You can put these drives in Thunderbolt, USB-C or USB-A enclosures with SATA interfaces. There is almost an endless number of offerings. A Thunderbolt interface would only pay off in a RAID configuration, short of that a USB-C enclosure is the best option for Thunderbolt Macs.
I was thinking about TB1 (which my semi-retired 2012 MBP has) for that, but unless there's a TB1 to USB-C adapter I'm not aware of, USB-C is not really an option for that vintage machine (it's easy enough to get a USB 3.x to USB-C adapter, but then your potential speed gets cut at least in half). It's telling how far Apple/Intel was ahead of the game with even the earliest Thunderbolt -- which had 10Gb/sec per channel -- that only USB-C 3.1 gen2 (one of the most recent versions of USB-C and still uncommon outside the Apple world) has managed to equal.
I used a TB-2/TB-3 adaptor to get around that TB1 limitation for over 3-years. I used a TB-3 dock with USB-C / USB-A drive enclosures knowing that I'd eventually move up to a TB3 Mac. You could also use a TB-2 dock directly with a TB-1 MBP to get USB-C / USB-A ports.
The USB-A 3.0 interface alone doesn't seem to shave much off of the performance. Just using USB-A 3.0 (no dock) for a file copy I can get sustained writes 400-500MB/s and reads up to 100MB/s using the latest OWC 6G SSD but the reads are limited by the write speed of the much older internal OWC Aura Pro 6G SSD (TLC 3D) in my 2013 MBP. That older TLC 3D memory just doesn't seem to make the cut on the write speeds unless it's in small bursts; a weakness of that cheaper TLC 3D memory.
You also don't need to get a USB-A 3.0 to USB-C adapter. Just replace the cable since UBC-C 3.1 Gen II is backward compatible with USB-A 3.0. In any case it's not going to cut your speed in half since the OWC 6G drive maxes out at 550 MB/s.
USB 3.0 = 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s) USB 3.1 Gen 2 = 10 Gbit/s (1.25 GB/s) TB1 = 20 Gbit/s = (1.25 GB/s) Up plus 10 Gbit/s (1.25 GB/s) Down TB2 = 20 Gbit/s TB3 = 40 Gbit/s
If you use this OWC 6D internally and externally, you'd get the expected 400-500 MBs read/write bu the writes will be a tad slower than the reads, maybe down into the 300 MBs depending on what your copying. Keep in mind that all USB controllers are created equal some perform better than other, so choose your UBB C/A enclosure well.
First off, in regards to speed, this is a SATA III drive. The SATA III bus is the limiting factor for speeds, not the drive.
Second, this drive uses MLC, which allows it to provide those peak speeds over very long writes. TLC is great and cheap, but when you are copying large files (Example, 2 hours of ProRes video in one file, is about 122 gig) TLC based drives will hit bottlenecks and slow down. TLC has limits that most users don't ever see. MLC (and even better, SLC) handles stuff like this better.
This is a "pro" drive for pro users who are still using SATAIII based machines.
If you don't read/write hundreds and hundreds of GB every day, you don't need this drive, buy a cheaper SSD and you won't notice the difference.
I have an NVME PCI card in my MacPro, but also have a cheap $20 SATA III card in there too, this drive will work well in my video workflow as a 1080p live video record drive.
Thanks for the info? Is TLC suitable for Time Machine backup?
Literally anything (even old slow cheap massive spinning drives) is fine for Time Machine backups. I personally use a Western Digital 8TB spinning disk USB3 external drive for my Time Machine Backups. I paid maybe $100 for it.
I use a G-drive. But it takes too much time.
I'm using a standard Apple Time Capsule which backups up incrementally every hour. Why would I care how long it takes? For a clone time might be an issue.
In the end these OWC drives are an all around cost effective solution. There are also some middle of the road NVME drives that offer 1GB/s which are less pricy than the 2GB/s models.
I worry about Time Machine these days. Dropped in 2018 by Apple. No APFS. I worry about how well it can truly back up and restore an APFS boot drive with Catalina. It's dog slow due to hardlinks and I swear it degrades the LAN speed.
APFS formatted volumes have issues with hard links so the TimeMachine volume must be HFS+. Whether that's TM on a TimeCapsule or TM on an external HD it has to be HFS+ so support for APFS is somewhat irrelevant at this point. If there are any performance compatibility issues I haven't noticed. I also use CCC to backup clones with a safety net so I'm covered either way.
My only issue with Time Machine is that I've yet to find a 3rd party solution that has all of TM's features. I tried using one such solution with a Netgear router and it was lacking in so many ways, plus it would fail weekly and have to be rebuilt from scratch.
Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac
I don’t think I would want an obsolete drive like this. With most every Mac offered the past few years having Thunderbolt, this drive is an insult. If it had both Thu derbolt and USB C version 2 or 3, I could get behind it. But why should anyone settle for 55MB/s when most others now offer 2GB/s? Makes no sense.
You mean 550 MB/s? Not everyone needs 2GB/s and those drives do cost significantly more per GB. The quality of the memory and the warranty are also an important consideration.
You can put these drives in Thunderbolt, USB-C or USB-A enclosures with SATA interfaces. There is almost an endless number of offerings. A Thunderbolt interface would only pay off in a RAID configuration, short of that a USB-C enclosure is the best option for Thunderbolt Macs.
Yeah, didn’t catch that. I saw it later but by then I didn’t want to correct it. They don’t cost significantly more. I’ve got a bunch of drives. This particular drive Ian’s really cheap either, when compared to a lot of others.
It’s not that you “need” the performance. I’ve never seen anyone complain of higher performance. In my experience, the higher performance drives are noticeably faster. On most everything.
so now you’re talking about throwing the cases away? Why not just buy the naked drive instead? You’re wrong. Thunderbolt works well for one drive, if the case has the interface.
Comments
The USB-A 3.0 interface alone doesn't seem to shave much off of the performance. Just using USB-A 3.0 (no dock) for a file copy I can get sustained writes 400-500MB/s and reads up to 100MB/s using the latest OWC 6G SSD but the reads are limited by the write speed of the much older internal OWC Aura Pro 6G SSD (TLC 3D) in my 2013 MBP. That older TLC 3D memory just doesn't seem to make the cut on the write speeds unless it's in small bursts; a weakness of that cheaper TLC 3D memory.
You also don't need to get a USB-A 3.0 to USB-C adapter. Just replace the cable since UBC-C 3.1 Gen II is backward compatible with USB-A 3.0. In any case it's not going to cut your speed in half since the OWC 6G drive maxes out at 550 MB/s.
USB 3.0 = 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 = 10 Gbit/s (1.25 GB/s)
TB1 = 20 Gbit/s = (1.25 GB/s) Up plus 10 Gbit/s (1.25 GB/s) Down
TB2 = 20 Gbit/s
TB3 = 40 Gbit/s
If you use this OWC 6D internally and externally, you'd get the expected 400-500 MBs read/write bu the writes will be a tad slower than the reads, maybe down into the 300 MBs depending on what your copying. Keep in mind that all USB controllers are created equal some perform better than other, so choose your UBB C/A enclosure well.
My only issue with Time Machine is that I've yet to find a 3rd party solution that has all of TM's features. I tried using one such solution with a Netgear router and it was lacking in so many ways, plus it would fail weekly and have to be rebuilt from scratch.
Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/types-of-disks-you-can-use-with-time-machine-mh15139/macAre we ready for Time Machine 2.0 yet?
https://eclecticlight.co/2019/08/16/are-we-ready-for-time-machine-2-0-yet/so now you’re talking about throwing the cases away? Why not just buy the naked drive instead? You’re wrong. Thunderbolt works well for one drive, if the case has the interface.