Summary of AirDrop, network file sharing, target disk mode, and sneakernet, explaining how to use each and what they’re best at.
Thunderbolt
AirDrop is quick, convenient and as slow as you’ll get. Ethernet all too often runs at only 1 Gb/s. Here are the fastest solutions involving M1 models.
There’s evidence to suggest that original M1 Macs write more slowly to external SSDs in some configurations. Does this extend to later models with M1 Pro or Max chips?
Thunderbolt 5 isn’t available yet, and in any case will probably offer no more than 6 GB/s. So what is the way ahead for Apple in its successors to its M1 series chips?
Fundamentally a combination of PCI Express and DisplayPort, with substantial power supply, there are several reasons why you won’t get the whole 40 Gb/s from external storage.
Armed with just a couple of flashy Thunderbolt NVMe SSDs and his home-made benchmarking app, we discover whether Thunderbolt is any better than USB 3.x.
During the first 11.6 seconds of writing, speed was steady at 2 GB/s, then suddenly dropped to 0.7 GB/s. That’s thermal throttling for you.
Internal or external? Hard disk or SSD? USB or Thunderbolt? Cooled or compact? Branded or separates? An external boot disk? Do you have a return and refund option?
It’s limited to 5 Gb/s, giving read rates of about 400 MB/s and writes at about 430 MB/s. Fine for Time Machine backups, but bad with NVMe drives.
Apple wants us to run our Macs at Full Security and not use third-party kernel extensions, but refuses to build S.M.A.R.T. access into USB in macOS.
The Eclectic Light Company 