[SOLVED] Which SSD for an external USB backup drive?

[Bellzemos]

Hello,

so I bought the wrong SSD for this usage, more here:

[SOLVED] - Intel 1TB NVMe 660p overheating?

Hello, I bought an Intel 1TB NVMe 660p M.2 drive and a Delock 42600 metal USB 3.1 gen2 encolosure for it. During short speed testing the numbers seem fine. But during imaging of my internal Samsung NVMe drive, it starts at aroung 4,5 Gbps and after a couple of minutes drops to 850 Mbps, which...

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Anyway, which 1TB SSD should I get for an external USB backup drive? I'm planning on using it to image big disk images (up to 500 GB files). Intel 660p isn't good for that, cause it slows down 10 times after if tills up the SLC cache (and on a 1TB drive that's pretty quick, way before I end up writing a 500 GB image file on it).

I am looking for a SSD which is not too expensive, is 1TB in size and is fast. I went USB 3.1 Gen2 with the 660p in hopes for high speed, but was only getting 8,5 Gbps at the start of an imaging operation, then speed went down to 0,8 Gbps. I'd rather go with SATA and USB 3.0, being capped at 5 Gbps, if that would be stable, than having a 10 Gbps burst at the beginning and then slowdown times 10...

What drives do you suggest for me? I was thinking maybe going SATA with 1TB Smasung 860 EVO or even 860 QVO in an external USB 3.0 enclosure. Would QVO or even EVO stay with stable speed around 5 Gbps when copying a 500 GB file on a blank drive?

Thank you for your toughts and suggestions in advance!

 

[Lutfij]

If it's between the SSD's you've listed, get the 860 Evo but you will get to the same conclusion as your previous thread when you notice a burst in speed and then it dropping off. Read more here.

 

[Bellzemos]

I've checked the link you provided, but was unable to find info regarding 860 EVO filling up the SLC cache and then significantly slowing down. Where does it say something like that (I'm not being sarcastic, I really can't find it)?

And, if that is so, is Samsung PRO the only way to then?

 

[Zizo007]

8.5Gbps, do you mean 850Mbps? Anyways, sustained speed is always lower than advertised speed which is the maximum, also make sure your drive doesn't overheat as it will throttle and slow down. My 850 EVO mSata was reaching 76C under load and was throttling until I installed a 10$ heatsink from ebay which dropped temps to 52C on load.

Also, the faster the drive, the faster the sustained speed is. You can buy an external USB 3.1 Gen2 M.2 NVMe case which is faster than traditional SSDs.

 

[Bellzemos]

No, I meant 8,5 Gbps (of declared 10 Gbps). And then it drops to approx. 0,85 Gbps. The drive is not overheating, I tested with HWiNFO and it never went over 50 degrees Celsius, even writing a really large file on it.

So which SSD/NVMe drive would you suggest for an external USB backup drive (for large, up to 500 GB image files)? If possble, not too expensive...

 

[Zizo007]

No, I meant 8,5 Gbps (of declared 10 Gbps). And then it drops to approx. 0,85 Gbps. The drive is not overheating, I tested with HWiNFO and it never went over 50 degrees Celsius, even writing a really large file on it.

So which SSD/NVMe drive would you suggest for an external USB backup drive (for large, up to 500 GB image files)? If possble, not too expensive...

1 byte = 8 bits so 10 Gbps is 1250 megabytes/s. Your are getting 850 megabytes/s in windows's transfer screen, right? If that's the case, there is currently no external case in the market that will give you more than 900 megabytes/s transfer rate.

First, make sure your external NVMe case supports fast speeds, check reviews.
This is a good NVMe drive:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-..._1?keywords=970+evo+1tb&qid=1578509363&sr=8-1

 

[Zizo007]

Samsung just released an external SSD with 1000 megabytes/s read write speed:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-portable-ssd-t7-touch

 

[USAFRet]

I absolutely get the speed difference between SSD and HDD.
But how much are you doing this, and why are you doing it where absolute speed makes that much of a difference? Backups like this should be done in the background, where it doesn't matter that much.

An 860 EVO or QVO cache will fill up and slow down as you try to copy 500GB to it.
An 860 Pro, or worse, a 970 EVO NVMe, is a significant waste of money for a 'backup drive'.

 

[Zizo007]

SanDisk also released a fast speed external SSD, 230$ for 1TB:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandisk-extreme-pro-portable-ssd

Edit: Speed of 1050Mbps read, 1050Mbps write.