Did you think your Intel Mac doesn’t support the 20 Gb/s speed of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2? It can do, with a little extra hardware support, just as it will a USB4 SSD.
USB 3
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.
Why an Intel Mac’s up to 40 Gb/s from Thunderbolt 3 is less than an Apple silicon Mac’s up to 40 Gb/s from USB4, and how you can benefit from it.
This has become more complex with increasingly popular hybrid drives that support USB4/Thunderbolt and fall back to USB 3.x.
Check its protocol support and expected maximum transfer rate, then whether it supports SMART indicators and Trims with APFS. Finally check its real-world performance.
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.
How well do USB 3.1 Gen 2 SSDs mix with Thunderbolt 3 SSDs when connected to the same Thunderbolt 4 hub?
Adds the ability to check some key SMART health indicators for Apple Fabric and PCIe SSDs.
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.
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?
The Eclectic Light Company 