Orico or Sabrent. It would be nice if there were a dual drive enclosure that works well. Right now, nothing catches my eye. But since enclosures are a fraction (somewhat) of the cost of the SSDs, moving the drives to a better enclosure went not be too painful.

There are tons of reviews and tutorials on this matter on YouTube, but you must maintain a satirical eye.

 

[Zephar77]

Yes, you are correct, Both the one terabyte and 2 TB sanDisks get a little over 1000 Mb/s per black magic. I thought this was pretty fast, and moved my entire music folder, which was over 40 GB to my new Mac mini pro and took a little over one minute. I was surprised. I was expecting closer to an hour. Remember, I went from a 2011 and 2014 iMac to a 2023 Mac mini pro with an apple display. I haven't checked the speeds on the other three USB connections on the Apple display, but suspect they're USB like speeds. . I thought the SanDisks were thunderbolt connections but in system info they are listed under USB.
I looked up the items that you mentioned and found a whole New World of stuff I didn't know about - thank you for that. In my research I found some decent prices and put together a package of the Samsung 980, those cables you talked about and an enclosure. I will upload a package ScreenShot I put together, which corresponds with the prices you mentioned, except I would just need a single enclosure and wondering if this will work OK. It was offered as an add-on for the SSD Samsung, So I suspected it would work, but there are other options ranging from $28-$55. Best, Seth
-> Having trouble uploading screenshot. Must not like the format my iPad is making.
I'll list the items in case it doesn't show:
1. SABRENT USB 3.2 10Gbps Type C Tool Free Enclosure for M.2 PCle NVMe and SATA. SSDs (EC-SNVE) - $28.99
2. SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2 Internal Solid State Drive
Memory Card, Maximum Speed, Thermal Control, MZ-V8P2TOB - $169.99
3. CalDigit [Intel Certified] Thunderbolt 4 Cable - 40Gbps 100W Charging, Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 & USB-C, 2016+ MacBook Pro, Air, 2020+ M1 - $29.99 (this must not be the right cable as it says thunderbolt-3/M1, but does say T4)
Or -> 3. StarTech.com USB-C 10Gbps to M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure - $52.99

 

[TonyAguila]

Yes, you are correct, Both the one terabyte and 2 TB sanDisks get a little over 1000 Mb/s per black magic. I thought this was pretty fast, and moved my entire music folder, which was over 40 GB to my new Mac mini pro and took a little over one minute. I was surprised. I was expecting closer to an hour. Remember, I went from a 2011 and 2014 iMac to a 2023 Mac mini pro with an apple display. I haven't checked the speeds on the other three USB connections on the Apple display, but suspect they're USB like speeds. . I thought the SanDisks were thunderbolt connections but in system info they are listed under USB.
I looked up the items that you mentioned and found a whole New World of stuff I didn't know about - thank you for that. In my research I found some decent prices and put together a package of the Samsung 980, those cables you talked about and an enclosure. I will upload a package ScreenShot I put together, which corresponds with the prices you mentioned, except I would just need a single enclosure and wondering if this will work OK. It was offered as an add-on for the SSD Samsung, So I suspected it would work, but there are other options ranging from $28-$55. Best, Seth
-> Having trouble uploading screenshot. Must not like the format my iPad is making.
I'll list the items in case it doesn't show:
1. SABRENT USB 3.2 10Gbps Type C Tool Free Enclosure for M.2 PCle NVMe and SATA. SSDs (EC-SNVE) - $28.99
2. SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 Gaming M.2 Internal Solid State Drive
Memory Card, Maximum Speed, Thermal Control, MZ-V8P2TOB - $169.99
3. CalDigit [Intel Certified] Thunderbolt 4 Cable - 40Gbps 100W Charging, Compatible with Thunderbolt 3 & USB-C, 2016+ MacBook Pro, Air, 2020+ M1 - $29.99 (this must not be the right cable as it says thunderbolt-3/M1, but does say T4)
Or -> 3. StarTech.com USB-C 10Gbps to M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure - $52.99

Were it not for the fact that today, the 11th, is your last day to return your SanDisk, I was going to suggest holding onto it for a while longer until you get more used to your Mac mini. I don’t know the mean read and write speeds of your internal SSD are, but my Studio averages 6,000+ megs/sec. and 5,500+ read and write, respectively. That’s why my personal expectation for an external NVMe SSD would be around 4,000, if I were to pay good money for it. But for many, the SanDisk, or a Samsung T5 or T7 will suffice. But I see the chance to “build your own” is a good way to dispel some of the mysteries around everyday tools that we use.

I haven’t come across good reviews of the Sabrent enclosure even though they are also SSD manufacturers. Look for Acasis or Orico. The top M.2 SSDs at the moment are the Samsung 990 Pro and the WD Black SN850X, and being new, expect prices to come down soon. The Samsung 980 Pro is also great and much more affordable. Look for YouTube videos on the matter. Don’t believe everything or everybody, but might as well learn from others’ experience before making the investment.

 

[Zephar77]

Thanks for the info Tony. Yes, I'm going to take it back on the way to work, but I don't need to buy some thing right away. I just put those items to see if those would work, and I was also reading the Acasis would be a better choice enclosure. Are those the correct cables that are very good? I was not much impressed with the cables that came with the SanDisks. For a while I thought the disc not ejected properly notice was because of the cable. But since reformatting for the second time and using disc first aid, they have gone away.
I was wondering why the SanDisk prices were almost half what they used to be-Paid $150. An extra $50 for 4000 Mb/s, I would definitely go for that. The SanDisks are only stated to be 1050 MB/s, but they also make one stated to be 2000 MB/s, but they are over $350 for 2TB. 4TB gets close to $500 with tax. Seems the 2TB SSD's are the action units for folks at the moment. I haven't been able to do a speed test on the internal SSD because it's the boot drive, but I didn't realize it was that fast. If black magic detects a bootable drive it will not run the test, at least on my set up, even if I boot from a different drive.
I'll have to leave for work an hour early today to swing by Best Buy. Best, Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Thanks for the info Tony. Yes, I'm going to take it back on the way to work, but I don't need to buy some thing right away. I just put those items to see if those would work, and I was also reading the Acasis would be a better choice enclosure. Are those the correct cables that are very good? I was not much impressed with the cables that came with the SanDisks. For a while I thought the disc not ejected properly notice was because of the cable. But since reformatting for the second time and using disc first aid, they have gone away.
I was wondering why the SanDisk prices were almost half what they used to be-Paid $150. An extra $50 for 4000 Mb/s, I would definitely go for that. The SanDisks are only stated to be 1050 MB/s, but they also make one stated to be 2000 MB/s, but they are over $350 for 2TB. 4TB gets close to $500 with tax. Seems the 2TB SSD's are the action units for folks at the moment. I haven't been able to do a speed test on the internal SSD because it's the boot drive, but I didn't realize it was that fast. If black magic detects a bootable drive it will not run the test, at least on my set up, even if I boot from a different drive.
I'll have to leave for work an hour early today to swing by Best Buy. Best, Seth

Right move—no need to rush. If you are planning on getting Thunderbolt cables, look at Thunderbolt 4 cables. Consider it an investment in the future.

You should be able to test your boot drive speed with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.app, available free from the App Store. There’s also AmorphousDiskMark, also free. I would think that your boot drive will test at around 6,000 megabytes per second. Amorphous is more detailed, and shows speeds at different queue depths. Blackmagic only reports on the top figures.

 

[Zephar77]

Tony, is there something you need to do in black magic to test the speed? Upload a screenshot of the message I get saying that it's a read only volume. Any drive that has a bootable or macOS installed I get the same message. This happens even if it's not the drive that currently the boot drive.
Yes, I'm seeing that the cables can be misleading, stating thunderbolt 4, then you look closer and it's really USB 3.0 or 3.2. Suppose it works on a thunderbolt 4 connection, but it's really a USB cable, yes? Which ones do you recommend?
I uploaded the screenshot from my iPhone and that seems to work but not from my iPad. Strange as they both have the same iOS. I even took a screenshot of the screenshot so it would be a JPEG and not a HEIC format.
really glad I took that drive back. No problem, but I was wondering if it says returned by March 11 meant March 11 would be too late? Best, Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Tony, is there something you need to do in black magic to test the speed? Upload a screenshot of the message I get saying that it's a read only volume. Any drive that has a bootable or macOS installed I get the same message. This happens even if it's not the drive that currently the boot drive.
Yes, I'm seeing that the cables can be misleading, stating thunderbolt 4, then you look closer and it's really USB 3.0 or 3.2. Suppose it works on a thunderbolt 4 connection, but it's really a USB cable, yes? Which ones do you recommend?
I uploaded the screenshot from my iPhone and that seems to work but not from my iPad. Strange as they both have the same iOS. I even took a screenshot of the screenshot so it would be a JPEG and not a HEIC format.
really glad I took that drive back. No problem, but I was wondering if it says returned by March 11 meant March 11 would be too late? Best, Seth

Correct! At first I thought it was File Vault preventing it, but a startup volume with File Vault off couldn’t be tested either. AmorphousDiskMark is more gracious in that attached bootable drives are greyed out in the list of attached volumes. I’m thinking of experimenting by adding another APFS volume to a bootable drive just to see if the disk speed test will allow it to be tested. The only bootable drive that you can test is the active volume itself.

Thunderbolt 4 cables have additional chips in the connector ends aside from mere wires, which explains why they are more expensive, with intel getting its royalty from the technology. As far as I know, they are all USB-C connectors. The way to tell them apart is the “4” stamped on the connector next to the lightning bolt symbol on both ends, unless, of course, if it’s a blatant fake.

If you are curious, this might be helpful, but does not cover Thunderbolt:

Enjoy!

 

[TonyAguila]

It just occurred to me that all of the external enclosures in the market that can take the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs are Thunderbolt 3. It seems like no manufacturer has yet developed the chipset to support TB4. I have decided to wait until TB4 enclosures come out because they will no doubt be a lot faster.

 

[Zephar77]

Correct! At first I thought it was File Vault preventing it, but a startup volume with File Vault off couldn’t be tested either. AmorphousDiskMark is more gracious in that attached bootable drives are greyed out in the list of attached volumes. I’m thinking of experimenting by adding another APFS volume to a bootable drive just to see if the disk speed test will allow it to be tested. The only bootable drive that you can test is the active volume itself.

Thunderbolt 4 cables have additional chips in the connector ends aside from mere wires, which explains why they are more expensive, with intel getting its royalty from the technology. As far as I know, they are all USB-C connectors. The way to tell them apart is the “4” stamped on the connector next to the lightning bolt symbol on both ends, unless, of course, if it’s a blatant fake.

If you are curious, this might be helpful, but does not cover Thunderbolt:

Enjoy!

It just occurred to me that all of the external enclosures in the market that can take the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs are Thunderbolt 3. It seems like no manufacturer has yet developed the chipset to support TB4. I have decided to wait until TB4 enclosures come out because they will no doubt be a lot faster.

Tony, that should've been obvious to me. The connections and connectors are the same in appearance, but that lightning bolt with the number is the key. Good reminder. I'll change my cables in my cart in case they are not the lightning bolt with a four on it. Best, Seth

 

[Zephar77]

I gave black magic full disk access but that didn't help not being able to test the speed of ever any hard drive, SSD that has an operating system on it, Mos. Is there some trick you need to do to run a speed test on such drives? Hold down the option key or control key or command key while you're selecting the target disk? I haven't read anything to assist on that issue and just gave up on running speed tests, which most of my drives Have operating systems on them.
Even my time machine I can't run a speed test on because it's a backup drive.
Ja ja ja oh well, Seth

 

[Zephar77]

Yes, all the enclosures are at best USB 3.2 10Gbps Type C. Not sure what type C means, but USB 3.2 is the same or similar in specs to thunderbolt 3? However, the higher end enclosures are more expensive than the 2 TB Samsung 980 or 990 for that matter. Quite expensive external SSD, though one really fast set up. It's gonna cost $500 - $600 for the 2 TB, enclosure and cable. At least the Sabient is 3.2 while all the others are 3.1 in the same price range. And the Amazon reviews are mostly fairly good, especially from the ones that seem to be in the know. That means you need to be knowledgeable and "in the note". ;-) Seth

 

[Zephar77]

Yes, I suspect it's going to be a while before we see what we want to see available in terms of "real" thunderbolt 4, start to finish equipment/hardware. But you got me up to speed and this seems to be a good combination. The enclosure has over 7000 reviews And I doubt a lot of them are fake reviews because it's just too many. It's the only one in that price range that even makes sense to take a gather a set up that USB 3.2. All the others that I've seen with recommended reviews are all 3.1 which makes difference. But, perhaps you can interject some information I haven't come across yet. Thanks so much for your patience and kind information provided.
Best, Seth

 

[TonyAguila]

Yes, I suspect it's going to be a while before we see what we want to see available in terms of "real" thunderbolt 4, start to finish equipment/hardware. But you got me up to speed and this seems to be a good combination. The enclosure has over 7000 reviews And I doubt a lot of them are fake reviews because it's just too many. It's the only one in that price range that even makes sense to take a gather a set up that USB 3.2. All the others that I've seen with recommended reviews are all 3.1 which makes difference. But, perhaps you can interject some information I haven't come across yet. Thanks so much for your patience and kind information provided.
Best, Seth

Yeah, I have a couple of those CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 cables! And the 980 Pro is my top choice considering the present price of the 990 at $250! The Sabrent enclosure is very attractive especially because of the price, but the reviews I’ve seen report ~1000 megabytes per second read/write speeds, which is way below what I would expect from the Samsung 980. It should be closer to 4000. I suggest comparing it with other brands like the Orico or Acasis. But that price is hard to beat. I assume it’s returnable. Try viewing more YouTube reviews of the 980 Pro in particular.

 

[Zephar77]

I was afraid of that. I guess folks that did reviews didn't realize that 1000 MB/s was not fast for the 980. I remember when first getting the sanDisk and black magic showing nearly 1000 Mb per second, thanking that was wow fast! Do you know which Orico or Acasis models are closer to the $50 range, if there are any; and do the 3.1's still give that 4000 Mb/s? I suspected there was a catch to the less tha $20 price and putting that USB 3.2 on the description to mislead you. Thanks for warning me from making a mistake. Best, Self

 

[TonyAguila]

I was afraid of that. I guess folks that did reviews didn't realize that 1000 MB/s was not fast for the 980. I remember when first getting the sanDisk and black magic showing nearly 1000 Mb per second, thanking that was wow fast! Do you know which Orico or Acasis models are closer to the $50 range, if there are any; and do the 3.1's still give that 4000 Mb/s? I suspected there was a catch to the less tha $20 price and putting that USB 3.2 on the description to mislead you. Thanks for warning me from making a mistake. Best, Self

I have watched a whole lot of videos on the topic, but I don’t just go with whatever reviewers show. I’m getting errors pasting in YouTube URLs so you might want to search for them yourself. Try searching for something like “acasis (or orico) name ssd enclosure” to get you started.

I know both Acasis and Orico have ~$50 enclosures on Amazon, but I didn’t see any one that could bring the performances to within the 2GBs–4GBs range. But a “cheap” unit might be good to go with to let you experiment. If you’re planning on getting the high-end SAMSUNG 980 PRO or WD_BLACK 2TB SN850X for about $170.00, I certainly would not compromise speed for cost.