New OWC portable USB-C SSD is tiny, rugged, and fast
Mac upgrade specialist OWC today announced the Envoy Pro, a tiny and portable USB-C SSD that starts at $99.
The Envoy Pro can reach up to 1011MB/s speeds, enough to transfer 91 high-resolution photos in one second or a 5GB movie in less than five seconds. The drive is a USB 3.2 type-C bus-powered and plug-and-play model, not requiring any power adapters or software to use with a Mac. It operates silently and has a drive-status LED on its side. The drive includes a USB-C to USB-A adapter to widen compatibility.
The tiny drive is small enough to fit in a pocket, measuring 3 x 2.1 x 0.5 inch and weighing 3 oz.
The portable SSD uses a heat-dissipating aircraft-grade aluminum exterior. Its IP67 rating means it's dust-proof and water-resistant for up to 30 minutes at less than one meter.
The 240GB and 480GB variants are available now, ringing up for $99 and $149, respectively. Versions with 1TB and 2TB storage arrive in early-to-mid November, retailing for $199 and $369. OWC includes a three-year limited warranty with the drive.
The Envoy Pro can reach up to 1011MB/s speeds, enough to transfer 91 high-resolution photos in one second or a 5GB movie in less than five seconds. The drive is a USB 3.2 type-C bus-powered and plug-and-play model, not requiring any power adapters or software to use with a Mac. It operates silently and has a drive-status LED on its side. The drive includes a USB-C to USB-A adapter to widen compatibility.
The tiny drive is small enough to fit in a pocket, measuring 3 x 2.1 x 0.5 inch and weighing 3 oz.
The portable SSD uses a heat-dissipating aircraft-grade aluminum exterior. Its IP67 rating means it's dust-proof and water-resistant for up to 30 minutes at less than one meter.
The 240GB and 480GB variants are available now, ringing up for $99 and $149, respectively. Versions with 1TB and 2TB storage arrive in early-to-mid November, retailing for $199 and $369. OWC includes a three-year limited warranty with the drive.
Comments
So, this is an alternative, if a wee bit larger but not much: I have numerous setups like this and they all work great on my Macs and my PCs. 2TB SSDs or higher could just as easily be used. I have several similar setups using NVMe SSDs too but I do use a small enclosure for those. This is just an example. They do not get hot and of course, the bare SSDs are dustproof already and pretty tough. I have had some for years that have been taken all over the world in carry-on luggage in a ziplock bag so I can add storage for RAW images and 4K video when using an MBP. These setups are not waterproof so if planning to take your Mac underwater I'd advise not using these suggestions. I just used BlackMagic on one of the SSDs over TB3 and got roughly 360 MB/s read and write.
1TB bare SSD $89.99
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y5VDNT9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
1 USBc/Thunderbolt 3 adapter $11.48
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0735KY2SL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The links in the post above are SATA SSDs. Fine for bigger mostly faster storage. There are ways to get around 450MB/s-500MB/s when using better adapters/enclosures via USB-C.
I didn't see that you'd ever posted your problem on the SoftRAID forum.
For transferring a few dozen photos or files, no big deal, but for heavier workloads it's a very different story. I regularly use external SSDs to clone a user's Mac for subsequent transfer to a new Mac, and can tell you that my SSDs — a 1TB Samsung T5 USB-C, and a new OWC TB3 enclosure with Samsung M2 innards — both get spanking hot during a 200-300GB transfer. In fact they get hot enough that I'll typically place some kind of improvised external heatsink against the case to help keep the temperature in check. Another solid aluminum drive enclosure stacked on top works well, although at home I've used a flat aluminum saucepan lid to great effect!
This is the "Envoy Pro Elektron" which is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) enclosure. I'm guessing the difference with this one, which is rated only a tiny bit faster — 1011MBps vs 980MB/s than the USB-C non-Elektron Envoy Pro EX, is a different controller and drive requirement (NVMe M.2 SSD with 2242 form factor and M-Key connector), I guess? That increase is so small that this is barely an upgrade unless other performance metrics are noticeably different.
Also, this thing uses the Aura P13 NVMe M.2 2242 SSD which I'm not sure about specs for, bu the P12 has read/write speeds of 3400MB/s & 3000MB/s, so they're completely wasted in a USB 3.1 gen 2 enclosure.
I'm not sure why you'd opt for one of these over the TB3 version, or more importantly this newer $79 TB3 enclosure which just came out — which I'd love to see reviewed: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/envoy-express/thunderbolt-3