Question Thermal Issues - HP EX950 2TB NVMe SSD + ORICO TCM2-C3 USB 3.1 Enclosure

Jul 2, 2019
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Hey all,

I'm running:

OS: MacOS Mojave 10.14.5
Computer: Macbook Pro 15" 2017

And I have recently purchased the following for use as a backup device:


I tried many times to use Time Machine as a backup solution, but it always:

- stalled and became unresponsive at different intervals of the backup procedure (between 30-200 GB)
- locked up / crashed finder, even in safe mode.

I then moved to Carbon Copy Cloner hoping that this was a bug / incompatibility with TimeMachine. Unfortunately the problem persisted.

Finally, I wondered if this could be heat related. I know NVMe SSDs run really hot under heavy load, but I thought this wouldn't be an issue because:

1.) It is reported that these devices only thermal throttle after ~800GB continuous writing.
2.) This enclosure being USB 3.1, I would only be able to write below half of full speed anyway.
3.) Thermal throttling is just a safety measure that lowers performance, not something that renders the device inoperable.
4.) The enclosure has a heatsink on it, which should help the SSD further in this regard.


Well. As it turns out, that's none of that seems to have held true.

After about a dozen failed attempts with Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner, I decided to try to do the backup with the heat sink laying down against a frozen gel brick

And... wouldn't you know it, the backup completed successfully, with All 750GBs having been copied in 55 minutes.

Now I'm wondering if this could be because of:

A.) A defective enclosure
B.) A defective SSD
C.) An incompatibility in regards to my intended purposes.

What are your thoughts and recommendations in regards to this issue?

Thank you.