Question NVME + Enclosure - not seeing expected speeds (Teamgroup MP34 4TB and Orico 20Gbps USB C to M.2. NVME

[saturndad]

Hi All,

TL;DR - NVME SSD is rated for 3500/2900MBps, enclosure has 2000MBps read/write upper limit, but testing results in sub 1000MBps read/write. What's up with this? Do I need to look into a different enclosure?

My use-case is to stick about 2TB of digital photos and videos onto an NVME SSD in an enclosure connected to a Mac Studio via one of the rear Thunderbolt 4 ports.
I did some research (but apparently not enough) into the choice. Didn't want to break the bank but in my learning journey I discovered I might want to get a TLC instead of QLC, so I wound up choosing

• TEAMGROUP MP34 4TB with DRAM SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC NVMe 1.3 PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 Internal SSD (Read/Write Speed up to 3,500/2,900 MB/s)
• ORICO 20Gbps USB C to M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure Reader, USB 3.2 Gen2x2 to NVMe PCIe M-Key Solid State Drive Aluminum External Adapter, M2 Case Support UASP Trim for NVMe SSD

First I formatted as APFS using my 2021 16" Macbook Pro. I tested with Blackmagic Disk speed Test on the MBP and saw each dial would quickly rev up to but not quite 1GBps. Not great as it's about 1/2 the speed I was expecting but not horrible. On the Mac Studio, they are seemingly more sluggish to get up to the max speed which is slower, more like 850/850MBps.

Since the recommendations on the product listing page was to use exFAT, I tried again - erased / formatted APFS (the only option associated with Erase) then partitioned as exFAT. I re-ran the tests on the Mac Studio, resulting a little slower results, about 800 read/write with BlackMagic and 760MBps read / write using Amorphous Disk mark 1GB, and 730/700 on the 16GB setting..

Some interesting(?) notes:

• The drive showed up as "Realtek rtl9210 nvme" in Disk Utility when I erased/formatted as APFS, then when I partitioned as exFAT, and it showed up as "ASMT ASM236X NVME Media"
• In the Amazon Q&A, the official response to the question "What chipset does this 20gbps use? (asmedia, realtek, jmicron, etcc)" is "This 20gbps M.2 NVMe ssd enclosure use ASM2364 chipset." I'm not sure if that's mutually exclusive to also being Realtek rtl9210. And if yes, then that's odd.

So here's the thing. Between Thunderbolt 4 supporting up to 40Gbps, the Teamgroup MP34 supporting 3.5/2.9GBps read/write, and the Orico enclosure supporting "theoretical read and write speed of 2000MB/s", I thought I would see some pretty high speed transfers; clearly there's a disconnect somewhere between my expectations, my purchase decision, and the hardware combination.

So my main question is why am I not seeing speeds approaching the Orico enclosure's theoretical supported speeds of 2000MBps read/write when the drive is supposed to be faster than the limit?

1. Is it a lemon of an enclosure?
2. Is it a compatibility mismatch between the enclosure and Thunderbolt4 or macOS that I'm not aware of?
3. In my limited testing, exFAT seems to run slower than APFS. Other than compatibility with Windows machines, is there any reason to use exFAT? Doing some quick googling it appears that APFS is supposed to be more optimized for SSDs and I won't be using this drive on a Windows machine.
4. Why would the same type of port (Thunderbolt 4) be slower on the Mac Studio than the MBP?
5. Am I missing anything else to help troubleshoot this?

And finally: Are there some better enclosure choices? 2000MBps would be perfectly adequate, so if I could achieve that I wouldn't feel the need to spend over $100 on a 40Gbps enclosure.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!

 

[USAFRet]

about 2TB of digital photos and videos onto an NVME SSD in an enclosure

How many files?
A lot of little ones (photos) will transfer MUCH slower than the advertised theoretical speed.

The big number is for a single large sequential glob of data.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, transferring to and from what other device?

Performance depends on the slowest device in the chain.

 

[saturndad]

How many files?
A lot of little ones (photos) will transfer MUCH slower than the advertised theoretical speed.

The big number is for a single large sequential glob of data.

Currently about 1.67TB of photos, about 134K files.

But the speeds I was reporting were from Blackmagic and Amorphous Disk mark.

 

[saturndad]

Also, transferring to and from what other device?

Performance depends on the slowest device in the chain.

Transfer was from the Mac Studio Thunderbolt 4 port to the Orico enclosure in question.

 

[saturndad]

- I got a thunderbolt 3 enclosure SABRENT Thunderbolt 3 Certified M.2 NVMe SSD Tool Free Solid Aluminum Enclosure (EC-T3NS) (was on sale for $70)

Also got this TB3 enclosure -
OWC Envoy Express Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure for NVMe M.2 SSD

Tested both with the Teamgroup NVMe.

I plugged into one of the Mac Studio Thunderbolt 4 ports in the back.

If I format with APFS, Read/Write speeds are 1290/1250MBps with Black Magic. If I format as exFAT, 1470/950.

So speeds are better, but still not maxing out the Teamgroup's supposed 3500/2900MBps "up to" speed.

Any idea? Is it possible the original enclosure is not working right, but neither is the Teamgroup NVMe , given I now have 2 TB3 enclosures with similar test results? And why is there such a big difference between APFS and exFAT in read/write speeds?

 

[footofwrath]

- I got a thunderbolt 3 enclosure SABRENT Thunderbolt 3 Certified M.2 NVMe SSD Tool Free Solid Aluminum Enclosure (EC-T3NS) (was on sale for $70)

Also got this TB3 enclosure -
OWC Envoy Express Thunderbolt 3 Enclosure for NVMe M.2 SSD

Tested both with the Teamgroup NVMe.

I plugged into one of the Mac Studio Thunderbolt 4 ports in the back.

If I format with APFS, Read/Write speeds are 1290/1250MBps with Black Magic. If I format as exFAT, 1470/950.

So speeds are better, but still not maxing out the Teamgroup's supposed 3500/2900MBps "up to" speed.

Any idea? Is it possible the original enclosure is not working right, but neither is the Teamgroup NVMe , given I now have 2 TB3 enclosures with similar test results? And why is there such a big difference between APFS and exFAT in read/write speeds?

USB 3.2 spec is only 10gpbs. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is the only one that gets you up to the 20gpbs. But OSX doesn't support that, so you get 3.2 Gen 2 vanilla, i.e. 10Gbps.

Thunderbolt 3 is only specced for 16Gbps over the PCIe bus while the rest is reserved for video (though some articles I read report 21Gbps instead). This is why you see ~1400ish with the TB3 case.
TB4 bumps that to 32Gbps. So you would need an enclosure with TB4 support.
Note, what I don't know is whether the current enclosures actually *run* at TB4 speed, or simply "support" the connection, but I guess if the host asks for it, it should mean that the enclosure 'agrees'. But I don't have a device to test that with.
That said, I found this thread because I was looking at doing exactly what you're doing, with exactly that drive and MBP. The 4Tb drive is currently at Amazon for 220$.. that seems like a good deal, even after adding the TB4 enclsoure (139$ mostly). Will report back if I end up picking it up.

 

[geofelt]

Your effective speed will be limited by the slowest part in the chain.
Then, also, if the transfer connection is very fast, the nand speed of the device itself will limit the ability to transfer data.