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.
USB 3
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.
Why is Apple soldering in the SSDs of so many new Macs? What problems does it produce, and should you avoid them?
Want to connect an external Thunderbolt 3 drive to your Thunderbolt 1 or 2 port? Apple’s adaptor isn’t necessarily the solution.
Radio-frequency interference from USB 3 peripherals can cause problems with Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi.
Although not now believed to be the cause, Samsung’s phone recall is a timely reminder about potential problems with USB-C ports and power.
Does the £120 Thunderbolt case outperform the £15 USB 3 one? And if you had both, which would you choose to use?
Could a £15 case really let my bargain 750 GB SSD perform at its best?
A sale offer brought me a 750 GB SSD for only £110. But should I mount it in a Thunderbolt or USB 3 case?
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