How much faster should a Thunderbolt 3 SSD be for making Time Machine backups? How can you speed up backups to your NAS? Here are representative speeds from real testing.
SATA
This has become more complex with increasingly popular hybrid drives that support USB4/Thunderbolt and fall back to USB 3.x.
PC users will get 20 Gbit/s and SMART health indicators from this new external SSD, but Mac users will only see half that speed and no SMART without reducing security.
If you want it to have full TRIM and SMART support, it’ll need to have an NVMe interface and a Thunderbolt connection.
Adds the ability to check some key SMART health indicators for Apple Fabric and PCIe SSDs.
Fast compact external SSDs are prone to thermal throttling. This is demonstrated during tests writing 96 files, when transfer rates fell from 2 GB/s to around 700 MB/s.
Estimated time to transfer 60 GB over Ethernet was around 24 hours. How can I speed that up?
Out with USB 2 and in with USB 3; out with FireWire and in with Thunderbolt, then Thunderbolt 2. But which should you choose to use, and how?
The Eclectic Light Company 